Rosalie Ungar is the author of IN A HEARTBEAT: The Ups & Downs of Life with Atrial Fib.
It has come to my attention that sleep is getting a lot of attention lately. Not only to maintain good physical health, but mentally and socially too. When I was in my thirties and in a workaholic stage, sleep was supposed to be sacrificed in order to get the job done and to have a social life. How many students pull an all-nighter to prepare for an exam or turn in a paper or meet a deadline?
What about traveling from one time zone or another and ignoring that you’ve just lost 3 hours or 6 hours or even 12 hours? When you get to your destination during the work day, it’s expected that you start working even if it’s 3 hours earlier than the time zone you just left, plus another 6 hour difference counting the time it took to get to the destination.
Can we make up for lost sleep? Some people can, I am told. Youth has its advantages. Maybe that’s why being a parent to infants is easier in one’s twenties or thirties,
Sleep has a healing mechanism. Sometimes it’s the best medication for preventing disease, recovering from an illness or maintaining good health. As we age it becomes more important but more difficult to manage. The charts now stipulate that as adults we should have 7 to 9 hours of sleep per night. It used to be that bedtime was sleep time and 7 or 8 hours after the head hit the pillow to wake up and feel great. In that case I awoke but never just jumped out of bed. I like to wake up slowly and get out of bed at least 20 minutes later.
Now, however, 2 hours after falling asleep I wake up even though my last thought before closing my eyes is that the next time I open them will be at least 7 hours later. It rarely happens that way, but when it does, I feel like magic the whole next day. I’m trying all the suggestions for good sleep therapy
Two of my previous blogs deal with sleep: Atrial Fib and The Nap and Atrial Fib and Sleep Apnea, written by guest blogger Lisa Eliason. You may want to read them again. Here are their links: Atrial Fib and The Nap, Atrial Fib and Sleep Apnea
For more about heart issues and atrial fib, don’t forget to get your copy of IN A HEARTBEAT: The Ups & Downs of Life with Atrial Fib in paperback, eBook or audio book on Audible.com, Amazon, iTunes, Kindle or Nook.
Future blogs will include more about sleep and some wake up news about genetics.
