WHEN SLEEP ISN'T REST

What's really ruining your sleep?

- BY LAKSHANA N PALAT

You slept 7 hours. The magic number. You did everything right: You crashed at 10, and woke up at 5.

And you're still tired. You don’t want to move. It’s not just the regular sleepiness, just the thought of making your way through the day seems exhausting.

Maybe, another 9 hours will do. And maybe, that won’t be enough either.

You aren’t alone in this exhaustion. It’s, unfortunately, quite common. And so, we turned to specialists like Dr Mohammad Nami, a clinical, cognitive neuroscientist and sleep health professional at the School of Health Sciences and Psychology, Canadian University, Dubai.

When sleep isn’t enough

It’s a question that Dr Nami hears quite often, too: ‘I sleep seven or eight hours a night and feel fine the next day, but I still feel tired, foggy and irritable. What’s wrong with me?’

As he explains, “The often-quoted ‘magic number’ for sleep is 7 to 8 hours. While this is generally true, amount of sleep isn’t the full story, quality’s every bit as paramount, if not more so.”

You need to think of it as eating three healthy meals a day, whether or not there is a surplus of food it does not matter, if your body isn’t taking up the nutrients. “And likewise, if your brain doesn’t pass through the stages of sleep it needs, in particular deep ‘slow-wave’ sleep and REM sleep, you may lose out on the restorative aspects of sleep,” he says.

So, why do you lose out on good sleep? Here are possible reasons:

The disruptors that leave you drained

OBSTRUCTIVE SLEEP APNEA (OSA)

You may unknowingly stop breathing during sleep, jolting awake repeatedly, often without realising it. This interferes with the deep stages of sleep your brain and body desperately need.

CHRONIC INSOMNIA

Going to bed early isn’t enough if you struggle with frequent awakenings or lie awake in a hyper-aroused state. Even if it looks like you're resting, your brain may still be on high alert.