28 Wellness Gifts for Better Health and Self-Care
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1. Sleep Is No Magic Word
There was a time when everyone would have written “sleep is the ultimate prescription” onto a list of the top 5 most important things in life.
We tend to be obsessed with our sleeping patterns, and we have this idea that we can change our sleep patterns to improve our health.
That, of course, is a fallacy that was proven false in a study published back in 2016. The research looked at the correlation between people’s sleep times and health. Researchers from the University of Texas at Dallas studied 3,099 adults, all of whom were between the ages of 30 and 59. These people were then asked to complete an online survey about their health, their health habits, and their sleep times.
The participants only completed the survey part that wasn’t too personal. They were then given several different scenarios about sleep. They were told they had a 6-8 hour sleep time, 9-11 hours, or 12 hours and a half. They were then asked to rate their health as being excellent, very good, good, or bad.
Ultimately, they were asked about their health as a whole, and the findings were clear, one, people who took the 9-11 hour sleep time had more trouble maintaining their health as a whole (less than half of those surveyed are in good health overall).
Those who slept more than 12 hours had the least difficulty maintaining their overall good health, no matter what their sleep times were. This does not mean long sleeps will have an effect on our health, but rather it shows that our sleep needs should be looked at on a case-by-case basis for each person.
It’s important to know the difference between how much sleep we need and what we mean by the term “sleep”.
When we get up in the morning, our internal clock tells us it’s time to get ready for work. Our body is then flooded with hormones to prepare us for the day ahead. This prepares us for the morning, but also helps us
