Sleep. Ah, delicious sleep. Today I want to talk about the miracle drug. There isn't a lot I can say about sleep that you probably don't already know. It protects us from heart disease, diabetes, and even cancer. It keeps us from overeating. It keeps us from making dumb decisions. It helps us drive. It improves our mood. It's like an aphrodisiac, anti-depressant and a career change all wrapped in one. There's isn't much it can't do. And yet, none of us gets enough. When was the last time you got a solid eight hours? And if it's been awhile, what's stopping you? Is what you were doing really more important than getting a good night's rest? As I get older, I find that I'm more sensitive to a lack of sleep - but I'm not sure if that's biological or rather that I'm just becoming more in tune with my body. I can say this: the problems of being tired are bad enough, but it's really the secondary items that hurt the most, my "fatigue compensation strategies", like food, caffeine, YouTube, etc. and it's a vicious cycle sometimes: when I don't sleep, I tend to indulge in things like late-night YouTube marathons, which makes the problem worse.
When I studied Early Childhood Education, I learned that little kids are very bad at knowing what they need. That is, often a toddler will tell you that they are hungry or thirsty when really they're tired, or vice versa. And I think that even as adults, we'd like to thing we're good at that, but we're not. I often find myself mindlessly eating when what I really need is a nap. So, who wants to take a nap?
