Sleep is one of the essential parts of our daily lives, but most of us do not practice healthy sleep habits every day. For adults, doctors recommend getting around 7 to 9 hours of sleep each night. Nightly sleep will vary depending on your age. Typically, children, teenagers, the elderly, and those with health conditions may require more than 9 hours of sleep a night. Often, our busy lives prevent us from going to sleep at a reasonable time, and various factors can keep us from receiving that quality sleep that we desperately need to live healthy lives.
While you sleep, your body essentially works to rejuvenate itself. Your brain is processing the information you learned during the day and improving your ability to store it. This leads to increased memory and a greater ability to learn new information. Additionally, sleep regulates your mood. Without sleep, your brain cannot properly process emotions and create the right response to those emotions, causing your spirit to be unbalanced the following day. Sleeping also repairs the muscles and tissues in your body while promoting growth in different areas such as your hair, skin, and bones. At the same time, your body is repairing and growing; it is also regulating your immune system to prevent illnesses, keeping your appetite under control, and processing glucose. Without regular, good quality sleep, you put yourself at risk for developing health conditions such as diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, and obesity.
So, what could be the cause of a lack of sleep?
Stress/Mental Health Conditions
Lying awake at night thinking about stressors can prevent you from falling asleep. Once you start reminiscing on life problems, it can be hard to concentrate on them instead of sleeping. Mental health conditions such as anxiety, depression, and PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) may also contribute to being unable to fall asleep.
Medical Conditions
Sleeping while you’re in pain or sick is never easy to do. Perhaps you pulled a muscle during the day or are lying awake at night due to coughing from a cold. A medical condition like sleep apnea where you wake up during the night due to breathing issues may cause inadequate quality sleep during the night.
Bad Environment
Disturbances from your surrounding environment, such as an uncomfortable bed, bright lights, loud noises, or extreme temperatures can keep you tossing and turning at night.
Too Much Caffeine
Drinking caffeinated beverages in the afternoon or at night puts you at risk of not feeling tired when it’s time for bed.
Medications
Some medications (for example, ADHD medication) may cause you to feel more awake at night than tired.
Bad Dreams
Bad dreams are unpleasant, but they can happen at any time. Stress or anxiety may increase your likeliness to have unpleasant dreams.
Inconsistent Sleep Schedule/Jetlag
Having an inconsistent sleep schedule can lead to sleep deprivation. You may be getting little sleep every night or having nights of varied sleep. The more you don’t sleep, the more rest your body needs. It can be hard to catch up on sleep when you are sleep deprived properly. An inconsistent sleep schedule can be caused by factors such as work hours or jetlag from traveling.
To help yourself sleep at night, you may be turning to sleeping pills prescribed by doctors or supplements like melatonin. Sleeping pills are usually made from artificial ingredients and may put you at risk of either sleeping too much or waking up in the morning feeling groggy. Melatonin is a more natural supplement released by the brain’s pineal gland and signals your body to start feeling prepared for sleep once the sunsets. It can usually be taken every day, unlike doctor prescribed sleeping pills, which might be harmful to your body if taken every night before bed.
Taking CBD oil may be a way to improve how you sleep. CBD (cannabidiol) is a chemical compound derived from the Hemp plant that can help manage sleep by potentially relieving symptoms that keep you awake, such as making you feel more alert in the day, so you don’t take naps, reducing anxious thoughts/feelings, easing pain, and relaxing your body. CBD may also affect sleep disorders that occur during the REM cycle of sleep. In conditions like Parkinson’s disease and PTSD, people are unable to control their bodily movements during the period of the sleep cycle that typically paralyzes you from moving and prevents you from hurting yourself or others. In some cases, CBD has helped those who struggle with this problem, resulting in lesser movement during the REM cycle, resulting in better sleep.
CBD products such as drops and soft gel capsules can be used every night before you go to sleep. If you’re looking for CBD products to help possibly have better quality sleep, Tree of Life Seeds has a variety to get you on that path. You can either take the CBD oil drops, which come in 250mg (10 mg per serving) or 500mg (20 mg per serving) bottles, or you could take the CBD Softgels, which include 30 capsules in a bottle and have 10-25 mg of CBD per serving. For sleep problems, the CBD Melatonin Chamomile Rest Softgels may be the best product for you. The bottle contains capsules with 25mg of broad-spectrum CBD oil plus 1 mg of melatonin and 1 mg of chamomile. Melatonin and chamomile are added to the CBD because of their relaxing benefits.
*Before you begin taking any supplement for sleep problems, talk with a doctor because insomnia may be an indicator of a serious health condition.