Michael Langston

Many use alcohol as a sleep aid since it helps to put you to sleep, but this is sedation, not natural, healthy sleep. It also interferes with sleep quality by fragmenting sleep and suppressing REM sleep. This is a very compelling reason to avoid using it.

If you have a health problem that needs to be corrected, one of the first things you should think about, in addition to diet, is correcting your sleep. We often forget how vitally important sleep is and what a profound influence it can have on our health.

Prescription sleep medications may seem to provide a solution for insomnia, but over the long term these drugs will make sleep problems and health in general worse, not better. The so-called sleep they provide is sedation, not natural and healthful sleep.

If you have an unresolved mental or physical health problem, an important lifestyle factor that you need to examine is the quantity and quality of the sleep that you’re getting. You need about 8 hours of sleep each day in order to maintain optimal health.

Since sleep both before and after learning is essential for learning and memory, it stands to reason that chronic sleep deprivation may play a role in contributing to cognitive decline and dementia. As we age, our sleep quality often tends to deteriorate.