BRYAN, Texas — March 10 through the 14 marks National Sleep Awareness Week for 2020, and as adults, we appreciate sleep much more than we did as kids.
A lot of us know we need at least seven to 8 eight hours, but are we getting quality sleep?
Are there sleep habits you’ve always wondered about? We spoke to Baylor Scott & White for some answers.
“We live in an age where there’s a lot of competition for our attention... we are very good at doing, we’re not very good at being,” said Dr. Rajesh Harrykissoon, from Pulmonary Medicine at Baylor Scott & White.
These days, lots of people prioritize staying busy and connected to the world, but is that helping us wind down for the night?
Chances are, it’s not, so BSW says first and foremost, put away the phones before bed.
“It'll be to simulate natural sunset in your homes. Now sunset is not when it occurs in nature, it’s when we choose for it to occur in our own homes, so that’s when we choose to dim the lights, avoid sources that come with high light intensity or the blue light that comes with electronics,” said Dr. Harry Kissoon.
Dr. Harrykissoon also noted to allow the body to quiet down like that with a pre-bedtime routine for an hour before bed can help decrease that time spent falling asleep.
Eating habits before bed can also come into play.
“Don’t go to bed hungry but also don’t have heavy meals. Snacks, light snacks are fine. Just caffeine free snacks,” he said.
Let’s say you’re falling asleep, and you twitch; Why does that happen?
“The twitching when you’re first falling asleep is called a hypnic jerk. It’s just a release of muscle tone. You’re losing that muscle tone as you're falling asleep, and you may have this sudden sharp jerk of a limb, that’s natural.”
So you’ve fallen asleep, and you had a crazy dream, chances are, you were sleeping pretty well.
“REM sleep tends to be bizarre, doesn’t follow the laws of physics. You're floating you're flying, whereas dreams in non rem sleep, it tends to follow a structure, it follows a plot. It might even be in the context of something going on in your life that day, you might be problem solving,” Dr. Harrykissoon said.
Of course, all dreams are normal, and as it turns out, as rare as it is to find in adults, sleepwalking is too.
“Usually at the end of adolescence, its one percent or less... usually if you’ve had it continuously through childhood. It’s just that physiology.”
But if you’re an adult who randomly begins sleepwalking, or has had consistent issues with sleep, doctors advise seeing a specialist to get to the root of the problem.
Baylor Scott & White offers sleep studies and you can find out about them here.