Reviewed by Rama Gaind.
By Dr Katharina Lederle, Exisle Publishing, $19.99.
Sleep is fundamental to our health and wellbeing. In fact, it’s the critical missing ingredient for physical and mental health. Everyone sleeps, yet few of us understand the importance of sleep, nor learn how to optimise our sleep habits for maximum health benefits.
International sleep expert Dr Lederle draws on the latest research to explore how sleep is connected to each of the three pillars of successful living: physical health, cognitive performance and emotional wellbeing.
Discover how you can choose from a ‘menu’ of healthy sleep options to help you establish healthy sleep habits that best fit your life. Most of us sleep seven-to-nine hours a day. So, what is the role and function of sleep? What regulates it and how much do we really need? Is it true that our brain is either ‘on’ (awake) or ‘off’ (asleep)? If so, what triggers that switch?
These are just some of the questions answered by Dr Lederle in this fascinating insight into one of the most intriguing subjects of modern science: how we sleep, how we improve sleep and – most importantly – how we sleep well again.
Sleep is an area we feel we don’t have much control over, but it definitely controls us.
The human sleep and fatigue specialist outlines how sleep directly impacts our health. “There are many associations between sleep and physical health. Healthy sleep helps to clear the brain of toxins that accumulate during the day when we are consciously using it. It also keeps our hormones in balance. The lack of sleep or rather the staying awake is likely to disturb the internal clock, too, which might further add to the altered relationship between the show hormones.”
If we’re deprived of sleep, and if it’s over a long period, then the risk of illnesses goes up – diabetes for example, obesity, cardiovascular illness (the heart and its systems) to name just a few. “Our immune system becomes affected as well, unbalancing our whole metabolism.”
