Stress Managment: Sleep and Rest

Remember the wreck of the Exxon Valdez in 1989 that resulted in a such a massive oil spill?

Most people seem to think it was caused by the captain being drunk. Not so at all.

The National Transportation Safety Board ruled the cause was sleep deprivation, as the third mate on duty and steering the ship had slept only six hours of the previous 72 hours.

Our bodies were designed for sleep

But we behave as if this is not true. It has become almost an accepted truth in our culture that in order to be successful, you have to learn to function well on less and less sleep.

The problem is we don't function well.

Occasionally sacrificing your sleep to get a job done on deadline is just a natural part of the world of work. Regularly sacrificing your sleep in order to work more is unhealthy and a lousy use of time that eventually catches up with you and becomes counterproductive.

According to sleep researcher William C. Dement, author of "The Promise of Sleep" sleep debt is like a money loan that must be paid back to avoid serious consequences.

Consistent sleep debt lead to dangerous drowsiness, fatigue and general crankiness.

If our bodies are designed to sleep, then it follows that one way to reduce the stress is to get enough sleep.

I bet you have a great and little used stress busting device in our home right now - the VCR. Tape Tv shows you want to watch and go to bed.

If you can't sleep, at least rest

Rest is simply setting still and doing not much at all. If you can get good at resting, getting good at sleeping is often not far behind.

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What is stress?

Stress (roughly the opposite of relaxation) is a medical term for a wide range of strong external stimuli, both physiological and psychological, which can cause a physiological response called the general adaptation syndrome, first described in 1936 by Hans Selye in the journal Nature.
An emotionally disruptive or upsetting condition occurring in response to adverse external influences and capable of affecting physical health which can be characterized by increased heart rate, a rise in blood pressure, muscular tension, irritability and depression. Stress does not cause migraine but can be a migraine "trigger".
A condition in which the organism is subjected to unfavourable or unfamiliar environmental conditions, resulting in some alteration in normal physical functioning. Short-term stress can often be overcome. Long-term stress can reduce resistance to disease and parasites, inhibit self-healing processes, and reduce life-span.