Paths to a healthy life - Pillar number two: Restorative Sleep

This workshop is a collaboration between Gisele Ortomolecular (specialist) and teacher Guil (moderator). Gisele's objective is to empower people to take control of their health while also covering the fundamentals of a healthy life.

We have 4 Pillars of health and they are:

1. Physical Activity
2. Restorative Sleep
3. Stress Modulation
4. Adequate Nutrition

Restorative Sleep

Prioritize your sleep.
Did you know that we spend 1/3 of our lives sleeping?
Crazy, right?!?
That’s a lot of sleeping!

And it’s not easy to realize how important it really is.
Sometimes it’s just harder for us to get a good night's sleep. Maybe you have young kids. Maybe you’re having other issues with sleeping. But it is so key to the overall health of our entire body. And the reason is that when we sleep our cells and tissues have a chance to regenerate, it’s excellent for our cognitive function and our memory for the next day. It’s almost like a cleansing experience for our brain.
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So, some things that you can do to try and get a better sleep are:
Go to bed and wake up at the same time every day, even on the weekends.
Sleep at least 6 hours per night and go to bed before 11 p.m.
Make sure your room is dark and cool enough for the body to relax.
You can even try using some essential oils to help you sleep, like lavender (personally, it’s one of my favourites). So you can use a diffuser or drop some in a tissue or at your pillowcase. These can really help to act on the limbic system in our brain and help us to calm down.
Avoid phones and screens 1 hour before bed so that the sleep hormone melatonin is not destroyed.

In our next blog post, we will bring pillar number three, "Stress Modulation".