Are You Getting Enough Sleep?
(Does You Doctor Know About Your Sleep Patterns?)
Sleep and getting enough of it is often on our mind and probably yours too. Especially, if you feel you aren’t getting enough. Last month, a dear friend of ours, Jenny Schulder Brant led a workshop across the country in Lancaster, Pennsylvania called Sleep with Me at the West End Yoga studio. As a yoga teacher, ayurvedic practitioner and former insomniac, she is an authority on learning how to get more and better quality sleep using the ancient Indian practice. After all, sleep is crucial to good health and longevity. While sadly, we missed this great workshop, (bring it out west, Jenny!) in the meantime there are a plethora of resources to remind us about our sleep issues and how important it is to get more.
The Washington Post recently posted a health and science article stating that “Up to 70 million Americans have a sleep disorder: persistent difficulty sleeping and subsequent trouble functioning during the day. More than 40 million don’t get a proper diagnosis or treatment.”
This research published in the Sleep Medicine journal has Matt T. Bianchi, director of the sleep division at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston explaining that often “patients don’t bring their sleep to the attention of doctors because they don’t think it’s ‘medical’ or think they should tough it out,”
We don’t want to stress you out where you lose sleep thinking about this, but it’s a good reminder to get in touch with the reality of our sleep issues. That means talk to your doctor. The Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine reporter that only 25% of primary-care providers asked new patients about their sleep, despite signs of problems.
As some of the many who struggle to maintain a steady flow of good sleep by being mindful of what we eat and getting plenty of exercise, we would love to hear your practices, remedies, and solutions. Please post them in our comments below. We’d love to share them with the Pilates Platinum community.
Have a good night sleep!