My Body Tutor : No More Excuses

It’s no secret that sleep is essential for our overall well-being.

Studies show that not getting enough sleep has many health consequences, such as raising our risk for cancer, heart disease, diabetes and obesity!

Lack of sleep also makes us cranky and less happy. And when we’re less happy we’re more likely to eat poorly. When we eat poorly, we’re less likely to be happy.

Want to make $60,000 extra per year while sleeping (literally!)?

According to author Norbert Schwarz, getting one extra hour of sleep each night would do more for your daily happiness than a $60,000 raise.

So how do you get more sleep? Like anything, you have to make time for it. Ideally, you’d get 7-9 hours of sleep a night. But sometimes, it’s hard to fall asleep.

Exercise to the rescue!

Well, according to one extensive study done this year on healthy children, sleep onset latency – the time it takes to fall asleep once in bed – ranged from as little as 10 minutes for some to as much as 40 for others.

However, physical activity during the day and sleep onset latency were closely linked. Apparently, every hour of sedentary activity during the day resulted in an additional 3 minutes it took to fall asleep at night.

And the children who fell asleep faster, slept longer too! They got an extra hour of sleep for every 10-minute reduction in time it took them to drift off.

But you aren’t a kid you say. We’ll we’re all kids at heart!

And studies done on adults have reached similar conclusions. For those who have trouble falling asleep – and staying asleep – exercise helps a lot!

Bottom line: The more active you are, the better you’ll sleep.