Like eating, drinking, and breathing, sleeping is a basic human need. Getting enough quality sleep at the right times can help protect your mental health, physical health, quality of life, and safety. Unfortunately, in today's fast-paced world, a good night's sleep has fallen down our list of priorities behind work, chores, social time, and entertainment.
Countless people trade sleep for working at night, catching up on emails, scrolling through Facebook and Instagram, or bingeing on movies, and falling into the habit of sleeping late.
Poor sleep has been shown to significantly increase the risk of health issues from anxiety and depression through to cardiovascular disease, stroke, and diabetes as well as suppressing the immune system and so leading to higher levels of infection.
Despite the advances in our understanding of the importance of sleep for our mental and physical health, we continue to control our light environment through the simple flip of a switch. We continue using alarm clocks and planned schedules in the misguided belief that we can override our natural sleep needs. In other words, we seem to value our alarm clocks more than our internal clocks. We believe we can comfortably live our lives outside the 24-hour light-dark cycle, and reverse our days and nights yet it is difficult to change our sleep habits and the "hands" of our "biological clocks" without consequences to our mental health, physical health, quality of life, and safety. This book highlights those consequences. I hope that the information in it will help the reader gain awareness about how our stubborn and /or unwitting disregard of our sleep needs can ruin our lives.