Sleep well! – that’s so easy to say, as if it were the simplest thing in the world. Many people just don’t sleep well. They lie in bed at night, count the woodchip shavings in the wallpaper, roll over from left to right and left again and when they do fall asleep, they wake up every few hours. In the morning, dark circles hang in the back of your knees and your energy level is below zero. According to experts, a simple yogic breathing exercise can help you sleep and also combat anxiety disorders.
“A lot of sleep problems are about people having trouble falling asleep because their mind is buzzing,” sleep researcher Rebecca Robbins, who teaches at Harvard Medical School, told CNN. Exercises like the 4-7-8 method are a way to calm down.
At the beginning, an upright sitting position in a quiet place is recommended; once it is practiced, it can also be practiced in bed. If the breathing exercise is practiced regularly, it is said to help reduce stress and anxiety. A reduction in depression and sleep disorders was also observed. A team of researchers from Thailand also found that the breathing exercise led to improvements in participants’ heart rate and blood pressure levels. However, it was a very small study, only 43 people took part. There are no large studies on the effects of breathing exercise yet.
We literally oversleep about a third of our lives. And that’s just as well. Because humans need sleep. The deep sleep phase is the time the body takes to regenerate – physically and mentally. The brain organizes the events of the day and tidies up. Cells recover, hormones are released, wound healing processes are underway.
According to a report by the Robert Koch Institute, around one in four people in Germany suffer from sleep disorders, meaning they sleep less than 42 hours a week. Eleven percent sleep so badly that they wake up exhausted rather than refreshed. There are numerous causes of sleep problems. Stress, menopause, depression and shift work are all part of it.
A lack of nighttime rest can have serious health consequences. The risk of heart disease or stroke increases and cognitive performance declines. Chronic illnesses and dementia are also associated with frequent sleep disorders and increased mortality.
Source: Study 1, Study 2, RKI, Ulm University, CNN
