Understanding Sleep in Lifestyle Medicine

Overview

Ever since I re-launched this website, I started discussing Lifestyle Medicine as a medical discipline and started the six areas of focus with nutrition. Each area of focus is important in itself and these should go along with the others. So enumerating them does not mean that is the order or a pattern to be followed. The next area of focus of Lifestyle Medicine I am going to share today is about sleep.

Isn’t it funny that although everyone sleeps, it is difficult for us to define precisely what sleep is? Try asking people randomly what sleep means to them and you will get different answers. Yet, and this is a reality, sleep is a human activity that almost everyone takes for granted.

Sleep Health and World Sleep Day

Last month, World Sleep Day® was celebrated. Yes, there is such a thing. It is held every Friday before Spring Vernal Equinox each year. For this year, it was held last March 19th. This annual event is intended to be a celebration of sleep and at the same time, create a call to action on important issues related to sleep which includes medicine, education, productivity, driving, and other social aspects of human life.

It goes to show that Sleep Health is being recognized as a component of Lifestyle Medicine. Sleep Health or sleep medicine is relatively new in the field of Lifestyle Medicine that scientific studies and related literature on sleep health are limited. Be that as it may, this article is going to provide you an overview of the key issues associated with sleeping habits and how to incorporate this knowledge into your own lifestyle for better health.

Definition of Sleep

Sleep is a body and mind activity which is natural, recurring,