Humans spend nearly one third of our lives sleeping. Our bodies require sufficient amounts of quality sleep for rest and recovery. And perhaps surprisingly, quality sleep is as important to our well-being as food and water.
Humans spend nearly one third of our lives sleeping. Our bodies require sufficient amounts of quality sleep for rest and recovery. And perhaps surprisingly, quality sleep is as important to our well-being as food and water.
There are many forms of sleep that help us to fully recover and restore different parts of our bodies and brains. Deep sleep (also called slow-wave sleep), for example, is the deepest sleep a person can get without going into REM (rapid-eye movement) sleep. Among other things, deep sleep helps integrate memory processing and restore the physical body while the brain is virtually silent and relaxed.
During REM sleep, on the other hand, the brain is very active. This state stimulates brain development, dreaming, and even emotional processing. Both REM and deep sleep are important for proper rest and recovery.
Lack of sleep over long periods of time increases the risk of a number of health problems. These include:
Moreover, not enough sleep or poor sleep quality decreases productivity and increases your irritability. This is because healthy sleep helps to form and maintain the pathways in your brain that are responsible for learning and new memories, which results in difficulty concentrating. Feeling lethargic, foggy-headed, forgetful, overwhelmed, or even grumpy can all be signs of poor quality sleep.
What can make these symptoms even more destructive over the long-term is how they relate to substance abuse and addiction. The effects of poor sleep can exacerbate someone’s pre-existing struggle, or even lead someone to engage in substance abuse to cope with their poor sleep habits.
The link between sleep and substance abuse often goes both ways: substance abuse can cause problems with sleep patterns; and insomnia and poor sleep are often factors in the onset of substance use.
Different substances affect sleep in different ways:
According to the journal of Medical Hypotheses, sleep disturbances are now acknowledged as one of the “universal withdrawal symptoms.” During recovery, these disturbances such as insufficient amounts of sleep, poor quality of sleep, or disruptive dreams can fuel cravings and increase the risk of relapse.
Disturbed sleep—especially in combination with the most studied-substances like alcohol—is a predictive factor in relapse. This means that the likelihood of relapsing increases if you’re experiencing poor sleep quality or not enough of it during your recovery process.
Since we know that healthy sleep patterns can affect the recovery process significantly, what are some ways you can practice getting there? In addition the treatments recommended by your recovery team, here are a few tips that can help you maintain healthy sleeping:
If you are a recovering addict or alcoholic and you are experiencing persistent problems with sleep, do not ignore them. Keep a sleep journal, speak to your sponsor or counselor, and seek assistance in improving your quality of sleep.The team at Seven Arrow Recovery can help you get the help you need—get in touch with us today for treatment and support on your recovery journey.
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