Tales from a Team Lead

Last week I chanced upon a talk show where two doctors from top hospitals here in Manila were interviewed. The topic was about sleep and sleeping disorders. Too bad I didn't saw it from the start.

I sent a text message for a question but I'm not sure if it was live or a replay. So my question was not read on tv. Anyway, here are some pointers that I remember and wanna share.

+ Sleeping is like eating, so don't skip it - It's bad for your health if you skip meals and so does sleeping. Most cases, whenever you skip sleeping or you sleep way past your bed time, you have a hard time falling asleep.

I told this to a colleague a few days ago and she then realized that when she's awake more than 24 hours and tries to sleep, she's having a hard time falling asleep. It's like in Filipino terms, "nalipasan ng gutom".

+ Doctors recommend sleeping from 4 to 9 hours only - In eating, having a diet is good but depriving your body of nutrients is not. And eating too much is also unhealthy. This is the same with sleeping. It is bad for your health to sleep too little or sleep too much.

+ Do not drink water before you sleep - Drinking water will only cause you to wake up in the middle of the night (or in my case, day) because of the urge to go to the toilet. Then most people tend to have a hard time falling asleep again after this.

+ Use your bedroom ONLY for sleeping - It is helpful to train your body and mind that when you go to your bedroom you only sleep. This is quite hard to do, especially if you have a small house. Like me, I have my computer right next to my bed, and most of us have a TV in our bedroom too.

+ Make your bedroom as cozy as possible - Less noise and less light helps us to relax. So totally getting rid of them would be a big plus. Unfortunately for day-sleepers like me the sun is up so it's almost impossible to have a dark room. My solution is to cover my already dark curtains with a thick blanket and use eye covers. I would like to have ear plugs too, but I can't seem to find any in stores here. My honey have them and I would love to try using a pair myself.



I know there are more tips that I forgot and even more that I did not see. But it was good to see that show coz now I know that there are sleep doctors here in the Philippines. the reason why I'm interested in this is because I have insomnia for years and I wanna avoid resorting to medication to cure it.