Building resilience: food and rhythm

We are still working on the fifth resilience factor here: namely discipline. Today we are looking at the next 2 elements of discipline. That, together with the previous 2 – healthy movement and healthy sleep – form the basis of this resilience factor.

Building resilience: sleeping well!

Having a good-night-rest. Sleeping long enough. Waking well-rested! What a luxury. Sadly, for quite some people, it has become a luxury that they often have to do without. Someone (some time ago) came up with the story that one can manage fine with 5 to 6 hours of sleep a day. The thing is that it actually seems to work for a few years. And yet, these people are (seemingly without really noticing it at first) damaging their brain and body extensively.

Someone who goes with less than 5 hours of sleep twice a week has a 200% bigger chance of getting a stroke (Dr. Helmut Kolitzus). Rene Kahn wrote the very nice and practical book ‘The 10 Commandments for a Healthy Brain’. One of these commandments is ‘sleep healthy and sleep plenty’. For all phases of life it is important to get enough sleep. What is enough though? For teenagers that is actually a lot: 10 to 12 hours. But for all others it is AT LEAST 7-8 hours. Another interesting fact is that one can’t really catch up lost sleep. So, sleeping very little during the week, and trying to catch it up by sleeping a lot during the weekend doesn’t work.