The importance of a good night’s sleep should never be overlooked simply because it incredibly important for an individual’s health. Sleep in essence is equally important as eating and exercising.
Nevertheless, modern technologies and lifestyles has become a bane of sorts as they have been observed to interfere with our natural sleep patterns. In general, most people are sleeping less these days apart from the fact that sleep quality itself has decreased quite significantly.
Studies conducted by researchers at prominent institutions have probed basically everything that has the potential to impair sleep. From the interruption of sleep by social media messages, to radio and electro-magnetic waves and from having children to work stress, researchers have gone through them all to find solutions except one factor which is the material we sleep on.
Although it is true that mattress and bed manufacturers have often claimed that their products improve significantly, none of them have been acknowledged by entities outside of their respective companies, thus the question of whether they actually work is still left floating up in la-la land so to speak.
Impact of Bad Sleep Quality
For starters, the lack of sleep or poor sleep quality has the potential to make people fat based on research on weight gain, this is due to the increased propensity to eat more by those who are deprived of sleep. Apart from that lack of good sleep also impedes concentration and productivity levels significantly similar to how sleep has a negative impact on athletic performance for the same reasons.
Other negative factors related to poor sleep include higher Risk of cardiac diseases and increased vulnerability to stroke and instigating diabetes. This is due to clinical findings that lack of sleep has an impact on glucose metabolism which is an element that is significantly related to Type 2 Diabetes.
Depression is also another issue that is strongly associated with poor sleep which in turn could possibly trigger a variety of other health complications.
The list of negative health due to the consequences of poor sleep just goes on and on before it finally lands on mental disorders and poor immune systems, however even those who are aware of these facts rarely take remedial action to make little changes that could possibly improve their sleep quality.
Bedding Quality
The perfect configuration for good night’s sleep is actually more complex than we realise because comfort is elusive and it is key towards a night full of ‘Z’s.
Most of us often look at everything else around us to blame including an overactive furnace, an exceedingly draft prone adobe, the sound of crickets or even the relentless barking of your neighbour’s dog as the reason for our lack of sleep, when in actual fact it could have been the sheets that we lay upon that was the reason for the all-night tossing and turning.
It has been actually proven that the type of material or the fabric weave of a person’s bedding has the potential to disrupt sleep quite considerably.
Sleep Science
The most common issue brought up by restless sleepers is almost always temperature; they often cite their sleep situation/ condition of either being too hot or too cold. The next most common complaint is ‘the bed was uncomfortable’ followed by ‘mattress quality’ and sheet texture.
The last point ‘sheet texture’ could be the answer to all of the previous reasons, simply because if we look at sleep from a scientific perspective, our body works actually works very hard to regulate our biological temperature and the smallest change in our internal temperature could be amplified to an extent that it feels drastic and raises the level of our alertness allowing everything else (noise, smell, light) to completely disrupt sleep for the remainder of the night.
What we all need to know is that our average body temperature is actually reduced at night by about 1 to 2 degrees which is critical towards conditioning certain organs. The expended heat during sleep therefore must not be trapped and thus it becomes vital to choose sheets that do not trap this expended heat as this would raise our internal temperature and create discomfort.
This discomfort is our body’s method of informing us that conditions are not right – do something about it!
Choosing Sheets
Sheets come in all shapes, sizes and materials that range from synthetic materials or natural materials and although some sheets are tempting as they are cool-to-the-touch, silky and smooth these sheets are almost always suffocating which will cause our bodies to overheat within 2 or 3 hours as they trap warm air and eventually wake us up smack in the middle of the night.
Natural fabrics such as cotton or bamboo definitely offer a better choice towards keeping us from the toss and turn routine as they are not just absorbent and breathable, but also soft and durable. Bamboo sheets especially assists us in keeping our core temperature regulated allowing sleepers to stay cool in summer and warm during winter.
Quality Bamboo Sheets
Quality bamboo sheets offered by an Australian bed linen brand called Linenly has become popular over the last few years and there is more than just one reason for it.
First and foremost the production or manufacturing of bamboo sheets is easily sustainable; apart from that, bamboo sheets that are extracted from natural bamboo are also much softer than cotton and linen and have natural antimicrobial properties.
Look for brands such as Linenly that feature their range of bamboo sheets because these are the companies that most likely take pride in their products and more likely to have used the finest organic bamboo to make their products.
Good Night & Sleep Well – Don’t let the bed bugs bite!
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