Good sleep is more than essential to healthy cognition, communication and swallowing. It feels good! When you are living with a healthy sleep pattern, you may echo Shakespeare: "O sleep! O gentle sleep! Nature’s soft nurse, ..." (Hylton, 1993). Recent research indicates that effective sleep habits help a person sustain essential nerve conduction functions, flush the nervous system of toxic material, and assure retention of the sleeper's memories (NINDS, 2023). Yet many, many of us struggle with getting the recommended quantity and quality of sleep to stay healthy (CDC, 2022). Outside of medical management of severe sleep problems, one of the better weapons in the sleep-deprived person's arsenal is sleep hygiene.What is sleep hygiene? The practice of sleep hygiene uses a collection of strategies and routines that allow most persons to get their maximum potential from a good night's sleep (Suni and Vyas, 2023). The reader can review the Sleep Foundation article, as well as other reviews of the practice (Irish, 2015; Breus, 2023; MGH, 2023) to develop and implement such a skill set.
It's then kinda a no-brainer for CSD clinicians like ourselves, reader, to support the consumers who need help to sleep better. What makes this extra-clinical activity fairly easy, is that clues to a better sleep can be found with the calendar! I'll give you an example. November 13 (tomorrow as I write this) is "World Kindness Day"(Random Acts of Kindness, 2023). Some sleep hygiene activities that you might have at the ready, to advocate for sleepy people everywhere, could include:
* CONTROL NOISE - there are construction sites in most urban areas, where noise is evidence of progress. Unfortunately, residential areas near the site suffer the consequences of piledrivers at dawn, or jackhammers in the heat of summer. An example is the Hyde Park Labs, a planned multi-story adjunct of the University of Chicago (Hyde Park Labs, 2023), which is scheduled to open in 4th quarter of 2024. To even the odds that nearby residents might get the best sleep, stop by a morning treat shop to bribe the construction crew to start an hour later. For this example, the Dat Donut store is approximately 5 miles away from the construction site, and a neighborhood treasure for their "Big Dat" pastry (Dat Donut, 2023).
* MAXIMIZE COMFORT - older persons often find that they might fall asleep anywhere, at any time (ask me how I know this!). When a senior wakes up from a sudden nap, she will most likely have aches in the head, neck and shoulders. You can advocate for new residents of congregate living facilities, be they independent care, assisted living or memory care units, be issued annually one new neck pillow for use in improving their sleep comfort. Most pillows of this type and size retail for less than $40.00 USD (Imbler, 2023). An example of a senior congregate living facility, amenable to supporting resident sleep hygiene is the Clarendale of Algonquin, IL (Clarendale of Algonquin, n.d.).
* TEACH, TEACH, TEACH - young people are caught up in the tornado of becoming an adult while in high school. Education and training after high school graduation can only perpetuate poor sleep habits, that a teen might take on to experience their school, work, leisure experience. Consider for your neighborhood high school a health class' unit on SLEEP: for example, the Lincoln Way Community High School District 210 of suburban Chicago, offers health education to high school freshmen.Yet teaching good sleep hygiene is not supplementing curricula for mental/emotional health, relationships, sexual reproduction, infectious and non - communicable diseases, drugs and nutrition (LW210, 2023). An e-learning platform piloted for Australian schools is only one example of the possibilities of improved sleep hygiene for this vulnerable population (Davis, Blunden, and BoydPratt, 2022).
Get some rest, then get busy tomorrow!
No comments:
Post a Comment