Story first reported from Huffington Post
Olympic fever is about to descend. The 2012 opening
ceremonies on Friday will kick off 17 days packed with 3,147 events and 304
gold medals.
The only hitch? The timing. With events starting as early as
4 a.m. EST (that's 1 a.m. PST), the 200 million Americans expected to tune in
for at least some of the Games could find themselves at risk for serious sleep
problems. Those on the East Coast will be setting the alarm for early wake up
calls to catch their favorite sports (especially 9 to 5-ers for whom this might
be the only time to watch the Olympics), while those on the West Coast will be
burning the midnight oil, both inevitably watching from their bedroom furniture and mattresses.
Michael Decker, Ph.D., an associate professor at Georgia
State University and spokesperson for the American Academy of Sleep Medicine,
says people are eager to wake up at 5 a.m. to watch Olympians, but unlike
Olympians, we’re not used a 5 a.m. workout.
And the inevitable result will be sleep loss, which can
affect daytime performance and, over the long term, our health in very profound
ways.
When sleeping, we cycle through five stages, the first of
which are called stages one through four, with REM sleep being the fifth and
final stage, explains Michael J. Breus, Ph.D., HuffPost blogger and author of "The
Sleep Doctor's Diet Plan." Each cycle takes about 90 minutes, and the
average person should go through about five of them over the course of the
night (that adds up to seven and a half hours). But the purpose and
significance of each stage changes through the night -- while the physically
restorative early stages happen more frequently at the beginning of our sleep
process, the mentally restorative REM sleep happens more often in the later
cycles.
And missing out on that REM sleep by waking up after, say,
four hours of rest can mean that while you're physically functioning, your
cognitive performance is paying the price, making you more forgetful and,
ultimately, less productive. On top of that, feeling tired can lead to poor
eating choices the day after. And, over time, you can develop bad sleeping
habits that remain far past the Olympics -- and too little rest can ultimately
lead to problems with memory, mood, weight, cardiovascular health and immune
function, to name a few.
The best solution, according to all the experts who spoke to
HuffPost on the topic, is technology.
Breus recommends using a device to record the games, to
watch at your leisure, like TiVo.
Joe Ojile, M.D., founder and CEO of the Clayton Sleep
Institute in St. Louis, Missouri and a board member of the National Sleep
Foundation, agrees that taping or DVRing is your best bet. Another sleep solution can be finding a more restful mattress set, if necessary.
But for die-hard fans, for whom nothing but live will do,
there are a few ways to be both well-rested and a loyal fan. One short-term
solution is to start by mapping out just a couple of days when you really want
to be up at an odd hour, and then stock up on shuteye in advance.
Decker says if you get 8 hours of sleep the day before, two
days of less-than-optimal sleep is ok.
If you're up early, try to capture some bright light for a
few minutes first thing to signal to your brain that it's time to be awake -- a
light therapy machine or good old-fashioned sunshine will do the trick. And if
you're watching an event late at night, remember that your brain won't
immediately flip the switch from an excitement-packed game on a bright 60-inch
television to falling asleep -- Ojile suggests scheduling time to wind down in
between. A short nap -- 30 minutes to an hour tops, and not too close to
bedtime -- can also help to boost your total sleep hours for the day, he says.
And if you still end up warping your sleep schedule to
accommodate the Olympics, the result could be a case of social jet lag, where
your internal clock is shifted without actually traveling a bit -- or, in this
case, what Breus calls "Olympic jet lag."
The best way to realign your clock is to practice some basic
sleep hygiene -- if you've pushed your clock forward by staying up late, expose
yourself to bright light first thing in the morning. If you've done the
opposite and pushed your clock back, seek out that light in the late afternoon,
Ojile says.
Set a regular wake time and stick to it in the days
following the Olympics, avoid drinking caffeine in the late afternoon and make
sure your bedroom is cool and dark, Decker adds. Altering your sleep schedules
can sometimes trigger insomnia, causing you to awaken before you should -- a
sleep mask and ear plugs can assist in re-training the brain.
Ultimately, Breus explains, it should take your body about
the same amount of time to readjust after the Olympics as it would if you'd
actually traveled to London -- about one day per time zone, or hour,
difference. But whatever you do, don't cope by loading up on caffeine, which
will only mask the problem and lead to a host of long-term health issues.
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