Our Top Wellness Trend of 2020: Get More Sleep
As a society, it’s about time we take a collective rest. The last decade has been all about more — more hustling, more grinding, harder workouts, even harder-to-follow diets. But was it worth the extra stress?
Like anything in life, it’s important for our wellness routines to stay in balance. Pushing to new limits all the time is a recipe for burnout and injury. It’s been overwhelming enough that even the most fitness-minded people are going into 2020 thinking enough already.
With all that said…
...Happy World Sleep Day!
Just think: is there any better way to hit the refresh button...than sleep? For one, it’s a biological necessity. Two, the more one sleeps the better they tend to feel. At Jasper, we feel like sleep has been overlooked for far too long.
Why Is Sleep So Important?
We humans are high maintenance creatures. It takes a lot of energy to keep our brains and bodies in action all day. Sleep is when we recharge our batteries and repair any damages sustained. Sleep is when many important hormonal levels get replenished.
Why Is Sleep So Important to The Brain?
Sleep is critical to pretty much all of the brain’s functions. Sleep ensures that one’s brain cells (neurons) stay healthy enough to clearly communicate. New research shows that sleep gives the brain time to ‘detox’ itself from daily stress.
Sleep also orients the brain towards a healthy circadian rhythm, which is controlled by a little structure called the suprachiasmatic nucleus. Good sleep — at the right times — helps your brain’s 24-hour cycle stay optimal.
What Are The Benefits of Sleep?
Sleep carries with it all sorts of benefits...the biggest and best of which is staying alive! *cue the Bee Gees*
Beyond that, sleep is great for hormonal health, mental health, and everyday health in general. Getting enough sleep ensures that your stress hormones stay balanced, your ‘calming’ hormones (like GABA) stay nice and high, and your mind stays fresh.
Conversely, missing sleep has been correlated with obesity, stress, inflammation, premature aging, and all sorts of awful stuff. Just a single night of missed sleep can cause levels of a hunger hormone called ghrelin to rise, which might make sticking with your diet that much harder!
Building Your Perfect Bedtime Routine
Thankfully, it’s not all that hard or complicated to improve your sleep. Here’s a list of things you can do to build your best bedtime routine — just remember, the magic really happens when these things are done consistently:
Wake up with the sun
Why? Because your body’s circadian clock is set at the start of the day.
Avoid bright light after dark
Believe it or not, your suprachiasmatic nucleus may not be able to tell the difference between natural and artificial light. So you wouldn’t want to confuse it or anything!
Exercise
Working out during the day is a great way to strengthen your body’s circadian rhythm. Plus it might make you tired enough that you can’t wait to go to sleep. Intuitive, right?
Take a nightly dose of CBD
Our Relax CBD Oil might be the perfect candidate. 
A Pro-Recovery Lifestyle
Want to perform better at work, school, sports...or just life in general? It may be that the way we’ve been going about things is counterproductive.
Why? Because “...a lot of everyday things we do — like dragging ourselves to an intense workout — cause [cortisol] to spike. We need cortisol, but most of us are functioning with too much at all times due to lifestyle factors,” dietician Lisa Hayim explains to Instyle.
In other words, the key to doing more could actually be doing less and resting more. Why focus on the intense parts of life if the moments of recovery are actually more important? “If I don't sleep 11 to 12 hours a day, it's not right,” tennis player-supreme Roger Federer has said.
Maybe we all need a little more of that mindset. Maybe sleep is key we’ve all been missing — in today’s hustling, bustling, coffee-addicted society, it’s easy enough to believe.
Ultimately, 2020 is bringing us a lot of new wellness trends. CBD skincare is probably number one, and there’s also cool stuff like sound therapy and wearable wellness tech. But maybe — just maybe — the most important wellness trend of 2020 involves going back to the basics and getting more sleep.
