Letters

It rained last weekend if anybody noticed. Same, same, the deluge caused panic on the roads with hazard lights aplenty, kids got their swimming pool floats and boats out for a splash around their compounds and unfortunate folk living near Isa Town found their homes flooded once again.

The misery will provoke MPs to get angry and ministries will promise to do better next time … until the next time. It’s April now and hopefully the showers will be over until November. And then we can have another moan.

It’s timely that Lulu Hypermarket has launched its British Week because the weather was all that us expat Brits used to talk about before BREXIT! Now it’s the never-ending hot (and wet) topic in Bahrain.

Bemused Dave, Saar.

Getting out of bed can be a real drag, and for many people hitting the snooze button once or twice is part of our morning wake-up routine. But all that snoozing isn’t helping our bodies get the restorative sleep that we need.

Much of the latter part of our sleep cycle comprises REM sleep, or dream sleep, which is a restorative sleep state. And so, if you’re hitting the snooze button, then you’re disrupting that REM sleep or dream sleep.

We have different arousal thresholds during different stages of sleep, and if we’re disrupting late-stage REM sleep, it can cause a ‘fight or flight’ response – which increases our blood pressure and heartbeat.

Plus, the short period of sleep that we get in between hitting the snooze button – five, 10 minutes at a time – is not restorative sleep.

While some people can get conditioned to hitting the snooze and actually get used to it, if a person feels the need to hit snooze again and again, it could be an indicator that they’re either not getting enough sleep or they might have an underlying sleep disorder.

For those who find themselves hitting the snooze every day, it’s time to take a look at your sleep habits.

Make sure you’re getting seven to eight hours of sufficient sleep and good-quality sleep. And, if that’s happening, and someone still feels the need to hit that snooze button, then they should probably see their physician to make sure there’s no undiagnosed sleep disorder that could be contributing to their need to hit the snooze.

The best way to de-condition ourselves from hitting snooze every morning is to make sleep a priority. Many people mistakenly think they can operate on less than seven hours of sleep per night, but research has shown that over time, insufficient sleep contributes to weight gain, cardiovascular risks and even death.

We have so much going on, and in this day and age with technology and phones, and TVs in the bedroom contributing to light at night, combined with work and family obligations, the time we spend asleep often gets short-changed.

Prioritising seven to eight hours of sleep for our overall well-being and health is very important, so that we can optimise functioning during the day and have healthy relationships with our loved ones.

Reena Mehra, M.D., M.S., director of sleep disorders research, Cleveland Clinic.

 Once again, I have had the opportunity to enjoy articles written by Mai Al Khatib-Camille in GulfWeekly. I like to read your newspaper and the Gulf Daily News whenever I visit Bahrain.

R. M. Arora, Senior Citizen, Augangabad, India.

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