ONE of the many issues students bring to yoga class are issues with their backs and spines.
Back pain is rampant in Western society.
An overlooked contributor to helping heal back pain, is quality sleep.
Poor sleep lowers your pain threshold, both making you more sensitive to pain and making your pain more intense.
It’s easy to see how not sleeping and feeling a bit crabby can make you tolerate your pain less well. But sleep seems to directly affect how the brain experiences sensations as painful or not.
In an experiment with healthy adults who didn’t have pain problems, researchers measured how hot something had to be before heat was felt as pain.
During the experiment, some people were allowed to spend a full eight hours in bed at night – others were only allowed four hours.
Those deprived of sleep or who had interrupted sleep had 25% less of a pain tolerance than those allowed to sleep a normal eight hours.
Recent studies show poor sleeping habits cause both brain damage and brain shrinkage and may even accelerate onset of Alzheimer’s disease.
Your brain removes toxic waste during sleep through what is called the glymphatic system.
This system becomes active during sleep, thereby allowing your brain to clear out toxins and harmful proteins.
Lack of sleep has also been linked to obesity in both animals and humans, as well as hormone alterations in animals.
So come and join us.
Regular yoga is guaranteed to help you sleep better!
