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Perhaps your kids are getting more sleep than ever these days with their social activities strictly limited and more time at home. Boredom can increase sleep time, too. Or maybe your kids are pulling all-nighters watching Netflix, making TikTok videos, chatting with friends or, now that school has begun, doing homework and actually reading.
Whatever life’s activities are, everything can be done better and with more enthusiasm and joy when we are well-rested. The same rings true for your kids.
Depending on your child’s age, there are very specific recommendations about how much sleep they should get. Question is: are they? After all, it’s your job as a parent to ensure their wellbeing and since sleep is fundamental to growth and a strong immune system, to learning and their physical development as well as their emotional wellness, it should be a top priority.
While you, as an adult, likely have adapted to getting less sleep and still being able to get through your day, babies, children and teens don’t cope as well and need significantly more sleep than adults. A child’s early years are so important in terms of development.
Different amounts of sleep are needed through different stages of development, from babies to a child to a teen—sleep is part of a healthy, holistic lifestyle. So, what’s the rule of thumb? Here’s a chart giving age appropriate and science-based recommendations for total hours of sleep each day including night and daytime naps combined.
As with everything health-wise, knowing the rule of thumb is a great start, but of course, you know your child best. If your baby, child or teen seems to function better on even more sleep, use the above guidelines for sleep as a baseline and add more as you deem appropriate up until the maximum because there is such a thing as too much sleep. In these cases, you may want to evaluate the underlying reason for excessive sleep.
As we’ve established, sleep is a healthy addition to a holistic lifestyle and critical for your child’s growth and development throughout childhood. This is because, just as sleep can have a positive effect on your child’s health, not getting enough sleep can lead to long lasting health effects if it persists.
What doesn’t sleep affect? Below is just a short list of the many benefits that sleep can have on your holistic health:
The effects of sleep deprivation go far beyond sleepiness during the day. Here are just some of the negative effects that result from sleep deprivation in babies, children and teens:
Sometimes, half the battle is just getting your child, teen or babies to fall asleep and stay asleep.
Getting quality sleep can often be solved by employing some simple tactics and creating habits, including:
In some cases, all that is needed to sleep better is creating the right environment for rest—starting with a cool, dark room and a natural, non-toxic bed. At SAMINA, we believe a Healthy Sleep Solution is a holistic solution.
To learn more about SAMINA healthy sleep products, contact us today and start sleeping better tonight.
When you consider how many different factors can negatively affect your sleep, dehydration isn’t usually high on the list. We all know that pillows, mattresses, room temperature, pre-bed routines, and body positioning play significant roles. But if you’ve been having trouble getting quality sleep and can’t find a culprit, you may want to explore dehydration as a possibility.
Keep reading to find out how dehydration affects your sleep and what you can do about it.
It is possible to be dehydrated even when you don’t feel thirsty, so relying on thirst alone to guide you is never a good idea. The consequences of dehydration can range from mild to severe, and include headaches, dizziness, confusion, fatigue, organ failure and even death in extreme cases. At night, dehydration can disrupt your sleep so you wake up not rested and still tired. It can also lead to a dry throat and nasal passages that lead to snoring and a raw, parched mouth in the morning. Trying to sleep while dehydrated can also lead to leg cramps and muscle spasms that will keep you up.
Surprisingly, dehydration actually increases the urge to use the bathroom in the middle of the night!
It makes sense that sleeping in a dry environment can dehydrate you faster than an environment with higher humidity levels. If your bedroom is particularly dry, you can become dehydrated while you sleep, or if you already are dehydrated, the situation will be made worse. And if you sleep in an environment that is conducive to dehydration, the sleep hormone melatonin may be affected, which can throw off your circadian rhythm and lead to poor quality sleep.
In 2018, the journal Sleep published research that found adults that sleep six hours per night or less have a higher chance of being dehydrated than those who slept longer.
Some believe these findings indicate that poor sleep symptoms like fatigue, headache or muddled thinking that many people experience in the morning may be caused by dehydration during the night.
The research was performed on around 20,000 Chinese and US adults. Those who claimed to sleep six hours a night or fewer across both groups had a 59% higher risk of being dehydrated than those who slept seven to eight hours regularly. The key may be a hormone called vasopressin. While you sleep, your pituitary gland uses vasopressin to signal the kidneys to retain fluid. Typically, more vasopressin is released later on in the sleep cycle, which is a period the shorter duration sleepers don’t reach.
It’s important to start the night well hydrated because you will lose fluid simply through the act of sleeping. The act of breathing leads to fluid loss, and this is exacerbated if you breathe through your mouth or snore during the night. As mentioned above, sleeping in a dry environment can increase fluid loss, as can exercising intensely in the evening or drinking alcohol to excess before bed.
It’s easy to assume that guzzling copious amounts of water before bed would be the solution to staying hydrated and having a more restful sleep, but that might not be the case. You may end up making multiple trips to the bathroom during the night, which would disrupt your sleep anyway.
It’s better to think of hydration as a whole day type of activity and not just think of it when you are faced with going to bed.
Some useful tips you can use include:
Staying hydrated at night to avoid the negative effects of dehydration can be challenging, but it’s definitely within reach. At SAMINA, we have a wide range of products that can help you have a holistic, natural sleep and avoid sleep-related dehydration. For pricing or any other questions, request more information here.
Most people love the summer heat during the day, but when night falls and it’s time to get to sleep, that same heat takes on a more sinister role. If you don’t have adequate air conditioning in your home (and sometimes even if you do), restful sleep may be replaced by tossing and turning, trying to cool down and get comfortable.
The average person spends around one-third of their lives sleeping, and there have been countless studies performed that connect adequate sleep with a range of health benefits. These include better immune function, higher cognitive ability, disease prevention, increased energy levels and better overall health.
If you’ve been having trouble sleeping comfortably through the hot summer, keep reading to find out the role temperature plays in quality sleep and how you can sleep more soundly.
In the natural process of falling asleep, temperature plays a significant role. As day turns to night and it gets closer to bedtime, the pineal gland releases melatonin in an attempt to help your body reduce heat. When you get into bed, your body temperature continues to decrease, until it is one or two degrees cooler than during the day. That temperature change helps you get to sleep faster to facilitate a good night’s rest. Naturally, if your room is hot and humid, it will be more difficult to cool down and start the sleep process.
Comfort is the main ingredient to healthy sleep, and that’s going to vary depending on the person. Many experts suggest keeping your bedroom cool, in the 60-68 degree range, for the best chance at finding that ideal temperature for you. If you are able to fall asleep relatively quickly and remain sleeping comfortably throughout the night, you’ve likely found the right temperature for your body. Another tip for keeping your room at the right temperature is minimizing the light and keeping it as quiet as possible. This may include installing coverings for your windows to block out street lights and turning off LED lights from any devices in your room.
The more you can make your room like a cave, the more relaxed you’ll be and the easier it will be to regulate your temperature.
If you experience high humidity in your bedroom, a dehumidifier that’s set to around 30-50% humidity should keep it right where you need it for maximum comfort.
There are a number of different things you can do to stay cool enough at night and sleep well during those hot summer nights. Here are some useful tips to keep in mind:
Temperature and quality sleep are closely related, so just trying to tough it out and make the most of it probably isn’t the way to go.
As you can see, you can have a say in controlling the temperature in your sleeping space, even if you don’t have a high-powered AC system working for you.
At SAMINA, we offer world-class sleep products and accessories that will help you have a quality sleep under any conditions. With luxury mattresses and complete holistic sleep systems, you can count on a natural sleep every time. Request more information on the SAMINA sleep system here.
Sleep is necessary for everyone, whether we want to admit it or not. When you’ve experienced disturbances with several nights’ sleep, you know exactly how important it is to ensure your quality of rest. Unfortunately, many chronic conditions are linked to sleep (or lack thereof): insomnia, anxiety and depression.
According to a 2018 study published in the US National Library of Medicine National Institute of Health, the average person needs seven to eight hours of sleep each night in order to maintain optimal mental and physical health; much less than that can be harmful to an individual’s health.
But how exactly does this translate to your daily life? According to the same study, many individuals with ‘sleep debt’ or sleep deprivation experience changes in their mood, even to the extreme of anxiety and depression. With so many people experiencing these mental health conditions, it is time to take a closer look at our sleep hygiene.
For many biohacking experts, sleep is the number one focus for all-natural performance enhancement. If you experience sleepiness throughout the day, mood swings, anxiety and depression, introducing better sleep hygiene, such as a quality green mattress, can be highly effective and yet holistic.
In addition, if you’re taking too long to fall asleep or are experiencing disturbances in your sleep throughout the night, it’s time that you consider evaluating your sleep routine – including screen time, daytime habits and, of course, your bed.
One of the best ways to improve your sleep is to make your bed irresistibly comfortable. This includes your mattress, bedding and pillows. Besides comfort, a luxury mattress should be healthy for you too! A non-toxic mattress is more important than you might think – you spend seven to eight hours a day on it after all!
A luxury, eco-friendly mattress can be a highly effective way to ease your mental health in a holistic way. In fact, many biohacking experts have seen some if not all of these improvements:
Optimal ambient temperature is very influential to the quality of your sleep. A quality mattress is constructed to meet requirements for temperature control, but a luxury mattress will exceed these requirements to ensure that you sleep comfortably and more deeply.
Stress is inevitable in everyone’s life, whether it’s related to personal and professional causes. However, how we manage and react to stress is up to us. Stress management comes down to routines and developing a ‘toolkit’ that helps you manage the daily struggles that you face. Within this toolkit should be habits and items that contribute to quality sleep.
The ‘vicious cycle’ of bad sleep and stress, according to The American Institute of Stress, means that stress brings on insomnia for many people. After that, a lack of sleep makes it much more difficult for a person to constructively manage stress – and the effects continue to cycle.
Your memory is, of course, highly linked to your mental health. In fact, one could view mental health (such as anxiety and depression), memory and sleep as three intertwined health concepts. Sleep deprivation has been, time and again, linked to forgetfulness and ‘unlearning’. By investing in your sleep, from bedding to an eco-friendly mattress, you are investing in your own mental and physical well being.
Of course, all of the above benefits of a quality luxury mattress amounts to the most important benefit: a better quality sleep and, for many, improvements to mental health.
Adding a quality eco-friendly mattress to your sleep routine can dramatically improve the quality of your sleep. The SAMINA sleep system, including the non-toxic mattress, supports you physically, so your sleep can support you mentally. A luxury mattress from SAMINA supports the neck and loins so that other heavier body parts like the shoulders and hips don’t sink into your mattress and contort your spine.
Start biohacking your sleep and find a holistic treatment for mental health conditions like anxiety and depression. To be on your way to your best sleep ever, request more information here.
A deep and comfortable sleep is crucial to a long and healthy life. There are many ways to improve your nightly sleep, including selecting an eco-friendly mattress, grounding yourself with a comfortable grounding pad, and selecting bedding that offers the best support and health benefits. At SAMINA, we consider ourselves sleep experts and one thing we’ve noticed in our time working with beds, mattresses and sleep accessories is that inclined sleep provides a multitude of advantages.
Here we’d like to shed some light on how choosing an inclined bed, like the SAMINA Gravity Inclined Bed, can help you sleep better and feel better.
Inclined sleep, as the name suggests, is sleeping in a bed which elevates the head above feet with body in horizontal position.
At SAMINA, we provide healthier sleeping opportunities for our customers with a bed built specifically for inclined rest. Here are some of the ways the Gravity Inclined Bed can help you improve your sleep.
The human stomach is a complicated and sensitive system. For some, the natural acids in our stomachs don’t always stay where they’re supposed to. Acid reflux and other issues resulting in the rising of stomach acids is uncomfortable and dangerous if left untreated. While an inclined mattress can’t replace a doctor’s assistance, it can help stave off symptoms and increase your long-term comfort.
According to one scientific study, which examined the difference between laying flat and laying inclined, patients encountered less acid reflux while inclined. Choosing a bed frame with an incline provides you with the same gastrointestinal support, reducing symptoms of acid reflux and adding to the comfort of any luxury mattress.
Throughout the day, your body takes a beating. Gravity combined with an active lifestyle compresses your spine and joints. This leaves your body craving the time it can stretch out and relax at night on a certified green mattress. Traditional flat beds place pressure along the entirety of your body as you sleep. Choosing an inclined bed frame, however, reduces this pressure, giving your muscles, skin and bones the chance to decompress after a long hard day.
Some of the best evidence of inclined sleep for low-pressure comes from the health industry. There are many reasons hospital beds incline, but one is the reduction of pressure from skin and muscle tissue during rest. When the human body spends long periods of time in bed, sores can form along the skin from pressure. Inclining the mattress reduces this pressure and resulting discomfort. While your typical 8-hours of sleep at night doesn’t warrant fear of bedsores, it still causes ongoing pressure during a time your body should be regenerating. Choosing a bed with a slight incline is best for body and mind.
There’s a reason why hospitals use inclined beds for patients having trouble breathing or regulating heart rate. Studies show that inclining a bed frame opens air passages and allows for easier breathing. While the SAMINA Gravity Inclined Bed doesn’t offer extreme elevations, it does gently lift your head and recline your feet enough to be beneficial yet subtle for a good night’s sleep.
The best example of elevating a bed for optimal breathing is from childhood. Anybody who has ever stayed home sick from school is sure to remember being propped up on extra pillows to lessen coughing symptoms and make it easier to breathe. The same can be said of the Gravity Inclined Bed, although to a less obvious degree.
Individuals who snore may also find that elevating the bed decreases the frequency with which you do. This could improve sleep patterns, decreasing the number of times you wake during the night due to snoring. Pairing your inclined bed frame with a non-toxic mattress increases these respiratory health benefits.
Achieving a good night’s rest makes a difference to the rest of your day. At SAMINA our doctor recommended mattress and bed frames are designed with your healthiest sleep in mind. To learn more about sleeping inclined and our certified green mattresses, contact us today.
It’s best when you can schedule an appointment to view our products and experience the SAMINA difference, but you may also order directly from us over the phone. A SAMINA Sleep Concierge will verify each order to ensure you and your sleeping partner, when applicable, have the right system for your respective physical needs and specific sleep concerns.
Our healthy sleep concierge service is available Monday – Saturday, 9am – 6pm PST. Our aim is to reply to you within 24 hours.
As a naturopathic doctor that focuses his practice on environmental medicine and healthy clean living,
I came across a very interesting phenomenon in practice. I have seen that there’s a very small number
of patients in my practice that seem to be extremely sensitive to the materials that their mattresses and
pillows are made of. Even though this is a small number of patients (perhaps less than 10% of my
patients), it’s still very significant as these patients have been experiencing a collection of “strange and
undiagnosed” symptoms that ended up being caused by their everyday exposure to their mattresses.
Over many years, they have seen multiple doctors, running lots of tests, and even done MRIs, in their
attempt to find out what is causing their symptoms that do not seem to be improving with attempted
treatment over the last few months or years.
The collection of symptoms that my patients report, which I believe to be related to their exposure to
VOCs from their mattresses or pillows are fatigue, balance issues/dizziness (especially in the
morning), brain fog or poor concentration, headache in the morning, and along with the more rare
symptom of numbness and tingling either in their hands, feet, or face. The reason that I feel these are
coming from their mattress and pillow is that 1) their symptoms started shortly after they purchased them. 2) Their symptoms match those of low chronic ongoing exposure to solvent/VOCs/off-gassing.
3) Their symptoms improved once they tried sleeping on a mattress that does not off-gas petroleum-based solvents VOCs. These symptoms and the improvements have been seen specifically with
regards to some memory foam-based mattresses and pillows and their subsequent removal.
One question I get asked often is “Why does my partner have no symptoms while sleeping on the
same mattress that I appear to be reactive to?”
Without going into a lot of detail here, the simplest answer is that we are individuals and have very
different genetics and different total body burdens of toxicants and toxins. Everyone responds
differently to chemicals – from chemical cleaners to pharmaceuticals, to alcohol. Depending on how
well we can clear a specific category of toxicants/toxins (due to your individual genetic profile – for
example our glutathione-s-transferase detoxification profile and our methylation profile), and how high
of a total body burden we’ve acquired based on our hobbies, diets, jobs, and lifestyle, we will all
respond very differently to chemicals. Thus, the same exact exposure to a chemical compound will
cause one person to experience no symptoms, while in another person it may manifest with very
significant and life-altering symptoms.
Seeing the improvement in my patients’ health has inspired me to purchase an organic, clean, and
non-off gassing mattress for myself, specifically one made from natural rubber, latex foam. I have been
sleeping on one for years now, enjoying a cleaner sleeping experience and sleeping better overall.
It wasn’t until recently that I have had a chance to upgrade my bed to a Samina mattress & bed frame.
I decided to invest in my health a bit more, especially considering all the research showing how
important good quality sleep is for prevention of diseases such as cardiovascular disease and
dementia/cognitive function.
When the crew from Samina came to my condo to install the bed, I was very pleasantly surprised by
the quality of the inclined bedframe and how It fits together so simply and without the use of any metal,
using a lock and key latch design. Also, with how easy it was to change from a 3 degrees incline to 5
or 7-degree incline if I ever decided to increase the incline (I started and stayed with 3 degrees for
now). It was obvious that a lot of care was taken in designing not only the bedframe but in every layer of the mattress, from the wooden panels for back support, organic latex foam, to the merino wool
layer.
To keep things short and simple, I was happy with the improvement that I experience in my sleep from
this upgrade to the Samina bed from my previous organic latex mattress. Both are great options for
improving the quality of my sleep and reducing my risk of developing any symptoms/future health
concerns and I can comfortably recommend anyone who is interested in optimizing their health to
look into upgrading to a Samina bed if they have the option to.
Dr. Aviad Elgez, ND