Sleep: better understand it

Let’s shed light on your sleep!

10:30 p.m .: book set, light off, Helight™ Sleep on. The blanket is cozy, the pillow is fluffy, drowsiness sets in. You are ready for a good night’s sleep. Picture perfect, isn’t it?

With our articles, we offer you a better understanding of the mechanisms of your sleep.

From the operation of falling asleep, until the discovery of the intensity of your nocturnal brain activity (because things happen in our brains while we sleep).

Here are some tips to limit the onset of sleep disturbances, and especially to establish a more natural relationship with your sleep.

In a few minutes of reading, you will be able to:

understand how your sleep cycles work and what disturbs them;
find advice to limit the onset of sleep disturbances or problems falling asleep;
take advantage of a few keys to promote a return to restful sleep.

All our articles on sleep

How to properly practice the micro-nap to rebalance your sleep cycle, a practical guide

You are in front of your computer or leaning on the coffee machine, your eyes start to get heavy? Are you unable to concentrate? The day is far from over! How about a micro-nap? We are not offering you a nice 2 hour nap under a duvet, but rather 10 minutes period of rest to get back in mental shape!

Insomnia: what to do in the middle of the night when you can’t sleep?

It’s 3 a.m. and you’re wide awake. There’s no point in turning over in your bed, that’s not how you will fall back asleep. So we are going to suggest some activities to pass the time and maybe help you fall asleep.

Circadian rhythm and sleep: how does it work?

We all have our own circadian rhythm: a biological clock which regulates our organism and which directly influences our sleep. How does it works ? Everything happens in your brain and in its interaction with your environment

Key figures

of our life is spent sleeping

sleep time lost by Canadians since 2005

the time the average Canadian takes to fall asleep

of Canadians take more than an hour to fall asleep

Sleep: how does work?

Sleep is a fascinating universe that science has not stopped exploring. What we know today is that when we sleep, we go through several sleep cycles of 60 to 120 minutes each.

For quality sleep, ideally you should chain 3 to 6 sleep cycles – it all depends on whether you are in the “little sleeper” or “heavy sleeper” leaue.

During a cycle, you will go through different stages of sleep:

Falling asleep
Slow light sleep
Deep slow sleep
REM sleep, or Rapid Eye Movement sleep, because this phase is marked by rapid eye movements.

Deep slow sleep is characterized by a slowing down of the whole organism: it is the sleep phase during which we recover the most.

REM sleep owes its name to the contradictory signals that can be observed during this phase: brain activity is very intense, while the body is still. Researchers believe that our dreams arise during REM sleep.

Health, quality of life, sleep: what’s the point of sleeping?

Sleep plays a fundamental role for our organism, and for our physical and mental health.

If the amount of studies on sleep keep on growing, it is because it has been demonstrated that the quality of our sleep and our health are linked.

We now know that poor sleep increases the risk of cardiovascular disease, obesity, diabetes, and cancer. It also plays a role on irritability, depressive symptoms, hypertension …

And, as you will have noticed, poor quality of sleep impedes our concentration, our learning, our memory skills … Sleep is also crucial for brain maturation and growth, hence the importance of sleep in children.

In short, taking care of your sleep is taking care of your health.

Sleep disturbances: what disrupts our natural rhythm?

Our environment, our lifestyle and the rhythm of our days have an influence on the quality of our sleep.

We consider that on average, since the last 50 years, French people have lost between 1h and 1h30 of sleep time due to the evolution of environmental factors: noise, brightness of screens and them time spent indoors each day disrupt our ability to sleep well.

The most common sleep disorders are:

insomnia, whether punctual or chronic;
difficulty falling asleep, waking up at night or feeling sleepy;
circadian rhythm disorders, the disruption of our biological clock;
sleep apnea;
parasomnias: these are disorders that occur during sleep such as sleepwalking or night terrors.

Several factors can contribute to trigger or worsen these phenomena. Some are specific to each individual, but others are external: lifestyle, the use of screens, the degree of exposure to natural light or the taking of certain drugs disturb the natural functioning of sleep.