Being able to get quality sleep is desired by everyone. If we look around, we observe that almost everyone has difficulty falling asleep and they consider people who fall asleep easily, privileged. It is indeed a huge privilege to fall asleep faster. A lot of people try different methods to fall asleep. Some go for yoga, some workout, some listen to ASMR, some meditate, some go to their happy place (mental image inside their heads), etc.
As we are all different and have different bodies, the time it takes to fall asleep varies from person to person. Some people pass out as soon as they hit their bed while others struggle really hard to fall asleep and are often sleep-deprived. This condition is also known as insomnia. People suffering from insomnia have trouble falling asleep on a regular basis. Sleep deprivation’s impact on our health cannot be underestimated as we all know that in order to function properly and enjoy a healthy life; we need to squeeze in those quality hours of sleep.
Before addressing the question, how long does it take to fall asleep; we must address the question, why sleep is so important and what are the side effects of sleep deprivation. It’s a huge misconception that sleeping only helps if you’re tired or to just turn our brains off for a while (catching a break) but, there are a lot of other factors as well upon which sleeping has an impact. It is known and proven that deep and regular sleep reduces stress. Not only that, but it also improves your memory as well. We all have noticed that when we are sleep deprived, we tend to be forgetful.
Sleeping also reduces your blood pressure levels and strengthens your immunity. It also helps you maintain your weight. Lack of sleep can make you grumpy and cranky; on the contrary, sleeping puts you in a better mood. Getting good hours of sleep can also majorly reduce your chances of getting heart diseases.
Sleep deprivation side effects, on the other hand, are terrible. Sleeplessness causes accidents. It happens so, as your brain wants to shut down but it isn’t, resulting in making you dumb and a public safety hazard. It also can cause a number of heart diseases.
The question arises…
How Long Does it Take to Fall Asleep?
Our bodies are different and react to situations differently. For a healthy person, it normally takes about 10-20 minutes to fall asleep. If you take less or more than that, your body might be telling you something. If you fall asleep as soon as you hit your bed, it could be a huge sign of sleep deprivation implying that you need to get a proper amount of sleep. You should make it a priority to shut down your brain for a while and get good sleep. If you are irritated by your snoring partner, it is advised to use some noise-cancelling earbuds listening to white noise or ASMR.
If you don’t sleep enough, you will most likely be lagging in tasks in your daily life. On the contrary, if it takes an hour for you to fall asleep, you might just be an insomniac. It might happen if you’re sleeping too much or you might be struggling with falling asleep. It mainly happens if you have trouble relaxing or turning off your thoughts while you go to bed. It could also be due to stress and depression, which makes it hard to fall asleep.
Another reason is your body isn’t ready for sleep which might happen because you had too much caffeine or your internal clock is out of sync for another reason (jetlag). To counter insomnia, the first step is to try improving your sleep hygiene. Your doctor could always help you better.
The average time for a person to get to sleep in about half an hour if you’re already sleepy and you’re going to bed on time as well. There are times in our lives when we really didn’t want to go to sleep but someone sent us to bed, and it wasn’t our time yet because of our sleep cycle. Some people are morning people or evening people, while some people are very morning people and some very evening people.
If the very evening people who feel like they’re the very most productive at 10 o’clock at night, and start getting sleepy about 1:00. Are sent to bed at 10:00, they won’t feel sleepy at all, and it may take those hours to go to fall asleep. All adolescents are night people. We recommend them to use good nightlights that can help them in sleeping or try sleeping without a pillow.
It could also be if you’ve got something on your mind. All of us have experienced hard times where we can’t go to sleep because we’re worried sick, overthinking. We could be worried about a loved one or we could be excited about a trip. We could be worried about ourselves. We could be not feeling very well. It’s all appropriate and we can counter it with time.
Lastly, there are people who feel tired and exhausted, they’re not able to sleep very well, and they can’t seem to fall asleep. Irregularity is observed among these people. These are the people who sleep doctors call primary insomniacs. They are the people that have a hard time going to sleep, they have a hard time sustaining sleep, and they’ve been that way throughout their lives. This sleeping pattern isn’t considered normal and these are the people for whom sleeping pills might the right answer, but it’s always good to avoid using sleep medication as you will end up getting addicted to them.
A very common question also asked is can you sneeze while sleeping. The answer is we don’t really sneeze when we sleep, thanks to our brain. It’s surprising that we actually should be more prone to sneezing during our sleep, as the mucous membranes start to swell when we lie down, thus making them more sensitive. Usually, there isn’t much airflow or movement to stir up irritating particles, so they aren’t as exposed to stimulants hence, resulting in not sneezing.
On the other hand, when we’re awake, particles, allergies, or illness can stimulate the nerve cells in the nose which then sends signals to the brain in order to initiate a sneeze to get rid of whatever is causing irritation.
Although, in some cases, sufficient external stimulates might trigger your need to sneeze. But, you will wake up to do so.
We cannot undermine the importance of quality sleep but what we can do is trying different things to see what works for us in order to get quality sleep. Just remember that you are in control of your body, and you could always teach it new things.
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