The Perfect Storm

I once hit the snooze button so hard, I broke my alarm clock.

I'm not a morning person, AT ALL, but I do enjoy staying up late! This is my perfect storm.

I remember my bedtime was around 8:30pm or so when I was young. My mom always said that I had to get a good nights sleep to be prepared for school in the morning but it didn't make sense to me why my parents didn't have bedtimes if they had to be up even earlier than me to be "prepared for work."

According to an ABC news article, all kinds of health problems can result from lack of sleep AND it turns out that kids aren't the only ones who should be following a bedtime routine...

Our natural sleep pattern should be waking up at sunrise, triggering a hormone release intended for dealing with all kinds of stress, and then settling down again at sunset, triggering a release of melatonin which helps us to sleep. The light is what triggers these releases and with the ever present laptop, cell phone, TV, fill in the blank, the regulation of these hormones become abnormal because they are tricked into believing its either day or night, when it's not.

A cycle of messed up hormones, eating sugary foods in the morning to "boost energy," and staying up late - allowing your brain to think its daytime - ends up repeating itself time and time again.

Make yourself a priority and evacuate this cycle before the storm hits again.