We are not getting enough sleep.

This is according to a recent study by SingHealth Polyclinics in Singapore, which showed that four in 10 people are getting far less than the recommended seven to eight hours of sleep on weekdays and 26 per cent are failing to get enough sleep on weekends.

The study was published in the International Journal Medicine in August 2016, and had involved 350 Singaporeans aged between 21 and 80 years of age.

Most adults are not getting enough sleep, unlike babies.

I can’t agree more with these findings because I too, struggle to get seven to eight hours of sleep on a daily basis, thanks to other distractions like work commitments, constant deadlines, running and triathlon training, and social media, which all tend to keep me awake much later into the night than I would have liked.

But if we cannot get enough sleep, we can at least try to get quality sleep, so that we do not wake up feeling lethargic and exhausted. 

 When the body does not get enough rest, you are more prone to getting illness and you are unable to concentrate well at work. As well, the brain is not able to process information and make critical decision that may affect crucial outcomes in your career.

As well, sleep is also quite crucial for athletic performance. If you are a marathoner or triathlete like I am, then a lack of sleep can also crucially affect your performance regardless of whether you are a competitive age-group athlete or a recreational weekend warrior. 

This is because accumulating physical stress during training is only half the equation for progress; actual results are only gained when the body is able to recover from the training in order to achieve a new level of physical fitness. 

A lack of sleep can cause our sports performances to suffer.

A lack of sleep can result in stagnating or declining performances; I find this to be quite true because when I am not sleeping well, I have realised that my training suffers. 

For example, I often find myself running at a much slower pace than I would usually be able to maintain if my body had been given enough rest. My heart rate also tends to spike during training too, if I have not slept well the night before.

So this is why to professional athletes, sleep and recovery is just as important as clocking high mileage training sessions. 

For example, American National Basketball Association (NBA) basketball player LeBron James, who has won three NBA Championships, four NBA Most Valuable Player (MVP) awards, three NBA Finals MVP awards, and two Olympic gold medals gets 12 hours of sleep per night.

And professional golfer Michelle Wie, the youngest player to qualify for an LPGA Tour event, always makes it a habit to gets about 12 to 16 hours of sleep per night, saying that if she gets less than 10 hours of sleep, she feels lethargic and is not able to perform well.

Unfortunately for many of us weekend warriors, due to our hectic schedules, constant deadlines and many commitments in life, we are often unable to get a restful block of sleep lasting seven to eight hours.

But if you cannot get enough rest, what about trying to make the most of your rest time and making sure that you can at least get some quality sleep instead?

So that is where the Luxiere™ 100% Silk Eye Mask comes in handy.

Billed as being entirely different to the rough and stiff sleep masks that you may be accustomed to, the product makers at SleepWiz – a company that designs smart, simple and natural solutions for better sleep – believes that the Luxiere™ has been manufactured the way that all eye masks should be designed.

Introducing the Luxiere™ 100% Silk Eye Mask.

Thanks to SleepWiz, I had the chance to try out the Luxiere™ mask for myself, in order to see whether it really helped to improve the quality of my sleep.

I remember that when I first received the Luxiere™ mask, I found it to be very soft and silky, much more so compared to the standard sleep masks that I usually pick up from airlines. So I was quite impressed at first glance.

This silky texture is thanks to the material that the mask is made of, which is a comfortable cushy 100 per cent mulberry silk fabric, instead of cheap synthetics – to achieve equivalent blackout effects.

So as a result, I had found that putting it onto my face for the first time, had felt somewhat more comfortable than the average sleep mask.

And just like a good sleep mask should do, the key feature of the Luxiere™ eye mask is to eliminate light penetration into our optical sensory system.

And at the same time, the 100 per cent mulberry silk makeup of the mask, helps to retain the natural oils in your skin too – in order to prevent any unnecessary lines and wrinkles forming on the skin and thus ageing it.

This is quite important for city dwellers because ambient electrical lights from our surroundings can easily trick our brain into thinking that it is dawn, and this persistently puts the body into lighter stages of sleep as it prepares to wake up even when we should be sound asleep.

So in this way, the Luxiere™ helps the body to enjoy longer and deeper phases of sleep, which is when recovery from the wear and tear of the day occurs.

As well, the Luxiere™ mask is also made with DreamWeave™ technology, which also contributes to making the fabric completely impenetrable to light – with the intention of increasing the sleep hormone levels in your body in order to allow you to get a more restful sleep. 

I can definitely feel the blackout effect at work whenever I slip the mask on, regardless of whether it is during the day or night. 

For instance, even if I am trying to get an afternoon nap in broad daylight and with the sun shining brightly through the windows, it really feels just like it’s night-time when I am wearing the mask. So as such, it makes me able to get some quality rest, and I do find myself waking up feeling more refreshed.

As well, with the Luxiere™ mask, I can also eliminate the factor of the sun shining brightly through the windows and waking me up. 

For example, I have just come back from a fly/cruise/cycle holiday to Taiwan and Japan, where the sun rises at about 5am in the morning during the summertime.

Without the Luxiere™ mask wrapped around my face, the bright sun shining through my hotel windows easily woke me up and I found that I had some trouble getting back to sleep after that. 

But with the Luxiere™ mask on though, I found that I was not woken up by the sun at all and I found that I had been able to get an extra hour or two of sleep, as a result. 

During the cycling part of the trip, which had lasted eight days and seven nights, we had completed rides ranging from 12km to 69km and I found that the extra sleep that I got when I wore the mask, had really helped me to feel fresher and raring to go for each day’s ride too.

And this had been despite the fact that I was definitely not getting eight hours of sleep each night, thanks to all of the the sightseeing, photo-taking, shopping and exploring of the various cities that I had headed to, in addition to the cycling exercise I was getting.

So in this regard, I must say that the Luxiere™ mask does do its job quite well.

The effectiveness of the blackout effect is probably also due to the fact that the mask is almost 200 per cent wider than the average sleep mask, thus helping to seal out the possible leakage of light from the edges. 

However I admit that I tend to toss and turn a lot when I am sleeping. As such there had been a couple of nights when I had put on the mask to sleep, and I wake up with the mask off. I  then had to search for the mask from under the bedsheets. Apparently the Luxiere™ had somehow managed to slip off my face during the night, on these occasions.

This is despite the fact that the Luxiere™ had been designed with super thin dual straps that are supposed to feel like they are not there, while keeping the mask on more securely. 

Every Luxiere™ mask also comes with a FREE pair of viscoelastic foam earplugs, which mould to the shape of your ear canal to seal out sound.

viscoelastic foam earplugs.

I generally don’t use these earplugs when I am trying to get some sleep at nights because it is usually quiet enough for me to fall asleep on most occasions.

But I did try these earplugs out in the plane though to see if they could block out any background noise.

Firstly, I must state that I have never been able to sleep on airplanes, because there is usually so much noise and activity going on and this always tends to be rather distracting. 

With the earplugs in my ears and the Luxiere™ mask covering my eyes, I found that I was actually able to get some quality sleep on the aircraft. 

Though I did not sleep during the whole plane journey, at least I was able to reach my destination feeling a little more refreshed, as compared to if I had not gotten any sleep at all during the way. 

The mask had helped me quite a bit to block out the light, because my flight to Taiwan had been a 6am morning flight! So I must say that this does say something about the quality of the mask and the accompanying earplugs.

The sleep that I had managed to get on the plane thanks the mask, had also helped me out with the cycling in Taiwan on the first day. 

For example, if I did not get any sleep on the aircraft, I think that I would have struggled to cycle 27km just a few hours after the plane had landed – as my body would have felt more tired and lethargic. But I had managed to survive this, because of my sleep, which I owe to the Luxiere™ mask.

But if you are not used to wearing eye shades to sleep, I have to say that sleeping with the Luxiere™ mask can take some getting used to. 

In fact for me, the first couple of times when I had put on the mask, it felt a little weird to have something plastered to my eyes when sleeping, but if you can overcome that feeling and are able to fall asleep, I think you really do wake up feeling more refreshed.

Try using the mask on your next plane trip.

So I must conclude that the Luxiere™ mask is really useful to isolate you from disturbances in your environment so that you can make the most of having a limited amount of sleep.

In fact, SleepWiz is so confident in the Luxiere™ that they are offering all of their customers a 7 Night Free Trial – if you do not love your Luxiere™ mask, you will receive a full refund.  

But so far, SleepWiz have stressed that they have not had any takers of this offer yet.

The Luxiere™ 100% Silk Eye Mask has a retail price of S$19.90. It also comes with free shipping to Singapore.

Head over to the SleepWiz website at https://eyemask.sg for more information and also to purchase the mask for yourself.