Posts Tagged ‘difficulty sleeping’
Worst Menopause Symptom? Lack of Sleep
This article is from the WebMD News Archive
Worst Menopause Symptom? Lack of Sleep
April 22, 2008 — New research shows that women in early menopause report that lack of sleep is their biggest problem.
Researchers interviewed 110 women. All were healthy white women between the ages of 43 and 55 with an average age of 49. They all had experienced their last menstrual period within the last three years.
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Healthy Sleep Tips | National Sleep Foundation
The following ten tips can help you achieve sleep and the benefits it provides. These tips are intended for “typical” adults, but not necessarily for children or persons experiencing medical problems.
Finally, if you have trouble falling asleep, maintaining sleep, awaken earlier than you wish, feel unrefreshed after sleep or suffer from excessive sleepiness during the day or when you wish to be alert, you should also consult your physician. Be sure to tell him/her if you have already tried these tips and for how long. To check for possible sleep problems, go to our checklist, “How’s Your Sleep?”
1. Maintain a regular bed and wake time schedule including weekends.
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Sleep Aids and Insomnia | National Sleep Foundation
Some medications can lead to insomnia as well. These include medications for cold and allergy (some antihistamines and decongestants, high blood pressure (antihypertensives), heart disease (betablockers), thyroid disease and birth control (hormones), as well as asthma and pain medications (containing caffeine).
Some common sleep disorders can also cause poor sleep. These disorders range from restless legs syndrome (a creeping, crawling sensation in the legs only relieved by movement) to a bed partner’s sleep apnea (a breathing disorder with loud snoring and brief periods when breathing stops).
Insomnia may be experienced for a few days, for two to three weeks, or it may be chronic, lasting for three weeks or more. Chronic insomnia is more difficult to treat, and doesn’t go away on its own. You may need to see a physician or sleep specialist.
Healthy Sleep: A Guide to Natural Sleep Remedies
Healthy Sleep 
A Guide to Natural Sleep Remedies Contents Introduction Many of us experience the occasional night of sleeplessness without any consequences. It is when the occasional night here and there becomes a pattern of several nights in a row that you are faced with a sleeping problem. Repeated loss of sleep affects all areas of your life: The physical, the mental, and the emotional. Sleep deprivation can affect your overall daily performance and may even have an effect on your personality.
If your insomnia continues for a long period of time it can cause problems in your relationships, compromise your productivity, and perhaps lead to other health problems. It can become a relentless cycle of worry and anxiety as night after night you toss and turn, wondering when sleep will come, wondering what is wrong with you. Insomnia and sleeplessness generally fall into three categories:
- “Initial” insomnia: where you have difficulty in falling asleep, generally taking 30 minutes or longer to fall into a sleep state.
- “Middle” insomnia: where after falling asleep you have problems maintaining a sleep state, often remaining awake until the early morning hours.
- “Late” or “Terminal” insomnia: where you awake early in the morning after less than 6 hours of sleep.
Insomnia can be the symptom of some medical conditions that may require your doctor’s advice and medical care. In those cases the cause will be treated, not the insomnia. If, however, your sleeplessness is due to a pattern of not sleeping, or because your body and mind find it difficult to settle into a state of relaxation necessary for sleep, this book offers you alternative choices for achieving healthy sleep without the use of prescription drugs. This document will teach you how to:
- Set the mood for a comfortable sleep atmosphere
- Prepare your body for relaxation
- Use colors to stimulate calmness and relaxation
- Understand the importance of exercise
- Use music and other relaxation techniques
- Relieve your mind of anxiety and worry
- Discover the importance of reducing stimulants
- Use herbal teas and warm drinks to promote relaxation
- Use herbs and vitamins to promote natural sleep
After reading this book you will have the information you need to turn your sleepless nights into restful ones, waking in the morning refreshed and alert rather than tired and anxious. All of the techniques and sleep-inducing aids in this book can be applied naturally and easily in your life. Get ready to embark on the journey of falling asleep naturally!
Overview – What Is a Sleep Specialist?
Sleep Specialist Overview
A sleep specialist is a medical doctor who has completed additional education and training in the field of sleep medicine. Sleep medicine focuses on sleep, sleep disorders, and sleep-related conditions, and is a subspecialty within several medical specialties, including neurology, pulmonology, internal medicine, and psychiatry.
Herbal Tea Sleep Study
A common criticism of conventional medicine is that it’s too clinical. Some patients feel like they’re simply cogs in a massive medical machine that needs repair. This is one of the unintended consequences of relying too heavily on the cold, hard facts provided by science alone. On the other hand, alternative medicine can sometimes go too far in the other direction, allowing emotions to run the show. Several years ago I attended a conference in which the famed cancer patient advocate Dr. Bernie Siegel gave a presentation. He emphasized the importance of considering every available treatment option and understanding the reality of one’s condition. But he balanced that advice by adding this, “Statistics do not apply to individuals and there is no false hope”.
When I was compiling research for today’s blog, I began to pull studies that evidenced the many hazards of sleep deprivation. Normally, I would cite those scientific trials at the end of the paragraphs that make up my column. But two things happened recently that shaped how I’m writing today’s particular entry. I discovered some coverage about SLEEP 2009, the 23rd Annual Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies. One of the presentations there caught my eye. It was entitled, “Sleep Disturbance and Daily Relationship Quality in Couples: Evidence for Bidirectional Associations”.
A bidirectional association is basically a chicken and egg kind of circumstance. If a couple isn’t getting along, it negatively affects their sleep quality. However it’s also true that poor sleep, no matter what the cause, is damaging to relationships. But here’s where it gets more interesting and specific.
- Women’s sleep tends to suffer the most if daytime interaction with their mate is stressful or unfulfilling.
- Men who sleep soundly at night rate their relationship as more positive during the day.
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When a School
When a School-Age Child Won’t Sleep Alone by Robert Needlman, M.D., F.A.A.P. reviewed by Robert Needlman, M.D., F.A.A.P. Parents expect their infants to keep them up at night. But many preschool and early school-age children also resist falling asleep without a parent present, or they wake up in the middle of the night and insist on coming into their parents’ rooms. Sometimes they do both.
This problem often starts in infancy and simply carries over into the preschool age range. On the other hand, it’s not uncommon for preschool or school-age children who were sleeping through the night in their own beds to start having these problems. They may end up camping out on their parents’ floor for months at a time–uncomfortable for everyone!
Sort out possible causes The way to go about solving this problem depends somewhat on how long it has been going on and on what else is going on. The more recent the problem, the easier it is to deal with. Sleep problems like this also are easier to handle when your child is doing well in other aspects of her life. A child who is under a lot of pressure–either from peers, at school, or in her home–may develop a sleep problem as a result of the other stress in her life. In these cases, you need to tackle the other problems first, if you can. Then the sleep problems are much easier to handle.
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How to Sleep Better: Sleep Deprivation Solutions
This article is from the WebMD Feature Archive
How to Sleep Better
From having occasional difficulty sleeping to insomnia, there is a lot you can do to get a better night’s sleep, feel refreshed when you awake, and remain alert throughout the day. It’s called “sleep hygiene” and refers to those practices, habits, and environmental factors that are critically important for sound sleep. And most of it is under your control.
There are four general areas important to sleep hygiene:
- Our circadian rhythm, or 24-hour cycle
- Aging
- Psychological stressors — those factors can cause difficulty falling asleep and disturb the quality of your sleep
- Common social or recreational drugs like nicotine, caffeine, and alcohol
Can’t Sleep? What To Know About Insomnia
Insomnia, which is Latin for “no sleep,” is the inability to fall asleep or remain asleep. Insomnia is also used to describe the condition of waking up not feeling restored or refreshed. According to Dr. Mark Mahowald, Professor of Neurology at the University of Minnesota Medical School and Director of the Minnesota Regional Sleep Disorders Center at Hennepin County Medical Center, insomnia refers to the inability to get the amount of sleep you as an individual need to wake up feeling rested.
Insomnia is the most common sleep complaint among Americans. It can be either acute, lasting one to several nights, or chronic, even lasting months to years. When insomnia persists for longer than a month, it is considered chronic. According to the National Center for Sleep Disorders Research at the National Institutes of Health, about 30-40% of adults say they have some symptoms of insomnia within a given year, and about 10-15 percent of adults say they have chronic insomnia. People who have trouble sleeping every night without exception for months or years are fairly rare. More often, people experience chronic-intermittent insomnia, which means difficulty sleeping for a few nights, followed by a few nights of adequate sleep before the problem returns.
Insomnia can be a disorder in its own right, but often it is a symptom of some other disease or condition. Half of all those who have experienced insomnia blame the problem on stress and worry. In the case of stress-induced insomnia, the degree to which sleep is disturbed depends on the severity and duration of the stressful situation. Sometimes this may be a disturbing occurrence like loss of a loved one, loss of a job, marital or relationship discord or a tragic occurrence. Anticipation of such things as weddings, vacations, or holidays can also disturb sleep and make it difficult to fall asleep or remain asleep. Insomnia can also occur with jet lag, shift work and other major schedule changes.
Pediatrics: Toddler not sleeping, bedtime routine, calm life
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Pediatrics – Toddler not sleeping Expert: Dr. Frederick Blount – 7/10/2006
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