Posts Tagged ‘improve sleep’
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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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.
Sleep apnea, narcolepsy, RLS, Alternative therapies, mind
Alternative and Integral Therapies
Herbs and Herbal Therapies
Insomnia can be naturally relieved with herbal teas, infusions and baths. Professional herbalists do not prescribe herbs simply to treat symptoms such as insomnia but aim to correct the imbalances within the body that cause those symptoms. For example, sedative herbs such as hops and valerian are used to relax the nervous system to that you enjoy natural, restorative sleep. Each herb contains a variety of active constituents and has a main action and several subsidiary actions which determine the conditions for which it is most appropriate.
- Age and sleep play catch
RELATED STORIES More health news Proven steps to a longer life Washing hands fight disease Heavy workers, hefty price Mammogram testing on decline More health news Today’s Top News Stories • 1 dead, 2 hurt in Mich. office shooting; police say suspect had worked there – 6:04 PM • AP Poll: Congress’ approval hits high point – 5:35 PM • Katrina claims stagger corps – 4:22 PM • National Guard tapped for Iraq tour – 3:04 PM • Edwards scared of ‘rabid Republican’ neighbor – 2:00 PM • Add USATODAY.com RSS feeds Age and sleep play catch-up 
Mimi Payne, 57, has her sleep “dissected” at the Sleep Disorders Center of Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center. By Dan MacMedan, USA TODAY
As the youngest of 76 million boomers move through their 40s, they’ll discover what many older Americans already know: The chances of enjoying restful sleep slowly but steadily decrease. The older the adult, the more likely he’ll have chronic insomnia, says Andrew Monjan, chief of neurobiology at the National Institute on Aging. Among twentysomethings, only about 1 out of 8 are insomniacs. By ages 50 to 64, it’s 1 out of 5. It rises to 1 in 4 over age 65. (Chat: Talk with Dr. Monjan, Thursday, 1 p.m. ET)
But insomnia is only part of the challenge. Snoring and sleep apnea — repeated short episodes of not breathing — also increase with age. About 3 out of 5 adults over 65 have some kind of sleep complaint, national studies show.
Treating Insomnia With Over-the
Treating Insomnia With Over-the-counter Sleep Aids, Herbal Supplements: AASM Position Statement Main Category: Sleep / Sleep Disorders / Insomnia Also Included In: Complementary Medicine / Alternative Medicine Article Date: 13 Dec 2006 – 15:00 PDT
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10 Great Ways to Improve Sleep
Adults need about 8 to 10 hours of sleep per night. Without it you can wake up irritable, tired, memory problems, and headaches. Also you can fall asleep during the day, and have a lot of micro sleeps (when the body loses concentration for fractions of a second). The body needs rest to feel replenished and healthy. It is also important to have sleep to improve immune, brain functions, and to produce growth hormones.
Long-Term Lack of Sleep:
If you don’t get enough rest in the long term you can develop depression, irritability, stress, anxiety or obesity which are all serious illnesses. In some ones lifetime, up to 30% of our day is spent on sleep. It is essential to have enough quality sleep during the nights.
Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child, Marc Weissbluth, Book
- Read an Excerpt
- Read a Sample Chapter
Infants and children who are still of tender age [may be] attacked by . . . wakefulness at night. —Aulus Cornelius Celsus, a.d. 130
Sleeplessness in children and worrying about sleeplessness have been around for a long time.
Health for All 10 Ways to Improve Sleep Quality
Rarely of adults who have slept soundly. Because it is up to 44 percent of older adults experience problems sleeping. Sleeping less than 6-7 hours per day has become a bad habit of many people.
Whereas sufficient sleep time is needed, so the body had time to do the recovery, so have the power to run all day events the next day.
Dr. Jennifer Ashton said the lack of sleep or not sleep soundly can reduce adverse health and harmony with your partner.
Menopause and Sleep | National Sleep Foundation
Menopause is a time of major hormonal, physical and psychological change for women although menopausal symptoms vary from woman to woman. During the perimenopause or transition phase, a woman’s ovaries gradually (over several years) decrease production of estrogen and progesterone. If a woman has her ovaries surgically removed (oophorectomy), periods end abruptly and menopausal symptoms become more severe. One year after menstrual periods have stopped, a woman reaches menopause, on average around the age of 50. From peri-menopause to post-menopause, women report the most sleeping problems. Most notably, these include hot flashes, mood disorders, insomnia and sleep-disordered breathing. Sleep problems are often accompanied by depression and anxiety.
Generally, post-menopausal women are less satisfied with their sleep and as many as 61% report insomnia symptoms. Snoring has also been found to be more common and severe in post-menopausal women. Snoring, along with pauses or gasps in breathing are signs of a more serious sleep disorder, obstructive sleep apnea (OSA).
Changing and decreasing levels of estrogen cause many menopausal symptoms including hot flashes, which are unexpected feelings of heat all over the body accompanied by sweating. They usually begin around the face and spread to the chest affecting 75-85% of women around menopause. Prior to the hot flash, body temperature rises accompanied by an awakening. Hot flashes last on average three minutes leading to less sleep efficiency. Most women experience these for one year, but about 25% have hot flashes for five years. While total sleep time may not suffer, sleep quality does. Hot flashes may interrupt sleep and frequent awakenings cause next-day fatigue.
TREATMENT:
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Brain injuries may result in trouble sleeping, study finds
ScienceDaily (May 25, 2010) — People with brain injuries may produce low amounts of melatonin, which affects their sleep, according to a study published in the May 25, 2010, print issue of Neurology , the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
For the study, 23 people who had a severe traumatic brain injury an average of 14 months earlier and 23 healthy people of the same age spent two nights in a sleep laboratory.
“We’ve known that people often have problems with sleep after a brain injury, but we haven’t known much about the exact causes of these problems,” said study author Shantha Rajaratnam, PhD, of Monash University in Victoria, Australia.