Archive for October, 2006

Yes, it is true that women are at higher risk to sleep disorder than men.

Women are two times as likely to suffer from sleep disorders, such as falling and staying asleep, than men. Many reasons are to be examined.

The clinical definition of a sleep disorder is “an unsettling pattern of sleep that may include difficulty falling or staying asleep, falling asleep at unsuitable times, excessive total sleep time, or abnormal behaviors associated with sleep”.

There are four categories of sleep disorders:

• Insomnia
• Hypersomnia
• Sleeping disruptive disorders
• Having trouble sticking to a normal sleep pattern

Factors Responsible For Sleep Disorders in Women

There are many factors that may have impact the ordinary sleep cycle for women. Changes in hormone levels, stress, lifestyle illness, and sleep environment, pregnancy and hormone fluctuations associated with menstrual cycles, premenstrual sleep disturbances, psychosocial stress, depression, and anxiety have all been named as causes.

Pain, grief, and worry can disturb sleep, as can certain medical conditions, medications, and breathing disorders, in menopausal and postmenopausal women.

Pregnancy

Pregnancy, which of course only affects women, causes a whole host of sleep-disturbing symptoms. Some pregnant mothers are faced with their first introduction to sleep apnea during pregnancy.

Many health conditions and a number of different types of medications can result in to sleep disorders.

Some of these health conditions include sleep apnea, heartburn, respiratory problems, arthritis, and leg disorders.

Sleep Apnea

Sleep apnea is a condition involving disrupted breathing where a person can stop breathing all together for anywhere from ten to sixty second intervals many times throughout the course of a night.

This sleep disorder can become very serious if left untreated and can result in serious health problems such as heart disease, stroke or high blood pressure.

Interestingly enough the majority of sleep apnea sufferers doesn’t know that they have a problem. The most common symptoms of sleep apnea include headaches and chronic tiredness throughout the day and loud snoring.

Heartburn

Heartburn is sometimes referred to as gastroesophageal reflux. Heartburn takes place when stomach acid from partly digested food makes it way into the esophagus, throat or mouth.

This problem makes it hard for a person to fall asleep or stay asleep, particularly if he/she has eaten a heavy meal right before bedtime that consisted of either greasy or spicy foods.

Being overweight is a very dangerous health problem.

Overweight can lead to back problems, you have very little energy, and your clothes don’t fit.

Some overweight people will have low self esteem and have tried every diet known to man and have still failed to lose weight.

Overweight can also result in to serious health problems such as heart problems and high blood pressure. On top of that even sleeping is a dangerous task. One of the most dangerous problems associated with obesity is sleep apnea.

Sleep Apnea

The technical definition of sleep apnea is the body temporarily stops breathing. Sometimes this cessation of breathing is not permanent and you can suffocate in your sleep.

Sleep apnea is a medical condition that can result in death if not properly treated. The disorder involves the repeated collapse of the windpipe, which causes a sleeper to awaken slightly due to shortness of breath.

People who suffer from sleep apnea often experience daytime drowsiness, poor performance at work and depression. One of the most common and most frightening effects is that you literally stop breathing when this happens.

More than 1.6 million U.S. adults are estimated to use complementary and alternative therapies to treat insomnia or trouble sleeping, according to the results of a national survey published in the September 18 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, a theme issue on sleep.

Approximately 10 to 34 percent of Americans regularly experience difficulty sleeping, also known as insomnia, according to background information in the article.

Insomnia Treatment options include prescription and non-prescription medications, antidepressants and cognitive behavioral therapy.

Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) therapies, defined as those practices that are not scientifically proven and are not currently considered part of conventional medicine, also are used to treat insomnia. Such therapies include herbal medicines and relaxation techniques.

Nancy J. Pearson, Ph.D., and colleagues at the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Md., analyzed data from a national survey of 31,044 adults conducted in 2002.

Respondents answered one question about whether they regularly had insomnia or trouble sleeping in the past 12 months and completed a 10-minute supplemental survey on the use of 27 types of CAM therapies.

You should be able to find several indispensable facts about avoiding frequent potty trips in the following paragraphs.

If there’s at least one fact you didn’t know before, imagine the difference it might make.

The causes of frequent trips to the restroom at night include numerous things like pregnancy, diabetes, congestive heart failure, or an overactive bladder, among others.

Getting up at night interferes with our sleep cycles.

Are there any treatment methods to help those who suffer from nighttime wake up calls to get better sleep? Here we will delve deeper into the matter.

Reason For Frequent Nighttime Urination

Your kidneys clean your body by producing large amounts of urine during the day. Your brain makes lots of a hormone called ADH for short that shuts down your kidneys so you can sleep at night, when you go to sleep at night.

As you age, the brain’s ADH production slows down so many older people have to get up at night to visit the restroom. Antidiuretic hormone nasal sprays or pills can help these people sleep through the night.

Bed wetting products of various types are available that you can buy for your children to make him or her feel drier and more comfortable.

For instance a special bed wetting alarm is a way to help your child overcome the nightly problem.

Whereas other bed wetting products such as disposable underwear are able to absorb the urine so it does not wet or stain clothing or bed sheets.

It also contains the urine odor so a child can still do all his or her usual daily social activities such as going on field trips with his or her class, playing sports, and attending pajama parties or staying overnight at a friend’s house.

Children who have a bed wetting problem want to be able to have a normal life like other children their age and don’t want to have to worry about the urine odor or its leaking out on clothing, a sleeping bag or the floor.

Be aware however that these problems are a stopgap measure and will not get rid of the bed wetting problem. It might be wise before you do anything else to take your child to the doctor in order to rule out physical problems as the cause of bed wetting behavior.

Brief behavioral treatment for insomnia (BBTI) appears to be a promising intervention for older adults who suffer from insomnia.

The study, conducted by Anne Germain, PhD, and colleagues of the University Of Pittsburgh School Of Medicine, focused on 17 older adults who were randomly assigned to receive BBTI, and 18 selected to receive an information-only control (IC) condition.

All participants completed clinician-administered and self-report measures of sleep quality, as well as a sleep diary.

Interventions were delivered in a single individual session with a booster session administered two weeks later. Post intervention assessments were completed after four weeks.

The results showed significant improvements in sleep measures and in daytime symptoms of anxiety and depression in 71 percent of those individuals who received BBTI, compared to 39 percent favorable response among IC participants.

Furthermore, 53 percent of BBTI participants met criteria for remission, while 17 percent of those in the IC group met the same criteria.

“These preliminary findings are consistent with previous studies that have shown that brief behavioral insomnia interventions can be efficacious and remain efficacious in older adults who present with the typical psychiatric and medical co morbidities associated with aging,” the authors wrote.

Whether your child suffers from primary enuresis or secondary enuresis, it is important to take measures to make sure your child will be as comfortable when he goes to bed as night.

One way to do this is to prepare his bedroom so it is as ready for a bed wetting episode as can be.

This will help put both the bed wetting child’s mind at ease as well as the parent(s). The following are methods for preparing a bed for a bed wetting child.

• It is a good idea to buy a protective mattress cover and place it over the mattress to protect it from the potential of bed wetting accidents. Mattress covers can be found in the bedding department of any department store and don’t cost too much. It is best to buy a heavy cover that is made of plastic. In case of accident not only it will this make sure that the urine does not seep into the mattress but also it reduces the chance of odor.