Archive for November, 2006

Stress is the main cause of sleep problems.

Stress is known to be one of the biggest causes of sleep disorders although there can be other factors preventing you from sleeping.

One of the most effective cures for sleep problems is hypnosis.

Hypnotherapy is the application of hypnosis as a form of treatment generally for relieving pain or condition related to one’s state of mind.

There are several reasons a person has difficulty sleeping.

Something may be on your mind and you are not able to switch off enough from your daily events to fall asleep at night. If you have had repeated problems falling asleep, you may develop a fear of lying awake at night. Stress and anxiety can keep you awake as well.

There are many Myths about hypnosis, but, actually, it is little more than a heightened state of awareness in which you are more in touch with your unconscious mind than your conscious one.

An instance of this is driving a car home and being unaware on reaching home how many robots were red and how many green. Another is watching fire crackling or water moving and losing sense of time. These, like daydreaming, are natural ‘trance’ states.

A sleeping disorder is defined as, “a disruptive sleep pattern that may include difficulty falling or staying asleep, falling asleep at improper times, excessive total sleep time, or abnormal behaviors associated with sleep.”

There are seven signs that indicate you have a sleeping disorder. These seven signs include

• Waking up often throughout the night
• Difficulty waking up in the morning and/or waking up too early in the morning
• Snoring on a regular basis
• Restless Leg Syndrome
• Drifting off to sleep at work or in school
• Difficulty concentrating
• Feelings of depression, anxiety, moodiness or general irritability

Waking up often throughout the night

Frequent waking up in the night is one of the seven signs that indicate you have a sleep disorder. This could be the symptom of sleep apnea and any number of other problems, be they physical or psychological in nature.

Quite often this sleep problem is due to what is known as inappropriate “sleep hygiene” which is basically just lifestyle considerations such as eating habits, exercise habits, drinking, smoking, jet lag, etc. The good thing about these lifestyle factors is that they are under a person’s control.

One of the most common sleep disorders is Insomnia.

Insomnia is the inability to get to sleep and stay asleep night after night.

It also involves irregular wakefulness and early morning awakening.

Actually, insomnia is not considered as a disease, but insomnia can be very annoying to the individual suffering from it.

Insomnia if left untreated can lead to sleep deprivation which can wreck havoc in an otherwise healthy adult’s life. People of both sexes and all age groups are affected by insomnia, even though it is most common in women and senior citizens.

Insomnia affects about one-third of senior adults and up to two-thirds of individuals over the age of fifty have one type of sleep problem or another according to the International Longevity Center.

The average senior citizen requires around 6  to 7  hours of sleep per night for proper functioning during the daytime.

Types of Insomnia

Insomnia can either be short-term (transient) or long-term (chronic). Long-term insomnia means that both the body and brain are not getting an adequate amount of rest which can usher in a host of other problems for the person.

It is proven that chronic sleep problems affect 40 million Americans every year and an average of 20 million to 30 million individuals will lose sleep on an occasional basis according to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.

Compound this with the knowledge that 22 million American citizens work night shifts or swing shifts which causes many disruptions with the bodys normal cycles in terms of sleep considerations.

These sleep disorders, if left untreated can evolve into full blown sleep deprivation which can cause problems with

• Person’s ability to function on the job
• Their driving skills and personal relationships
• Their ability to learn, remember and concentrate

It has also proved that a person’s cognitive functions get effected with consistent lack of sleep, which includes impaired memory, a slower reaction time, an inability to concentrate, a shorter attention span and a reduced ability to learn and process new information.

Being too tired to learn can lead to lack of adequate performance at school or work for an individual. When an individual is deprived of sleep, his or her brain will have a difficult time while processing new information.

Quality of both our sleep and our waking lives gets reduced by any factor that disrupts the normal sleep wake cycle.

The more we learn about snoring, the more we realize how disruptive it can be - and not just to the snorer’s bedmate.

Consider that the average sleeper takes a breath every twenty to forty seconds.

We may breathe anywhere from seven hundred to fourteen hundred times each night depending on our breathing patterns and how long we sleep. It’s not surprising that snoring, which interferes with the ability to breathe fully and deeply each time, can affect our health.

Heavy snorers with sleep apnea have measurably less oxygen circulating in their blood at night. A vital role is played by oxygen in transporting nutrients to body cells and removing the waste products of the cell’s biochemical processes.

Reduced oxygen supple means reduced efficient body metabolism, allowing these toxic by-products to build up in body tissues.

Evidence is mounting that over time snoring affects both health and longevity. Actually, it has been reported that heavy snorers have a greater risk of developing heart disease than non-snorers.

Clinically, a sleep disorder is defined as “a disruptive pattern of sleep that may include difficulty falling or staying asleep, falling asleep at inappropriate times, excessive total sleep time, or abnormal behaviors associated with sleep.”

Nearly 100 types of sleep disorders were identified by doctors and specialists who study sleep.

Sleep disorders are broken down into four categories as delineated by the International Classification of Sleep Disorders.

These categories are

• Dyssomnias - Examples of dyssomnias include a variety of subcategories of insomnia, obstructive sleep apnea, restless legs syndrome and narcolepsy.
• Parasomnias - Examples of parasomnias include sleepwalking, bedwetting, bruxism, and primary snoring.
• Medical/psychiatric disorders - Medical/ psychiatric sleep disorders include asthma, peptic ulcers, dementia and degenerative brain disorders.
• Proposed sleep disorders - Proposed sleep disorders are disorders that don’t fit in any of the other three categories such as short sleepers, long sleepers, sub-wakefulness syndrome and sleep choking syndrome.

Many myths revolve around sleep and sleep disorders that need to be dispelled. Let’s take a closer look at some of the most common myths regarding sleep disorders.

6 out of every 1000 people in the world are affected with Narcolepsy.

It has been estimated that about 250,000 people in United States have this type of sleep disorder.

Although there is a strong genetic factor linked to the disorder the exact cause of narcolepsy is not fully understood.

Relatives of narcolepsy sufferers are at a much greater risk for developing the disorder.

Narcolepsy is often viewed as a disorder of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep or as an imbalance between the physiologic mechanisms that control sleep and wake. Most of us go directly into non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep when we fall asleep at night.

We then enter REM sleep after approximately an hour and a half of NREM sleep. On the other hand, patients with narcolepsy often enter REM sleep as soon as they fall asleep, that is, they have sleep onset REM periods.

When patients with narcolepsy fall asleep unintentionally during the day, they also may enter REM sleep right away. This is why narcolepsy is considered a disorder of REM sleep.

However, patients with narcolepsy do not always enter REM sleep immediately. They may enter NREM sleep first, just as most of us do.

Children to have occasional nightmares and fears that surface at bedtime are not an unusual act.

Children during emotionally sensitive periods in their lives often experience anxiety.

The most cited distressing period for a child include the first days of daycare or nursery school.

Kids experience some type of separation anxiety as they’re left off at school. Such anxieties often surface at bedtime, when the child is lying quietly in bed.

The signs of these anxieties are strange noises, monsters, and the dark. Accordingly, children may have trouble falling asleep. They may get out of bed and tell you that they are scared or ask for another bedtime story.

They may refuse to sleep alone or may resist going to bed altogether. These are normal consequences resulting in normal anxieties experienced by small children.

Often these bedtime difficulties can be resolved without professional help. The following are some steps for reducing separation anxiety in children.

Reassurance

Parents can talk to their children about the issues responsible for their anxiety. Sometimes, it is just simple reassurance, which is required. The child might need to hear that Mommy or Daddy will pick them up after school or daycare.