Archive for December, 2006

Sleep apnea is recognized as a common condition among overweight children.

If your child has sleep apnea, he stops breathing for a period of 10 to 20 seconds during sleep.

The interruption of breathing may extend up to 2 minutes. This episode may occur hundreds of times in a single night.

Sleep apnea can be caused by complete obstruction of airway or partial obstruction.

Therefore obstructive sleep apnea is defined as obstruction of airway during sleep.

Due to the obstruction of airway, your child’s sleep gets interrupted. As the sleep is interrupted, your child may feel drowsy during the daytime. This also results in tiredness, headaches, loss of memory, lack of energy and depression.

If your child is a normal weight child, he may have tonsils and adenoids which can be cured with surgery. If you child is overweight, the excess fat may narrow the airway. Excess body fat on the neck and chest constricts the air-passageways and sometimes the lungs.

Obesity, mainly abdominal and upper body obesity, is the most significant risk factor for obstructive sleep apnea. The more obese your child, the greater the risk of apnea. Thus morbid or malignant obesity carries a greater risk.

At present, one of the most common problems is Sleep deprivation.

In fact the Better Sleep Council surveyed a thousand adult respondents and discovered that more than 30% of them confessed to not getting enough sleep each night.

The recent survey also revealed that insufficient sleep resulted in reduced daily performance at work and at home in terms of their ability to concentrate, their capacity for problem solving, their coordination and reaction time, their physical strength and energy levels and how they handled stress.

Consequences of Sleep Deprivation

Excessive tiredness and a general feeling of irritability are the short-term effects of sleep deprivation, but studies have proven that there are long-term effects as well. One needs to be able to fall into a deep sleep and also dream in order to learn and process information.

Memory also requires these things as well. The brain is capable of retaining new information for a short quantity of time and that is why it advantages greatly from restful sleep patterns. Information learned throughout the day can be easily forgotten or lost by the brain if a person is sleep deprived.

There are many health risks associated with sleep apnea.

When you are suffering from sleep apnea, airway becomes obstructed during sleep. When breathing is obstructed, the oxygen levels come down.

Therefore you wake up from sleep and start breathing again.

Snoring is the sign of sleep apnea.

Many people snore during the night without their knowledge. It is the bed partner who informs about your snoring.

Your quality of sleep and performance during the day is affected due to sleep apnea.

There are many life threatening problems due to sleep apnea. They are high blood pressure, depression, irritability, memory problems, heart attacks, and strokes. You may fall asleep at work place and while driving a car if you have sleep apnea.

If you are suffering with obstructive sleep apnea, you have an enlarged heart. The enlarged heart cannot pump the required oxygen to the body and brain. Therefore it can lead to heart attack and even death.

The enlarged heart problem can be treated. You can use oral appliances which will open the jaw allowing you to breathe and reduce the stress on the heart

Sleep apnea is a condition in which people stop breathing for 10 to 30 seconds while sleeping.

This occurs repeatedly and you cannot get enough sleep in the night.

Sleep Apnea is defined as interruption of breathes during sleep.

Why breathing is interrupted during sleep?

The throat muscles which are open in the wakefulness relax during sleep. The upper airway is closed while asleep, the uvula and soft palette collapses on the back wall of the airway. Then the tongue falls backward, collapsing on the back wall of the upper way.

The throat is partially closed and enough air cannot flow into your lungs through your nose or mouth even if you try to breathe. Therefore breathing is obstructed and this condition is obstructive sleep apnea.

This obstructive sleep apnea may last up to 2 minutes. When this happens, the amount of oxygen in the blood is reduced. This episode continues until you wake up from sleep for breathing.

When, you wake up the muscle tone of the tongue and airway increases. This increase in tone reduces the obstruction and terminates the episode.

You should consult your health care provider if you have been having problems getting a good quality sleep for more than two weeks.

Insomnia and sleep disorders could be symptoms of other types of disorders.

Your doctor can prescribe an antidepressant or a sleeping pill temporarily if the cause of your sleepless nights cannot be identified immediately.

Sleep inducing side effects can be found with the usage of antidepressants and they tend to work for months while sleeping pills tend to be effective for a much shorter time.

Most people who complain of chronic sleeping problems will sooner or later end up in a doctor’s office asking for sleeping pills.

Coming off sleeping pills does not mean that you have to go cold turkey, particularly if you have been taking them for some time. First of all, nobody should try to wean himself off a medication without the advice of a doctor.

Most of these people are probably suffering from depression or some other underlying anxiety-related problem, but do not know or reluctant to admit it.

This is why patients get sleeping pills. Not only are they taking the wrong medication for their condition, they are also covering and delaying effective treatment for the real problem.

We spend one third of our life in sleep, but surprising we know a little about it.

Only recently has science started to investigate why sleep is good for us and why we feel miserable if we don’t sleep well.

All living creatures function in alternating rhythms of activity and sleep; in humans, one sleep-wake cycle lasts about twenty-five hours.

There seems to be an internal clock that’s set to make us sleepy at particular points during this cycle. The major “down- time” for most adults occurs naturally between 11:00 p.m. and 7:00 a.m., with a minor energy dip between 2:00 and 4:00 P.M.

New research shows that the need for sleep is a biological drive, just like the need for food and water. While we snooze, the brain busily produces chemical changes to repair injured and worn-out body cells.

Some scientists think dreaming also plays a therapeutic role by bolstering memory and learning. Dreams help us process new information and connect it to what we already know. Resting while we are awake may feel good, but it’s not the same.

Sleep diary is one very valuable sleep disorder solution tool that many people have used. Sleep diaries have many great effects.

It helps you to discover your sleep cycle patterns that a doctor can then analyze and treat.

A section for a dream journal should also include in your sleep diary.

This section will help you remember your dreams and in some cases people have been known to learn to entirely control their dreams.

The dream section may be used by a psychologist to help analyze any psychological problems that may be affecting your sleep. Sometimes sleeping disorders are not all physical.

Sometime the mind can be the cause of sleep disorders and a psychologist is the best option. Interpreting your dreams may hold the key to you getting a good night’s sleep. The following information should be included in your sleep diary:

What you had to eat that day

Sometimes, your sleep cycle gets affected by the foods you eat. Some foods are known to have chemicals that cause dreams, cramps, insomnia, and other things.

There are some foods that cause the exact opposite and are good sleep inducers. Knowing what you ate that day can help you see patterns that you can try changing.

Many changes occur in our body as we age. Parts of our body and mind begin to deteriorate and other parts slow down.

But how many of these changes are due to the normal aging process and how many of these are due to pathologic conditions?

In the area of sleep, some changes that occur are a result of normal aging and there are many others that are pathologic.

Sleep Requirement for People in Different Ages

When it comes to determining sleep norms, there seems to be a correlation between age, body development, and sleep requirements. The scale is roughly as follows.

• Babies up to two months old require about 16 to 17 hours of sleep each night.
• Babies four months up to one year need about 10 hours of sleep each night, plus two long naps and one short nap during the day.
• Children one year up to 5 years of age generally need 11 hours of sleep each night plus three hours of short and long naps.
• Children between 5 and 15 years of age require 9 to 10 hours of sleep each night.
• Adolescents need about 10 hours sleep each night.