Archive for January, 2007

A new study showed that people with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) are more likely than those without apnea to have a family history of death due to heart disease.

The relation between obstructive sleep apnea and heart disease is developing rapidly.

People with cardiovascular problems such as heart stroke, heart failure, high blood pressure have a high occurrence of obstructive sleep apnea.

Researchers analyzed the relationship between obstructive sleep apnea and death from heart disease by comparing the personal and family histories of 316 patients with OSA and 202 patients without OSA.

Regardless of the patien’s own heart disease status, there was a significant association between OSA and family history of death from heart disease.

The relationship between OSA and heart disease is that people with obstructive sleep apnea have other diseases. Your blood pressure rises when you are not breathing, the oxygen levels drop and excite receptors that alert the brain.

The brain delivers signals through the nervous system and tells the blood vessels to tighten up in order to increase the flow of oxygen to the heart and brain. The problems which take place at night occur during day time when the sleep apnea patient is awake.

Poor sleep can contribute to heart disease and heart disease can disturb your sleep, reported by Harvard Heart Letter.

Poor sleep has been linked with heart attack and stroke, heart failure, diabetes, high blood pressure, obesity and arteriosclerosis.

The reason behind all these conditions together may be due to inflammation that is the body’s response to irritation, injury, disease or infection.

The levels of C-reactive protein increases with poor sleep and other substances that reflect inflammation.

Sometimes you get heart disease due to poor sleep. You may wake up with trouble in breathing if you have heart failure. Some studies have shown that heart failure may lead to sleep apnea, a disorder which can awaken you repeatedly throughout the night for breathing.

Sleep researcher David White, MD, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School studied for about ten years and found that people who slept for six or seven hours per night had the incidence of heart attacks and it increased relatively.

People who slept for only five hours has the risk of heart attack about forty percent higher than people who slept for eight hours.

Somnoplasty is a procedure to treat the upper airway obstruction. It is also used to treat snoring and obstructive sleep apnea.

It shrinks the soft tissue in the upper airway including base of the tongue which is the source of the obstruction performed under local anesthesia.

It uses radio frequency (RF) energy to provide a less painful treatment of upper airway obstruction.

The somnoplasty treatment takes about half an hour and five minutes required for RF energy delivery.

During somnoplasty, automated RF control unit is used with temperature monitoring capabilities that deliver controlled energy into surface layer of soft palate to reduce tissue volume and stiffen soft tissue.

Heat of approximately eighty five degrees is generated for treating obstructive sleep apnea. This creates finely controlled lesions at specific locations within the upper way.

To minimize post operative discomfort, an insulating sleeve at the base of the needle electrode is intended to protect the surface of the tissue from thermal damage. The body reabsorbs the lesion causing the nasal mucosa to shrink and clearing the airways.

New born babies spent most of the time in sleeping in short segments throughout the day.

New borns sleep eight to nine hours during the day and eight to nine hours during night.

But they need your attention during feeding and settling them after feeding up to six months and even more for some babies.

Throughout the day, the new born babies wake up for feeding and sleep again. You should maintain regular schedule for feeding milk to the new born.

You should fix a schedule which is convenient to you and your baby. Many new parents do not follow the schedule and often new borns have their days and nights confused. You should feed the new born babies for every few hours.

No need to wake a new born baby for feeding, but if the baby is sleeping continuously for five hours or more, then it is necessary to wake the baby for feeding. Whenever your baby wakes up, change the nappy, feed the baby, soothe and settle the baby to sleep.

Following are the tips to prevent circadian rhythm sleep disorder:

1. Exercise increases the amplitude of daily rhythms and tells the body to endorse deeper sleep cycles to help refill the muscle tissues from daily physical exertion. Aerobic and anaerobic exercise seems to work as well. But exercise too close to bedtime can disrupt the sleep cycle. The best time to exercise is 4 - 6 hours before bedtime.
2. Napping during the day can harm a good sleep rhythm and keep you from enjoying a full sleep at night. If you suffer from insomnia, the best thing to do is don’t nap during the day.
3. Maintain a regular routine. Getting up and going to bed around the same time, even on holidays, is the most important thing you can do to establish good sleep habits. By following the regular time schedule, the circadian rhythm will not be disturbed.
4. If you don’t get very bright light in the morning, your body clock perhaps will not work in a right way. If you don’t get dark signals in the evening and keep your room bright, your body clock won’t produce a full amount of sleep hormones at night.

Insomnia in older people are often neglected by their doctors even though treatment of insomnia could improve mental and physical health and improves their quality of life.

This is the found by new research from the Feinberg school of Medicine at Northwestern University.

When patients of age sixty and above visited their doctors, they did not note the sleep problems.

Independent social workers who interviewed the same patients learned that seventy percent of them had at least one sleep disorder while forty five percent said that they had difficulty staying asleep, being able to sleep, or falling asleep.

Doctors may not think it is important to ask the patient about sleep. Researchers assume that doctors think that sleep problems are normal part of aging, said Kathryn Reid, Ph.D., lead authority on study and research assistant professor at Northwestern’s Feinberg school of Medicine.

Reid also said that patients also assume sleep problems are common as they grow older and no need to mention to their doctors.

Some changes in sleep are common such as reduction in slow wave or deep sleep starting at the age of forty five is natural as we grow older. But insomnia is not common as it results from different conditions.

Melatonin is an all natural sleep aid. Pineal gland, which is a small pea size gland in the center of the brain, secretes melatonin, as our eyes register the fall of darkness.

At night melatonin is produced to assist our bodies regulate our sleep and wake cycles.

As we age, the amount of melatonin produced by our body lessens. Scientists believe this may be the reason why young people have less of a problem sleeping than older people will.

Though we create our own melatonin, this can also be bought in the form of supplements.

It is believed that without any hazards or side effects of prescription and over the counter sleeping pills, melatonin supplements make it easier sleep and ease jet lag.

Melatonin may have many other uses and has been reported to make people feel better, strengthen the immune system, and reduce free radicals in the body.

Melatonin as Anti-oxidant

At present, research is being performed to also determine melatonin’s effect as an anti-oxidant. Because there is much still to be learned about melatonin and its effects on the human body, tests are still being done now.

Caffeine is colorless and lends very little flavor to whatever it is added to. When in its pure form it is white and very bitter. Caffeine is a drug that is found in many food drinks and medicine.

Caffeine is more commonly used to provide a boost of energy or heightened alertness. It’s often used to stay awake longer. College students and drivers use it to stay awake late into the night.

Many people consider as though they cannot function in the morning without a cup of coffee to provide caffeine and the boost it gives them. Medically, caffeine is useful as a cardiac stimulant and also as a mild diuretic used to increase urine production.

Caffeine is an addictive drug

Caffeine does many things including operating using the same mechanisms that amphetamines, cocaine, and heroin use to stimulate the brain.

On a spectrum, caffeine’s effects are milder than amphetamines, cocaine and heroin, but it is manipulating the same channels, and for this reason, caffeine can also be considered as addictive. You are addicted to caffeine if you feel like you cannot function without it and must have it every day.