Archive for July, 2007

Do you know that the headache you are experiencing is the result of sleep apnea?

Sleep apnea is a life threatening disease which is characterized by partial or complete closure of your airway during sleep.

The partial or complete closure of your airway reduces the amount of oxygen in your blood which is carried to your brain.

Therefore the risk for high blood pressure, heart attack, sudden death, stroke and headaches increases.

Hypoxemia, reduced oxygen in the blood is partially responsible for headaches.

20% patients with sleep apnea will have cluster headaches and 25% of patients with other sleep disorders will also experience cluster headaches approximately.

Musculoskeletal headaches also known as tension headaches are difficult to be differentiated from sleep apnea headaches. Headache associated with sleep apnea is located above the eyebrows (bifrontally). They last for at least one to two hours after awakening and tend to be dull in character. You will not experience any other symptoms of migraine or other typical headaches.

People with sleep apnea will not get the deep and relaxed sleep they need and it is the cause for headaches. Many researchers indicated a link between cluster headache and sleep apnea. Sleep apnea triggers cluster headache during the first hours of sleep which leads to a bout of apnea headache.

In many sleep and eating disorders, the inability to manage stress leads to sleep problems and obesity as food is normally consumed in large quantities during high stress periods, especially for emotional eaters.

Night eating syndrome is a disorder where the affected individual wakes up during the night and unable to fall asleep unless they eat something.

Foods eaten during the night are often high caloric in content and unhealthy. The night eating syndrome is beyond the person’s control.

If you have night eating syndrome, you take 35% or more of the calories after dinner time which leads to obesity. You will not feel hungry in the morning due to night eating. You are caught in the vicious cycle of binge eating during the night and less eating during the day.

Triggers for Night Eating Syndrome:

• Depression [Manage Depression]
• Anxiety
• Boredom
• Prolonged dieting
• Stress
• Sleep walking [Sleep Walking Treatment]

Night eating relieves temporarily the stress of these unwanted feelings but you feel guilt, shame, disgust and further depression due to this behavior. If you are suffering from night eating syndrome, you eat usually in secret and hide it from others.

Smoking during pregnancy is not good for unborn child.

But, the fact is that pregnant women still smoke cigarettes during their pregnancy.

Many women are unaware of the fact that how harmful cigarette smoking is on their unborn child and how smoking cigarettes during pregnancy is one of the major causes of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS).

Causes of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) due to smoking:

Cigarette smoke contains chemicals like carbon monoxide, tar, and nicotine which are considered to be most dangerous substances for the fetus. It is also proven long before that these chemicals extremely effect the development of fetus inside the mother’s womb.

Pregnant women who smoke are under risk of ectopic pregnancy. This is especially possible when you are a heavy smoker during the first trimester of pregnancy. Ectopic pregnancy means embryo is embedded outside the uterus which is opposite to what normal pregnancy should be. The fetus has to be removed in ectopic pregnancy as this kind of pregnancy never survives.

Second hand smoke can also damage the child’s health and can lead to SIDS. Children whose parents smoke are most seriously affected by exposure to second hand smoke and are at increased risk of lower respiratory tract infections such as pneumonia and bronchitis.

Having difficulty to get a good night sleep?

Spending several hours without sleep?

Improve sleep with good sleep habits.

Lack of sleep can result in stress, lack of concentration, moodiness, memory loss, lower motivation and fatigue.

It is important to get a good night sleep otherwise it may lead to different sleep disorders.

Here are 11 ways to get good night’s sleep for those who experience difficulty in getting sleep.

11 ways to get a good night sleep:

1. Maintain regular bedtime routine. Try to go to bed at the same time and get up in the morning at the same time. Keeping a regular schedule helps the body expect sleep at the same time every day.
2. Maintain the sleep schedule even on weekends and holidays. Following the sleep schedule even on weekends does not disturb the internal clock of the body and helps to maintain circadian rhythm.
3. Regardless of how much sleep had the before night, get up the same time in the morning. If the amount of sleep is reduced due to some reasons, don’t oversleep to make up for a poor night’s sleep.

Restless leg syndrome is a common condition to hear from people with fibromyalgia.

Restless leg syndrome and fibromyalgia are currently under study for ways to treat and prevent them.

Both disorders disrupt sleep in one way or the other and this lack of sleep can have undesirable side effects including poor job performance, lack of safety while driving and problem in enjoying social activities.

Similar symptoms between restless leg syndrome and fibromyalgia:

Both the syndromes are characterized by uncomfortable sensations in the limbs. In restless leg syndrome, you feel often the urge to move the legs while in fibromyalgia, you feel fatigue or pain in the muscles or joints.

Both syndromes tend to have disrupting sleep patterns, though troubled sleep seems to be the problem with those suffering from restless leg syndrome and fibromyalgia sufferers tend to have problems maintaining REM sleep due to periods of brain activity through the night.

Different symptoms between restless leg syndrome and fibromyalgia:

There are differences between two syndromes. Fibromyalgia can be caused more in females than in males while restless leg syndrome does not have specific gender. As fibromyalgia disrupts the actual process of sleep, once the person falls asleep, it tends to have more events of extended periods of dizziness and loss of motor dexterity.