Archive for March, 2008

According to the Researchers at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, it has been proved that adolescents who are suffering with chronic insomnia not only lose their sleep, but also their health.

There are several types of health problems which affect the adolescents if they are prone to chronic insomnia.

Insomnia is common and chronic among the adolescents.

It has negative impact on the adolescents who are aged between 11 to 17 years.

The research has also found that out of 100 percent, 70 percent of adolescents who are aged between 11 to 17 years have this problem of chronic insomnia. Therefore, it is the most common problem among the adolescents.

The studies also showed that adolescents who have this chronic insomnia are affected with some psychiatric disorders like anxiety, mood, substance abuse and disruptive disorders. Other than this psychiatric health, normal health of your adolescent will also be affected.

The impact of the chronic insomnia in the future health cannot be determined at that adolescence stage itself because in some cases it will have severe impact, where as in some other cases it will have much less impact.

Not getting enough sleep has been linked to overweight and obesity. Lack of sleep can change your body’s metabolism and hormonal function. Lack of sleep also alters mood, decreases motor and mental skills. It also affects other hormones such as leptin and ghrelin.

Sleep and weight gain

Leptin and ghrelin are hormones that help your body to control appetite, weight gain and weight loss. Leptin tends to decrease appetite and ghrelin tends to increase appetite.

When you have chronic sleep loss, ghrelin levels increase, causing to increase your appetite and leptin levels decrease.

When your appetite increases, you crave for high energy foods like sweets, chocolates and ice creams. As your leptin levels decrease, you think that you are hungrier than you need to be.

Getting a good night sleep improves your mood and alertness level. If you have sleepless nights from many days, you are chronically sleep deprived. Chronic sleep disruption can result in heart and kidney diseases apart from other health problems.

Sleep deprivation activates sympathetic nervous system, resulting in constriction of blood vessels. Therefore, it raises your blood pressure. Chronic sleep deprivation also affects blood sugar regulation.

More insulin is necessary for keeping blood sugar normal if you are sleep deprived. Poor blood sugar regulation and increased levels of insulin are main contributors of cardiovascular disease.

When you are sleep deprived, kidney tubules can sustain significant scarring, leading to kidney disease. Sleep deprivation can also cause other problems like high blood pressure, diabetes and depression.

Different types of allergies can keep your children awake. These allergies cause itchy eyes, watery nose, and sneezing. When your child has these symptoms with allergies, their sleep is disturbed.

With disturbed sleep, their daily functioning such as performance in school, mood, energy, concentration and ability to think are affected.

One can affect with allergies from environment or from the food your child eats. Allergic rhinitis, a common child allergy, is an inflammation of nasal passages that occurs when your child’s body over reacts to an allergen such as pollen, dust mites, dander etc.

When swelling of nasal passages takes place, air flow is blocked, causing congestion. Nasal congestion can affect child’s sleep in many ways. Nasal congestion makes difficulty in breathing through nose.

You feel tired and distracted when you do not get enough sleep. You will also feel that you are out of sync with situations and persons around you, whether they can be friends, family members and co-workers.

With lack of sleep, you will unable to study, concentrate and work effectively. You will also experience emotional problems such as depression.

Even health problems like heart diseases, diabetes, hypertension, and obesity can result.

Therefore, it is necessary to get enough sleep to start your day actively when you wake up and to be busy with what is going on around you.

Here are 6 effective sleep aids that can make a big difference to tackle sleep problems.

1. Relaxation techniques for inducing sleep:

Relaxation techniques such as deep breathing, progressive relaxation, and guided imagery help in improving the quality of sleep.

When you practice these techniques during daytime, you can get rid of daily stress. These relaxation techniques in turn reduce the elevated stress hormones at night.

When you practice these techniques during bedtime, negative thoughts during sleep can be removed.

Know how heart attacks, diabetes and obesity are associated with sleep deprivation and how to prevent them.

Nothing can be more frustrating for you than not being able to sleep. Many of you toss and turn at night to fall asleep.

Researchers identified many conditions such as sleep apnea, snoring, restless leg syndrome, bruxism, sleep talking, nocturnal cramps, night sweats, rhythmic movement disorders and other conditions that can severely affect your sleep and quality of living.

Lack of sleep not only affects your daily activities but also affect your health, resulting in obesity, heart attack, diabetes and early aging. Here are the reasons how lack of sleep affect your health.

Sleep loss can equal to weight gain:

Risk of obesity is related to how much time you spend in sleeping. If you are sleeping for fewer hours, then the risk of obesity is more. If you have sleep apnea, it can lead to sleep deprivation. Sleep deprivation can make you less active. Less active means less exercise. Less exercise can cause weight gain.

Hormones also play an important role in regulating your body weight. Leptin is a hormone that suppresses your appetite and ghrelin is a hormone that boosts the intake of food. Leptin levels decline and ghrelin levels rise with sleep deprivation.

The waterbase pillow is easy to fill, providing comfort and support all night.

This pillow is adjustable to unique shape and preferred degree of support.

You can fill this pillow simply with tap water. This pillow is designed to provide quality sleep.

You can get the support you want from this pillow with three layers of comfort like soft, medium or firm.

The first one is soft outer layer with hypoallergenic down. The next layer is anti-humidity and thermal insulating, which prevents loss of heat. The last and inner most layer is easy to fill without leakage, providing comfort all through the night for a good night sleep.

You can get the exact support and can control the support level you need by adding the water simply until you get a pillow that is perfect for you. When you have a good night sleep, your energy can be restored, appearance can be refreshed and stresses can be soothed.

Neck stiffness can be relieved from this pillow, allowing better sleep. Improved sleep quality can reverse negative consequences of tiredness.

Women are more likely to have difficulty in staying and falling asleep than men and experience more day time sleepiness.

Cardiovascular disease is one of the leading causes of deaths among women and sleep is one of the risk factors. Fifty percent of sleep problems are due to stress. Stress in women is related to work related issues, family and child related issues.

Poor sleep can result in heart disease and heart disease can contribute to poor sleep. Lack of sleep is also linked with heart failure, high blood pressure, atherosclerosis, stroke, heart attack, obesity and diabetes.

All these factors are linked to each other with inflammation. It is the response of the body to injury, irritation, infection or disease.