Archive for September, 2008

If you are experiencing hard time to get sleep at nights, regular practice of yoga can help you a lot.

Particularly if your insomnia is related to stress, incorporating yoga in your routine life can help your way to get good sleep.

However, exercising regularly also gives you better results.

But, if you incorporate vigorous yoga practice such as power yoga at least 3 times in a week, it can become added advantage for you.

Here are few yoga poses that you can practice before going to bed. If you frequently become awake during nights, these yoga poses helps you to relax and get back to sleep easily.

Legs up the wall:

This particular yoga pose cools your nervous system and helps you to experience good sleep at nights. You can practice it at any place of your house where you have clear floor in front of a bare wall. Even, the back part of your door also goes well, instead of wall.

About 1 foot away from the wall, place a folded up blanket on the floor. By facing your body to the bare wall, sit on the blanket.

—-Here are some tips to help your child sleep!

Many parents find it as a big struggle to get their child to bed at night.

Your child play, whine and at times they even cry and repeatedly get out of their bed.

Actually, there are many ways to find better solution for your problem.

But, here are few effective and also easy tips to help you in getting your child sleep in their beds, without troubling you.

Initially, it can become a bit tough task for you, but soon after implementing these tips, you can enjoy your nights in your bed while your child is in good sleep peacefully in their bed.

1. If your child is newborn, try to limit the amount of time that your child sleeps in their bed, if possible. This will certainly help you later and most essentially, it can also assist you to avoid the possibility of sudden infant death syndrome, which is the most common concern for many parents.

Do you know how frustrating it can be when you have problem with your sleep at night? If you have ever experienced it, you can know better.

If you try harder to get sleep, it becomes more difficult for you to get sleep. The harder you try, the more sleep eludes you.

At times, the best way to handle persistent sleep problems is to stop struggling with it.

There are many things that can make good sense for you to plan for your wake time at sleepless nights.

So, here are a couple of suggestions for you to use your wake time in better way.

Improve your knowledge!

Test your knowledge and explore different ways to improve your knowledge. Read books and good magazines to get better knowledge.

Search different websites in your internet and play games that can improve your motor skills. Learn some tongue twisters that can help you to make people impress with your skills.

Look at your body and skin!

Now, you can find enough time to take care of your body and skin. Add some fragrant bath oils or salts to your bath tub and take a hot bath. It can also help you to relax, if you add some pleasant music.

Many of us feel we could do with more sleep. However, the demands of modern life make this dream largely impossible.

But there is an alternative. Instead of always wishing we could have time for just a little more sleep, we can improve the quality of what sleep we do get.

The following are 4 tips for ensuring you get the very best quality sleep possible.

Sleep in Complete Darkness

It has been shown through scientific research that the release of melatonin is light sensitive. Light inhibits melatonin release whenever it touches skin but the eyes are especially important.

Even as much light as produced by a single candle has an effect of reducing nighttime melatonin release.

These days melatonin is sold as a sleep aid. But why buy and take a synthetic chemical when you can make your own, all natural, melatonin?

It may also interest you to know that melatonin is the single most potent antioxidant known to man. Our bodies naturally enjoy a nightly melatonin bath but only if you sleep in complete darkness.

You should probably also know that it takes a respectable number of hours of melatonin release before other vital hormones become activated.

Loss of sleep, even for a few short hours during the night, can prompt one’s immune system to turn against healthy tissue and organs.

A new article reports that losing sleep for even part of one night can trigger the key cellular pathway that produces tissue-damaging inflammation.

The findings suggest a good night’s sleep can ease the risk of both heart disease and autoimmune disorders such as rheumatoid arthritis.

Specifically, the researchers measured the levels of nuclear factor (NF)-?B, a transcription factor that serves a vital role in the body’s inflammatory signaling, in healthy adults.

These measurements were repeatedly assessed, including in the morning after baseline (or normal) sleep, after partial sleep deprivation (where the volunteers were awake from 11 pm to 3:00 am), and after recovery sleep.

In the morning after sleep loss, they discovered that activation of (NF)-?B signaling was significantly greater than after baseline or recovery sleep. It’s important to note that they found this increase in inflammatory response in only the female subjects.

These data close an important gap in understanding the cellular mechanisms by which sleep loss enhances inflammatory biology in humans, with implications for understanding the association between sleep disturbance and risk of a wide spectrum of medical conditions including cardiovascular disease, arthritis, diabetes, certain cancers, and obesity.

A new study shows that objectively measured heavy snoring is an independent risk factor for early carotid atherosclerosis, which may progress to be associated with stroke.

In a study of 110 adults, the prevalence of carotid atherosclerosis was 20 percent with mild snoring, 32 percent with moderate snoring and 64 percent with heavy snoring.

After adjustment for age, gender, smoking history and hypertension, heavy snoring was significantly associated with carotid atherosclerosis.

“Heavy snorers may be at risk for the development of carotid atherosclerosis, which is the leading cause of stroke,” said lead author and study coordinator Sharon Lee. “Heavy snorers…should have a review of all their risk factors for vascular disease.”

The study is the first to objectively measure and quantify snoring, rather than using a questionnaire, to explore the association between sleep-disordered breathing and carotid atherosclerosis.

According to Lee, the high prevalence of snoring in the community means that these findings have substantial public health implications for the management of carotid atherosclerosis and the prevention of stroke.

Read more at ScienceDaily