Why sleep is a critical factor

occurrence when they get in the way of your daily routine and hamper your ability to function you may be suffering from a sleep disorder. Sleep disorders and other sleeping problems cause more than just sleepiness.
Everyone experiences occasional sleeping problems. So it is important to know whether your sleeping problem is just a minor, passing annoyance or a sign of a more serious sleep disorder or underlying medical condition.
Therefore, start by scrutinising your symptoms, looking especially for the telltale daytime signs of sleep deprivation. If you are experiencing any of the following symptoms on a regular basis, you may be dealing with a sleep disorder.
Insomnia, the inability to get the amount of sleep you need to wake up feeling rested and refreshed, is the most common sleep complaint.
Insomnia is often a symptom of another problem, such as stress, anxiety, depression, or an underlying health condition. It can also be caused by lifestyle choices, including the medications you take, lack of exercise, or jet lag.
There is another one called Sleep Apnea. This is a chronic medical condition where the affected person repeatedly stops breathing during sleep. These episodes last 10 seconds or more and cause oxygen levels in the blood to drop. It can be caused by obstruction of the upper airway, resulting in obstructive sleep apnea, or by a failure of the brain to initiate a breath, called central sleep apnea.
It can cause and worsen other medical conditions, including hypertension, heart failure, and diabetes. Sleep problems, including snoring, sleep apnea, insomnia, sleep deprivation, and restless legs syndrome, are common among millions of people.
It’s important to understand why sleep is necessary for optimal health, how the natural hormone melatonin affects sleep and wakefulness and how the different states and stages of sleep impact sleep quality, quantity, and sleep dreams.
If you are experiencing sleeping problems, learn about the signs and symptoms of common sleep disorders, what you can do to help yourself, and when to see a doctor. It is not normal to feel sleepy during the day, to have problems getting to sleep at night, or to wake up feeling unrepressed.
But even if you’ve struggled with sleep problems for so long that it does seem normal, you can learn to sleep better. You can start by tracking your symptoms and sleep patterns, and then making healthy changes to your daytime habits and bedtime routine.
If self-help doesn’t do the trick, you can turn to sleep specialists who are trained in sleep medicine. Together, you can identify the underlying causes of your sleeping problem and find ways to improve your sleep and quality of life.
The family’s observations are particularly important to evaluate sleepwalking, kicking in bed, snoring loudly, or other behaviours that the patient cannot remember.
Poor quality sleep can have a negative impact on your energy, emotional balance, productivity, and health. Some sleep disorders are serious enough to interfere with normal physical, mental and emotional functioning.
Polysomnography is a test commonly ordered for some sleep disorders. The amount of sleep a person needs depends on many factors, including age. For example, in general infants require about 16 hours a day, teenagers need about nine hours on average.
Most adults need seven to eight hours a night for the best amount of sleep, although some people may need as few as five hours or as many as 10 hours of sleep each day. Women in the first three months of pregnancy often need several more hours of sleep than usual. “Early to bed and early to rise,” the old saying begins.
Although sleep is a basic behaviour in animals as well as humans, researchers still do not completely understand all of its functions in maintaining health.
In the past 30 years, however, laboratory studies on human volunteers have yielded new information about the different types of sleep. Researchers have learned about the cyclical patterns of different types of sleep and their relationships to breathing, heart rate, brain waves, and other physical functions. There are about 70 different sleep disorders.
To qualify for the diagnosis of sleep disorder, the condition must be a persistent problem, cause the patient significant emotional distress, and interfere with his or her social or occupational functioning. Diagnosis of sleep disorders usually requires a psychological history as well as a medical history.
With the exception of sleep apnea syndromes, physical examinations are not usually revealing. The patient’s sex and age are useful starting points in assessing the problem. The doctor may also talk to other family members in order to obtain information about the patient’s symptoms.
We sleep less now than we did a decade ago, according to data from a Japanese study. In 1970 we slept an average of 7,5 to 8 hours a night. In 1990 we slept an average of 7 to 7,5 hours a night. Nobody knows why this is so, but it may be a result of a faster-paced life, in which we juggle many responsibilities.
l Fifty percent of the elderly suffer from insomnia.
l The average person sleeps 220 000 hours in a lifetime.
l The average healthy sleeper moves 40 to 60 times each night.
l Nearly 40 000 000 North Americans snore occasionally.
l The life span of a pillow is supposed to be at least two years.
l Fifteen percent of people sleep in the nude.
l The highest sound level of a snoring sleeper ever recorded is 90 decibels.
l Fifteen percent of children under twelve sleepwalk at least once.
Disruptions in sleep can be caused by a variety of issues, from teeth grinding (bruxism) to night terrors. When a person suffers from difficulty in sleeping with no obvious cause, it is referred to as insomnia.
In addition, sleep disorders may also cause sufferers to sleep excessively, a condition known as hypersomnia. Management of sleep disturbances that are secondary to mental, medical, or substance abuse disorders should focus on the underlying conditions.
While some sleep disorders may require a visit to the sleep doctor, you can improve many sleeping problems on your own. The first step to overcoming a sleep problem is identifying and carefully tracking your symptoms and sleep patterns.
Solutions
A sleep diary is a very useful tool for identifying sleep disorders and sleeping problems and pinpointing both day and nighttime habits that may be contributing to your difficulties. Keeping a record of your sleep patterns and problems will also prove helpful if you eventually find it necessary to see a sleep doctor.
Your sleep diary should include (what time you went to bed and woke up, total sleep hours and perceived quality of your sleep. A record of time you spent awake and what you “stay in bed with eyes closed,” for example, or “got up, had a glass of milk, and your feelings and moods before bed).
It should be noted that details could be important, revealing how certain behaviours can be ruining your chance for a good night’s sleep. After keeping the diary for a week, for example, you might notice that when you have more than one glass of wine in the evening, you wake up during the night.
Make sure your bedroom is dark, cool, and quiet. Cover electrical displays, use heavy curtains or shades to block light from windows, or try an eye mask to shield your eyes.
Turn off your TV, smart phone, iPod, and computer a few hours before your bedtime. The type of light these screens emit can stimulate your brain, suppress the production of melatonin, and interfere with your body’s internal clock.
Feel refreshed when you awake, and remain alert throughout the day. It’s called “sleep hygiene” and refers to those practices, habits, and environmental factors that are critically important for sound sleep. And most of it is under your control.
There are four general areas important to sleep hygiene ( Our circadian rhythm, or 24-hour cycle, Aging, Psychological stressors, and Common social or recreational drugs like nicotine, caffeine, and alcohol.)
Light therapy may be the new, 21st century solution to the sleep problems. The prescription — bright, full spectrum light an hour every evening for those who fall asleep before their bedtime, and bright light an hour every morning for those who can’t fall asleep until hours after their regular bedtime. The light now available does not contain UV rays. It is worn in a device strapped around the forehead so that it does not shine directly into the eyes, allowing the wearer to go about normal activities.
Nutritional supplements that help treat and often cure this problem include magnesium, potassium, calcium, vitamin E and folic acid. Sometimes a patient’s requirements for these nutrients can be enormous
There are many possible solutions to sleep apnea. If the snorer is overweight, losing weight may help eliminate some of the fat in the throat, thus clearing breathing passages. Cutting out nighttime alcohol and taking an antihistamine or decongestant during allergy season can help. In addition, a device called Snore Guard that keeps breathing regular is worn in the mouth at night.
Sometimes insomnia is related to anxiety about insomnia. An initial period of stress may lead to sleeplessness, and then the sufferer begins to worry about lack of sleep, perpetuating the problem. In this case, it helps to restrict bedtime hours.
If a person is sleeping only four hours a night, he can set bedtime hours of 3:00 am to 7:00 am, for instance. Within two to three weeks, he should be falling asleep more easily, because bedtime is no longer associated with tossing and turning. When he is sleeping more efficiently, he can increase the time in bed by 15 minutes each night.
l Try to keep your sleep schedule consistent. Plan regular hours of sleep time every day.
l Eliminate caffeine and alcohol, particularly at night.
l Don’t exercise or start involving yourself in highly engaging mental tasks near bedtime.
l Don’t go to bed hungry or after eating a large meal. Eat a light snack before bedtime or drink a glass of warm milk, which contains tryptophan, an amino acid that is a known sleep inducer.
l Take a hot bath before sleep.
l Don’t read or watch TV in bed. Remove all other stimulants from the bedroom, including work and bills.
l Don’t nap during the day. Confine your sleep to certain nighttime hours.
l In some cases, patients with sleep disorders related to jet lag or shift work may need to change employment or travel patterns. Patients may need to avoid rapid changes in shifts at work.
l Children with nightmare disorder may benefit from limits on television or movies. Violent scenes or frightening science fiction stories appear to influence the frequency and intensity of children’s nightmares
l Meditation, practice, breathing exercises, and yoga, can break the vicious cycle of sleeplessness, worry about inability to sleep, and further sleeplessness for some people.
l Yoga can help some people to relax muscular tension in a direct fashion. The breathing exercises and meditation can keep some patients from obsessing about sleep.