Sleeping near a person who snores can seriously interrupt sleep. “If only the snoring would stop,” you think. Then it does. Peaceful as it is, that’s not always a healthy sign. Snoring is related to a condition known as sleep apnea.
If you have sleep apnea, your nighttime breathing is interrupted and doesn’t return promptly. Sleep apnea can be a life threatening condition. The airflow into your body is delayed by more than 10 seconds.
That may not sound like much, but it’s a serious situation. This breathing interruption can happen up to five times in an hour during sleep. If you snore loudly and nightly, you’re at higher risk for sleep apnea than the occasional snorer.
Other signs of sleep apnea are episodes of daytime fatigue and emotional distress or skill deficits when you’re tired. Sleep apnea seems to start most often in middle age and afflicts more men than women.
Risk factors for sleep apnea are:
1. Overweight by more than 120% of your appropriate body weight
2. Large neck girth. That’s determined by using a tape measure. The danger level is 17” or greater for men and 16” or greater for women.
3. Hypertension whether treated or untreated by medication
4. Narrow nasal passages
A medically supervised sleep study is needed to diagnose sleep apnea. A home monitor can be used for children as well as adults to monitor breathing interruptions. You have a number of options for treating sleep apnea.
You can be fitted for a dental appliance, an orthodontia device that you wear at night. Basically this appliance changes the tongue placement so that the airway is clear for breathing.
Losing weight is also important to moderating sleep apnea. Along with losing weight, you need to be in an exercise program. Many people report that their sleep apnea completely disappears once they lose weight and get back to a normal, healthy range.
Continuous Positive Airway Pressure (CPAP) masks are worn over the nose and mouth to force air into the nasal passages in a continuous flow. This may not be the most comfortable way to sleep, but it has been highly effective and most people get used to the machine and rely on it to deliver a good night’s sleep.
If all else fails, there are surgical procedures such as widening the palate, restructuring nasal cavities or taking out the tonsils to aid in a sleep apnea disorder. Make sure you don’t ignore your snoring and mistake it as something harmless because if it’s sleep apnea, you’re putting your life at risk!
Filed under sleep apnea by on Aug 11th, 2010. Comment. 
Toss, turn, yawn, stretch, shift, toss some more – but you just can’t get to sleep. When you prepared for bedtime, you were so tired you thought you might fall asleep brushing your teeth.
The clock face flashes past 1 o’clock in the morning and you’re still not asleep. If this is a regular problem, you may have insomnia. Your sleep problems may be related to other medical conditions.
Breathing problems, back or leg pain, acid reflux and indigestion can disturb the body in ways that make sleep difficult no matter how tired you are. Emotional problems can also mess with your sleep.
If you’re feeling depressed, anxious or having obsessive thoughts, your mind just doesn’t shut down enough to allow sleep. If you experience a major loss, during the grieving period, sleep can be complicated.
Lifestyle changes can also cause sleep interruptions. Starting a new job with different hours that you are use can take time to adjust your sleep cycle. Staying up too late while watching television or surfing the Internet doesn’t give your body enough time to wind down from the day for effective sleep.
Constant stress at work or school that you just can’t let go of will definitely make a good night’s sleep elusive. Trying to drown your frustrations in alcohol, caffeine, or through smoking will only cause more sleep interruption problems.
If you’re tired of being tired all the time, here’s what you can do to overcome insomnia:
- Reset your body clock by getting on a reasonable schedule. Don’t try to exhaust yourself with exercise, work or activity as a way to fall asleep. You already know that doesn’t work. Write down a schedule that allows an hour to prepare for sleep. Take a warm shower, turn off the TV and electronic communications and turn on some calming music (an instrumental CD, not the radio). Stretch and slide into bed at the time scheduled.
- Don’t focus on going to sleep, think about relaxation. Visualize a pleasant, satisfying, relaxing place and see yourself in that place.
- Gradually turn down the lights. This gives your body time to wind down better than going from fully lit room and monitor screen to dark room.
- As you are resetting the sleep cycle and find yourself getting tired too early, increase your light exposure. Go outdoors in the sunshine or turn up the light in the room. The body responds to light and dark cues for sleep.
- Cease any work or stressful activity at least three hours before bedtime. Let go the frustrations and allow your mind to focus on less intense things.
- When insomnia can’t be managed by another other means or interferes too much with normal activities, you may need to get prescription medication. Whatever you do, don’t self medicate with over-the-counter sleep aids at night and wake-up pills during the day. That makes the problem worse. Don’t take any sleep medications unless monitored by a physician. You want to cure insomnia not acquire a drug problem.
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Filed under Can't Sleep, Sleep Aid, Sleep Deprivation by on Aug 2nd, 2010. Comment.
If you have difficulty getting to sleep and are easily disturbed, you may want to consider using white noise to help mask noise that seeps into your resting place. This type of sleep therapy is known to help people who are awakened by peripheral noise, such as traffic from the street or a noisy neighbor.
White noise can help mask these other noises so that you can sleep through them, ideally enabling you to achieve a more restful slumber and the benefits that come with it. White noise is also useful for those who have trouble sleeping when it’s “too quite.”
What is white noise? It’s not simply soft ocean waves or the soothing sounds of the autumn wind blowing through the trees. Technically, it includes all sound frequencies within the range of human hearing combined.
It’s similar to the color white being produced from a combination of all other colors, which may be why they call it white noise. The “noise” is random, meaning it doesn’t have rhyme or reason unless it’s manipulated.
It doesn’t follow a pattern like normal sound does. Rather, it’s mixed up and in constant transformation, creating the “swooshing” effect that our ears absorb. According to experts, the reason why white noise is so soothing is because the masking effect produced covers all other sounds – from high to low pitches.
If your sleep is being disturbed by a dog barking outside, white noise theoretically can help muffle, mask, or cancel-out that sound. On a whole, white noise sounds relatively high-pitched to us (though at a “hum”).
The reason why it doesn’t keep us awake is because the noise essentially overloads our auditory systems and for most of us, provides a distraction from competing sounds. It prevents us from zeroing in on any one sound, so we simply become “numb” to them all.
While we may think of white noise as being tranquil sounds from nature, it’s actually closer to the sound a fan makes. Pure white noise can be “tuned” to more closely resemble these soothing, familiar sounds.
An ocean wave gently rolling onto shore or a light rain against the windowpane are sounds now easily found on white-noise CDs that are sold in stores, which also holds the advantage of volume control and repetition. Set your CD on repeat and let the white noise help you sleep through the night.
Listening to a Sleep Sound CD in bed can help you to overcome this problem and drift off to sleep naturally and easily. Here are some of our recommendations:-
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Other forms of white noise include a ceiling or box fan, static from a radio or a furnace or air conditioner with a low hum. There are also actual white-noise or sound-conditioning machines, which serve a specific purpose of helping you find the sleep you crave.
Some white noise CDs contain a number of different “scenes” to choose from. All are composed to create an oasis of relaxation and ultimately promote sleep. Find the one that best lulls you to sleep and end those days of feeling tired, drowsy, and irritable.
Filed under Sleep Aid by on Jul 28th, 2010. Comment.
