Sleep Problems

Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), the most common form of the sleep disorder, affects an estimated twelve million American citizens every year. Of these, over a half are prone to loud snoring and are also overweight or obese. For reasons unknown, OSA is more common in males than females and in people who have large as opposed to medium or small neck measurements.

Where obstructive sleep apnea is concerned, a person’s airways are blocked during the night therefore their breathing ceases. Normal breathing patterns often begin again after anywhere from a few seconds to ten seconds but there are cases where it takes fifty to sixty seconds for normal patterns to resume. The longer period of breathe cessation there is, the more serious the case. Obstructive sleep apnea is most likely to occur for those individuals who are prone to snoring, those who drink liquor, those who need to lose weight and those who have one form or another of an anatomical abnormality afflicting their soft palate or jaw. There are times however when a person who doesn’t fit any of the above criteria still develops obstructive sleep apnea.

When muscles in the airways relax excessively while a person sleeps at night that is what is the cause of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). In many cases of OSA there is a “severe narrowing or occlusion of the pharynx” that seriously obstructs or completely stops breathing all together. This causes an excessive amount of carbon dioxide to develop and once the brain becomes aware of it the “airway muscles are activated which opens the airway, allowing breathing to resume but interrupting deep sleep.”

Obstructive sleep apnea develops as a result of constant episodes of airway obstruction during sleep. Approximately two percent of women and four percent of men who suffer from sleep apnea meet what is deemed as the “diagnostic criteria” for the sleep disorder, which averages an estimated ten bouts of apnea or what is referred to as “apneic events” in the course of an hour. An apneic event can be “either an apnea, characterized by complete cessation of airflow for at least ten seconds, or a hypopnea in which airflow decreases by fifty percent for ten seconds or decreases by thirty percent if there is an associated decrease in the oxygen saturation or an arousal from sleep.” Sleep apnea is give a grade or level by sleep researchers which is calculated by the number of apneic events that take place every hour. This is known as the “apnea-hypopnea index” (or AHI). The normal level of an AHI is less than five whereas one that lies somewhere between five to fifteen is mild and a moderate AHI would be fifteen to thirty. The highest level or most severe is thirty or more apneic events per hour.

Extreme tiredness during the daytime is one of the most common symptoms of obstructive sleep apnea. A person suffering from this sleep problem can experience any number of other symptoms. These symptoms include drifting off to sleep during the busy workday, headaches in the A.M., irritability, anxiety, depression, difficulty concentrating on tasks, weight gain, behavioral changes and/or changes in mood, a tendency to forget easily and an increase in a person’s heart rate.

Cortisol is a vital hormone which helps us respond to stress in an appropriate manner, however, if the stress is prolonged and severe, then elevated cortisol levels cause destruction. Failure to deal with our reaction to continued stress result in a decline in our general health and accelerate the aging process.
For further information on cortisol and its effects visit:

http://www.sleep-problems-nomore.com/Cortisol_and_Sleep.html

Did you know that you can actually lose weight by sleeping more, and gain more weight by sleeping less? It may seem reasonable that you might lose weight by sleeping more because if you sleep long enough you might manage to miss a meal, and if you are sleep deprived you would gain more weight because you have more opportunities to eat. While superficially this might appear to make sense, there’s much more to it than that.

It has been found that chronic sleep deprivation, averaging less than 5 hours a day, resulted in metabolic and endocrine changes similar to those found in the aging population.  Ailments such as hypertension, obesity, diabetes, increased in severity, while the secretion of thyroid-stimulating hormone decreased, and cortisol secretion increased.

The changes that researchers, Karine Spiegel and Rachael Leproult, particularly noted were those connected to glucose metabolism. Glucose tolerance alterations in healthy sleep deprived subjects  were found to be similar to patients with type-2 diabetes.

Research by Emmanuel Mignot MD. PHD showed a strong association between sleep deprivation and disruption to metabolic hormones. The hormones of interest in this study were ghrelin and leptin, ghrelin mostly produced by the stomach stimulates appetite, leptin produced by the body’s fat cells decreases appetite and regulates metabolism.Mignot et al  found that subjects who averaged 5 hours sleep showed increased ghrelin secretion, and decreased leptin secretion compared to those subjects who slept for 8 hours.

What has been noted by other researchers, Van Cauter and colleagues, was the difference in the ratio between ghrelin and leptin for subjects who averaged 4 hours sleep. It was found that the ratio of ghrelin to leptin increased by 71 percent in these subjects compared to those who slept for 10 hours. What was even more noticeable was that food preferences were for simple carbohydrates, cookies, cakes and candy, whereas more nutritious foods were not as appealing.

While researchers have established a correlation between sleep deprivation and obesity, it remains just that, for perhaps many other factors have a role in the increase of obesity in today’s society.

What keeps you awake when you should be sleeping? Swallowing a sleeping pill without searching for the cause of your insomnia, may help for a while, but ultimately you will begin to have side effects from the pills. Far better to find the cause, and where possible to either eliminate it, or solve it in some manner.

Inadequate sleep hygiene may be the root of your problem, in order to sort out this problem you need to establish a before sleep routine, and stick with it .

1. Leave all the day’s anxieties in the living room, not the bedroom. Mulling over the day’s problems while attempting to sleep is an exercise in futility, instead of going to sleep, you will be in awake mode for hours after.

2. Exercise a couple of hours before bed, not directly before bed, otherwise you will be in alert mode. Those who have more physical type occupations are more likely to experience sound sleep than those who are sitting in front of computers all day.

3. Do not drink alcohol before bed, even though you may have noticed that you fall asleep quickly after a few drinks, your sleep tends to be fragmented.

4.Smokers tend to have sleep problems often as a result of snoring and sleep apnea.

5. Coffee before bed is very likely to produce restless sleep, that is if you are lucky enough to get to sleep after drinking coffee.

6. Don’t go to bed hungry, make sure you have a light protein carbohydrate combination before bed. The tryptophan in the protein part of your snack, which induces sleep, will not kick in if unaccompanied by carbohydrate. Moderation is the key here, for if you overeat that can also keep you awake, just eat enough to prevent hunger pains keeping you awake.

7. Make sure your environment is as quiet as possible, if you have to sleep near a railroad track you will need ear plugs. If you have a baby in the house you can’t use ear plugs, unfortunately you need to hear them when they cry, there really is not much you can do about this, it’s one of the trials of being a new mother. Playing white noise CDs may help the baby to sleep, that is if it isn’t hungry.

8.Going to bed at the same time every night and getting up at the same time will help establish sound sleep. Erratic sleeping patterns with late nights followed by late morning awakenings upset the circadian rhythms and result in impaired sleep.

9.Excessively hot or cold rooms also interfere with sleep, the temperature needs to be maintained at a constant comfortable one.

10. Fear may prevent sleep, fear of the dark, wild animals, snakes, robbers or whatever can prevent sleep. A couple of doses of Mimulus ( Bach Flower remedy) will solve this problem.

11. If you fear to fall asleep. but have no idea what you are afraid of, then a couple of doses of Aspen (Bach Flower remedy) will solve this problem.

12. If you can’t leave your anxieties in the living room, then take a couple of doses of Agrimony ( Bach Flower Remedy) before bed.

13. If you can’t stop the constant flow of your thoughts, if you constantly mull over the insults and injuries you may have suffered during the day, then a couple of doses of White Chestnut ( Bach Flower remedy) will end the turmoil in your mind, and allow you to sleep.

http://www.sleep-problems-nomore.com/Bach_Flower_Remedies_for_Sleep_Disorders.html