Wenatex Blog | Healthy Sleep for a Better Life

Did you know that you can learn to control your dreams… or that the most common dream is that your partner is cheating? I didn’t until I read this eye-opening (pardon the pun) article this morning.

We know so little about our dreams but this article has taken views from dream experts and collated them into 9 concise and interesting points that you might find very enlightening like I did.

Read the article for yourself at http://www.webmd.com/balance/features/9-things-about-dreams

If you have a view or personal experience on the subject, please let us know, we would love to hear from you.

If you are interested in the subject of healthy sleep and want to learn more, Wenatex conducts free seminars on the subject all over Australia. If you are interested in registering to attend one in your area, go to http://www.wenatex.com.au/seminars_registration.asp

When is it insomnia or is it just a few bad nights’ sleep? How can you tell if you are having a bit of a rough patch or if you have a chronic sleep problem? The answer to this question according to Dr William Kohler, Medical Director of the Florida sleep Institute, is this “Insomnia persists (for more than a couple of nights) and interferes with your functioning”.

Underlying reasons for insomnia include pain, medications, sleep disorders, and poor sleep habits. If you have been experiencing insomnia for several weeks as a result of one of these reasons, you should consult your doctor.

However, if you are just simply experiencing a few bad nights’ sleep, you might be worried about a particular event or deadline. Don’t worry, this will pass once the stress is over.

Read the full article that inspired this post at http://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/living-with-insomnia-11/is-it-insomnia?page=1

If you would like to know more about how to get a better night’s sleep, you should attend a Wenatex ‘Healthy Sleep for a Better Life’ seminar. It is free to attend and held in venues all over Australia. Register your interest to attend at http://www.wenatex.com.au/seminars_registration.asp.

Grandma’s recipe of a warm glass of milk to get you off to sleep isn’t just an old wives’ tale, it is absolutely true. Dairy foods contain tryptophan which is an amino acid which promotes sleep. Other carbohydrate-rich foods such as a few crackers complement dairy foods by increasing the level of tryptophan in the blood. So tonight if you can’t sleep, enjoy some cheese and crackers with a glass of warm milk, that will do the trick!

There are other food related things you can do to help you sleep. These can be found in a great slideshow at Foods that Help or Harm your Sleep.

If you would like to learn more about getting a healthy night’s sleep, Wenatex conducts free healthy sleep seminars all over Australia. Register your interest in attending at http://www.wenatex.com.au/seminars_registration.asp

Sleep is vital for good health, and in our busy lives we sometimes forget just how important it is. On this blog, we rabbit on about all things sleep, but maybe it is time we go back and revisit the basics.

I found a great article that covers what happens during sleep and looks at all the different stages of sleep without all the scientific mumbo jumbo. Check out the article at http://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/excessive-sleepiness-10/sleep-101. Essentially, you need to get all stages of sleep to get a good night’s sleep and most adults need 7 to 8 hours sleep per night. When you are deprived of sleep there can be impacts on your health, for example, impaired memory, depression, decreased immune response, fatigue, and increased pain are just of few of the potential consequences.

So if you are sleeping poorly, or you would like to find out more about getting a better, healthier night’s sleep, Wenatex runs free ‘Healthy Sleep for a Better Life’ seminars all over Australia. To find one at a location near you, you can register online at http://www.wenatex.com.au/seminars_registration.asp

Here is the proof - Wenatex has always argued that turning off the bedside lamp will help you get a better sleep. Now science has taken this thinking a step further and a new study links leaving the light on with depression.

I read an article this morning that discussed a recent study which exposed hamsters to artificial light and found that after four weeks, they were disinterested in things that they previously enjoyed, when compared with a control group.

However, the positive that came out of the study is that these effects can be reversed by simply turning the light off!

To read the article from New York Daily News which inspired this blog entry, go to http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/health/dim-lighting-sleep-linked-depression-article-1.1122322

To learn more about how to get a healthy night’s sleep, you should consider attending a free Wenatex ‘Healthy Sleep for a Better Life’ seminar. They are held all over Australia. To register your interest, go to http://www.wenatex.com.au/seminars_registration.asp

Do you wake in the middle of the night? In an article I read recently, new research has highlighted that what you might be experiencing is a throwback to your ancestors prior to the introduction of artificial light.

In olden times, people slept in two four hour blocks, then rested and relaxed for a period in between. This may have “played an important part in the human capacity to regulate stress naturally”, says Sleep psychologist Gregg Jacobs. He also suggested that in today’s modern world, we don’t get much time to rest and relax and he believes that “it’s not a coincidence that the number of people who report anxiety, stress, depression, alcoholism and drug abuse has gone up.”

So next time you are wake up in the middle of the night, don’t stress, take the time to just rest and relax. Lie back and think of your ancestors, you will get back to sleep in no time.

If you would like to read the full article that was the inspiration for this blog entry, it appeared on BBC News Online, go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16964783

Please let me know your thoughts and experiences.

If you would like to learn more about how to get a healthy night’s sleep, Wenatex conducts free seminars all over Australia on the subject. You can register your interest in attending a free seminar near you at http://www.wenatex.com.au/seminars_registration.asp

An article I read recently appeared in Brisbane’s Courier Mail. It discussed new research conducted by the Jackson Hole Centre for Preventive Medicine in the USA which found that adults taking between 18 and 132 sleeping tablet doses per year were 4.6 times more likely to die early. What a scary statistic! They even ruled out the factor that people taking the pills may have other health problems, by matching with a control group of patients of similar ages, gender, lifestyle and health. The test group still had a higher mortality rate. The results of this research provide a clear picture for those who experience poor sleep. Our advice - minimise your use of sleeping tablets and address the underlying problem affecting your sleep.

You can read the article at http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/breaking-news/sleeping-tablets-linked-to-early-death-us-study-finds/story-e6freonf-1226284428246

If you have problems sleeping and you want to learn more about getting a healthy night’s sleep, you should consider attending a Wenatex “Healthy Sleep for a Better Life” seminar. They are free to attend and are conducted in venues all around Australia. To register your interest, fill in the form at http://www.wenatex.com.au/seminars_registration.asp

An article I read this morning online from Reuters really caught my attention. The article talked about the decline in kids’ sleep and focused on three key points:

1. All the way back to the 1800’s, scientists’ recommendations on how long kids should sleep for has always been higher than the actual amount of sleep reported.
2. Doctors’ and scientists’ recommendations for the amount of time kids should sleep have also declined.
3. The actual amount of sleep that kids are getting is also declining. It has fallen by 73 minutes over the last century.

Our modern 24 hour society has meant changing societal expectations.Societal pressures on experts have meant their recommendations for sleep time has decreased. Combine this with the societal pressures on parents which has meant that kids are getting less sleep. Dr David Gozal, expert in child sleep problems, from the University of Chicago sums it up nicely and blames our shorter nights on the accelerated pace of modern society with its 24-7 demands on parents and kids alike.

Does anyone else think that this is a concern? What does this mean for the future of our children? What about their future health? If you are a parent, this article will no doubt make you consider how your kids are sleeping.

At Wenatex, our advice to parents is put your kids to bed early and maintain a regular sleep routine. We agree with the National Institutes of Health in the USA, quoted in the article, for the current recommendations on sleep time. They state that “newborns should get 16 to 18 hours a day. Children fall in between, with preschoolers needing 11 to 12 hours of slumber and older kids and adolescents 10 hours.

Read the full article at http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/13/us-sleep-science-idUSTRE81C0IS20120213 and let us know what you think.

If you are interested in finding out more about how to get a better night’s sleep, come along to a free Wenatex seminar on the subject. We offer seminars all over Australia. You can register your interest at http://www.wenatex.com.au/seminars_registration.asp

An article in the Wall Street Journal caught my eye this morning. It discussed how scientists from the University of Pennsylvania are researching biomarkers, which are characteristics or substances in the body, to measure sleepiness.

Initially, when reading the article, I was excited about the possibilities of this research, for example, looking at sleepiness as a measure for the potential risk of diseases such as diabetes. Measuring people’s levels of sleepiness has the potential to improve overall health.

However, I can see a more negative potential for this research. It is one thing to measure how “sleepy” a person is but it is another to measure the ability of someone to cope with it. Dr Dinges raises the debate when he states “The ability to pinpoint who handles sleep loss poorly brings up ethical issues. For example, for positions that involve a lot of travel or long hours, what companies want to screen candidates for their natural ability to weather sleep loss?” Take an example, say you are applying for a job. Sleeping six hours per night is normal for you. As part of the interview process, you are required to go through a test which measures how “sleepy” you are, and based on the results of the test, you fail to get the job. In the example, the test failed to measure how well you cope with your level of sleepiness.

On the flipside, some companies appear to be using this technology in a positive way. The company in Melbourne that was raised in the article has developed special eyeglasses that can give truckdrivers a “sleepiness” score in real time.

I think in the end that Dr Shaw, also from the University of Pennsylvania, has the final say. He believes that there is no one single biomarker that can measure sleepiness. He states in the article that “we are going to need a panel of markers, each of which is going to be imprecise on its own.”

We can only wait and see further outcomes from this research.

You can read the article at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204369404577206952841644944.html?mod=googlenews_wsj. Please let me know what you think.

If you are one of those people who doesn’t need to measure, you know you are not getting enough sleep, Wenatex holds free seminars all over Australia educating people on how to get a better night’s sleep. If you are interested, you can register your interest at http://www.wenatex.com.au/seminars_registration.asp.

Every now and then, Catalyst on ABC TV features an excellent story on a sleep related subject. One of the most important stories featured on Catalyst looked at what happens to us when the “body clock”, also referred to as “circadian rhythms” is “out of sync”. Circadian rhythms make up your internal timekeeper linking your body to time, for example, daily, weekly, monthly etc.

If you are interested in seeing the video, go to the ABC Catalyst Story Archive at http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/2351893.htm

Let us know what you think.

If you would like to find out more about the body clock or more about healthy sleep in general, Wenatex conducts free seminars all over Australia. If you are interested in finding out about a seminar close to you, you can register your interest at http://www.wenatex.com.au/seminars_registration.asp.