Wenatex Blog | Healthy Sleep for a Better Life

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

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

Do you feel on some days that everyone and everything is irritating? Next time it happens to you, you should step back and consider how you have been sleeping. An article that I read recently from the Body Odd on msnbc.com in the USA talked about some research conducted in 2011 by David Mastin, Associate Professor at the University of Arkansas. It is believed that his research is the first to explore how people actually think when they are sleepy. It showed that sleepy people consider events and that when they go badly, they blame others and sometimes even take revenge. He describes this thinking as “counterfactual”.

Can you reflect on a time when you were feeling agitated with the whole world? Can you attribute it to a lack of sleep? I would love to hear your thoughts.

Read the article that inspired this blog entry at http://bodyodd.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/07/19/7106894-sleepy-people-blame-others-for-everything

Wenatex conducts free seminars on how to get a better night’s sleep all over Australia. If you are interested in finding out more, 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.

There are some foods that will help you sleep, for example, dairy contains tryptophan which aids sleep. However, there are some foods (and drinks) that you should avoid close to bedtime in order to get a good night’s sleep. WebMD has produced a great slideshow that gives you some really good hints of what to have and what to avoid before bed. View the sideshow at http://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/slideshow-sleep-foods?ecd=wnl_slw_052611

What tips do you have to make you sleep well? Please share them, I would love to hear from you.

If you would like to find out more about how to get a healthy night’s sleep, Wenatex runs free seminars on the subject all around Australia. To register your interest in attending an event local to you, please fill in the form at http://www.wenatex.com.au/seminars_registration.asp

Check out this article I read recently http://www.kansascity.com/2011/03/14/2725490/texting-tweets-rob-us-of-sleep.html. It comes from the USA, but it is very relevant to Australia as well. The article talks about social networking, computer gaming, web surfing, texting, etc, and how when we are on these late at night, they are robbing us of sleep. It also talks about the problem getting worse and how adolescents between the ages of 13 and 18 are the worst affected. These are all stimulants and The Hackensack University Medical Center representative stated “The stimulation makes it much harder to fall asleep.”

So the bottom line is that we should create a sleep routine which doesn’t have to completely eliminate but rather limits our computer and phone time, particularly late at night. Let me know what you think.

Wenatex conducts free healthy sleep seminars all over Australia. They can give you good tips on how to create a good sleep routine. If you want to find out more, you should register your interest in attending at http://www.wenatex.com.au/seminars_registration.asp.

Do you answer yes to any of the following?

• Do you have difficulty falling asleep?
• Do you wake up often during the night and have trouble going back to sleep?
• Do you wake up too early in the morning?
• Do you feel tired upon waking?

If you answered yes to one or more of these questions, the chances are you have insomnia and you might want to read this inciteful article that I read today. http://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/guide/insomnia-symptoms-and-causes?page=2 The article discusses the types, causes symptoms and treatments for this sometimes debilitating disorder. It also gives some great tips as to how to overcome insomnia.

If you wish to learn more tips about how to get a good night’s sleep, Wenatex conducts free healthy sleep seminars all over Australia. If you are interested, please check it out and register at http://www.wenatex.com.au/seminars_registration.asp.

 

When you had a tough decision to make, did your parents ever tell you just to sleep on it and the answer will come to you? Well, it appears that they instinctively knew what some recent research has uncovered, that letting a problem rest will help you to differentiate between the vital and the irrelevant aspects of the problem and help you make a better decision.

Read the article at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1325435/Got-tough-decision-make-Just-sleep-it.html and let me know your thoughts.