Wenatex Blog | Healthy Sleep for a Better Life

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

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.

This fantastic article http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/magazine/mag-17Sleep-t.html?_r=2 which appeared on the New York Times website, talks about some fantastic new research on restriction of sleep over a period of time and the effects (conscious or otherwise) on its subjects.

The key finding from the research - “…after just a few days, the four- and six-hour group reported that, yes, they were slightly sleepy. But they insisted they had adjusted to their new state. Even 14 days into the study, they said sleepiness was not affecting them. In fact, their performance had tanked. In other words, the sleep-deprived among us are lousy judges of our own sleep needs. We are not nearly as sharp as we think we are.”

What this means is that not only are we depriving ourselves of sleep, but we are deceiving ourselves as well. We think we are fine but we are unaware that our sleep deprivation is affecting us or by how much.

Think about it and let me know your thoughts.

If you would like to get some tips on how to get a better night’s sleep, you should consider attending a free Wenatex “Healthy Sleep for a Better Life” seminar. They are free to attend and conducted all over Australia. To register your interest, go to http://www.wenatex.com.au/seminars_registration.asp

Some Australian researchers have put this myth to bed (pardon the pun) by conducting a study on 7,000 men and women aged between 73 and 78. The research showed that sleep disorders are not a natural part of the ageing process and that problems sleeping could be a sign of an underlying health condition.

Read the article and video at http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/11/18/3069738.htm and let me know your thoughts.