Stages of sleep: REM sleep and non-REM sleep stages
Here is some information I got from an American online Help Guide – which talks about REM and Non REM sleep. Hopefully by understanding types of sleep it will help you understand your insomnia, its causes and what you can do to help cure your insomnia.
All sleep is not created equal. Sleep unfolds in a series of recurring sleep stages that are very different from one another in terms of what’s happening beneath the surface. From deep sleep to dreaming sleep, they are all vital for your body and mind. Each stage of sleep plays a different part in preparing you for the day ahead.
There are two main types of sleep:
• Non-REM (NREM) sleep consists of four stages of sleep, each deeper than the last.
• REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep is when you do most active dreaming. Your eyes actually move back and forth during this stage, which is why it is called Rapid
Eye Movement sleep.
The Stages of Sleep
Non-REM sleep
Stage 1 (Transition to sleep) – Stage 1 lasts about five minutes. Eyes move slowly under the eyelids, muscle activity slows down, and you are easily awakened.
Stage 2 (Light sleep) – This is the first stage of true sleep, lasting from 10 to 25 minutes. Eye movement stops, heart rate slows, and body temperature decreases.
Stage 3 (Deep sleep) – You’re difficult to awaken, and if you are awakened, you do not adjust immediately and often feel groggy and disoriented for several minutes.
Stage 4 (More intense deep sleep) – The deepest stage of sleep. Brain waves are extremely slow. Blood flow is directed away from the brain and towards the muscles, restoring physical energy.
REM sleep
REM sleep (Dream sleep) – About 70 to 90 minutes after falling asleep, you enter REM sleep, where dreaming occurs. Eyes move rapidly. Breathing is shallow. Heart rate and blood pressure increase. Arm and leg muscles are paralyzed.
If you are an insomniac you rarely get long periods of deep sleep. Although by dozing and drifting in and out of light sleep you can often be susceptible to dreaming.
By treating the cause of your insomnia we can hopefully get you to get back into the routine of moving through the 4 stages of non REM sleep and REM sleep . So here is a bit more information about the architecture of sleep.
The sleep cycle: Understanding the architecture of sleep
You may think that once you go to bed, you soon fall into a deep sleep that lasts for most of the night, progressing back into light sleep in the morning when it’s time to wake up. In reality, the sleep cycle is a lot more complicated.
When you chart the sleep stages over the course of the night, the result looks like a city skyline—which is why it is called "sleep architecture"
During the night, your sleep follows a predictable pattern, moving back and forth between deep restorative sleep (deep sleep) and more alert stages and dreaming (REM sleep). Together, the stages of REM and non-REM sleep form a complete sleep cycle that repeats until you wake up.
The amount of time you spend in each stage of sleep changes as the night progresses. For example, most deep sleep occurs in the first half of the night. Later in the night, your REM sleep stages become longer, alternating with light Stage 2 sleep.
This is why if you are sensitive to waking up in the middle of the night, it is probably in the early morning hours, not immediately after going to bed.
Dan Kennedy has written a free ebook on how to Cure Your Insomnia. To download it visit www.cure-your-insomnia.com
Monday, 15 November 2010
Can switching to Soy Milk help cure insomnia?
Can switching to Soy Milk help cure insomnia?
Thank you to Stella Katsipoutis for suppyling this article on the benefits of Soy milk in helping to provide relief from insomnia…
Replacing whole milk with a soy version in dessert recipes, cereal and smoothies could help you sleep better. A recent study conducted by the Universidade Federal de Sao Paolo in Brazil has shown that isoflavones, a substance found in soy that is similar to estrogen, could help reduce the symptoms of insomnia in postmenopausal women.
Researchers studied the effects of soy on sleep patterns by randomly administering either 80 milligrams of isoflavones or a placebo to 38 postmenopausal women over a period of four months. Each participant’s sleep cycle, movements and vital signs were observed overnight throughout duration of the experiment. Questionnaires that allowed the researchers to gauge the intensity of insomnia experienced by each subject were also administered.
Test results revealed that the sleep efficiency of women who received isoflavones increased from 77.9% at the beginning of the study to 83.9%, while the sleep efficiency of women who received a placebo only increased from 77.6% to 81.2%. The percentage of participants in the isoflavone group experiencing “moderate or intense” insomnia also decreased from 89.5% at the beginning of the study to 36.9% at the end of the study, whereas the percentage in the placebo group only decreased from 94.7% to 63.2%.
Because the study focused on a small population sample—and because other health factors such as snoring and sleep apnea affected the level of sleep disturbance experienced by several participants—researchers suggested that isoflavones may not be as effective in alleviating postmenopausal insomnia for all women. However, they concluded that soy treatment is still an option that could prove to be beneficial for many women who are suffering from sleeplessness.
Stella Katsipoutis is a freelance writer who has written for Redbook, Fitness, Global Rhythm, and Bridal Guide magazines. She has also previously worked on TheNest.com and WeddingChannel.com, published by The Knot Inc. Her writing has covered a variety of topics, including health, nutrition, music, travel and weddings.
Dan Kennedy has written a free ebook on how to Cure Your Insomnia. To download it visit www.cure-your-insomnia.com
Thank you to Stella Katsipoutis for suppyling this article on the benefits of Soy milk in helping to provide relief from insomnia…
Replacing whole milk with a soy version in dessert recipes, cereal and smoothies could help you sleep better. A recent study conducted by the Universidade Federal de Sao Paolo in Brazil has shown that isoflavones, a substance found in soy that is similar to estrogen, could help reduce the symptoms of insomnia in postmenopausal women.
Researchers studied the effects of soy on sleep patterns by randomly administering either 80 milligrams of isoflavones or a placebo to 38 postmenopausal women over a period of four months. Each participant’s sleep cycle, movements and vital signs were observed overnight throughout duration of the experiment. Questionnaires that allowed the researchers to gauge the intensity of insomnia experienced by each subject were also administered.
Test results revealed that the sleep efficiency of women who received isoflavones increased from 77.9% at the beginning of the study to 83.9%, while the sleep efficiency of women who received a placebo only increased from 77.6% to 81.2%. The percentage of participants in the isoflavone group experiencing “moderate or intense” insomnia also decreased from 89.5% at the beginning of the study to 36.9% at the end of the study, whereas the percentage in the placebo group only decreased from 94.7% to 63.2%.
Because the study focused on a small population sample—and because other health factors such as snoring and sleep apnea affected the level of sleep disturbance experienced by several participants—researchers suggested that isoflavones may not be as effective in alleviating postmenopausal insomnia for all women. However, they concluded that soy treatment is still an option that could prove to be beneficial for many women who are suffering from sleeplessness.
Stella Katsipoutis is a freelance writer who has written for Redbook, Fitness, Global Rhythm, and Bridal Guide magazines. She has also previously worked on TheNest.com and WeddingChannel.com, published by The Knot Inc. Her writing has covered a variety of topics, including health, nutrition, music, travel and weddings.
Dan Kennedy has written a free ebook on how to Cure Your Insomnia. To download it visit www.cure-your-insomnia.com
Sleep preparation
Preparing yourself for sleep – some quick reminders
I thought it would be useful to remind you of a few simple things that it might be worth trying to hopefully give yourself some releief from insomnia. A number of the things have been discussed in previous blogs in more detail, but sometimes it’s useful to look back and review some of the information.
There are a few different techniques here or things that you can alter which you never know might just provide that elusive cure for insomnia or help some relief for your sleep depravation.
Clear your mind. Do not watch TV, or read a book or go on the internet right before sleeping. Your brain can feel overwhelmed with all the information it has just heard that it will all linger on for a few more hrs and thus deprive you of sleeping right away. A clear mind can fall asleep quite easier.
Breathing technique. Lay down on your back, comfortably, and breathe in and out, slowly, but deeply. Do this over and over again. This breathing ritual will help relax you and cleanse your being, thus making it ripe for a good night of sleep.
Visualization. Close your eyes, and imagine the most beautiful, and peaceful place you know. Picture yourself there, and submerge yourself into the amazing feeling it's giving you. This will give you something relaxing and soothing to focus on, which will help calm you down and make you ready to fall asleep.
Sleep at regular hours. If you're awake until 3am and wake up in the afternoon, then you'll never overcome this problem. You need a normal sleeping schedule, which is waking up early in the morning, and going to bed not too late into the evening. Try it, and you'll notice immediate improvement.
Get rid of any addictions. The thing with addictions, is that they are constantly bugging you, and this even translates to the time when you're supposed to sleep. Therefore, if you have a caffeine, smoking, alcohol, or drug addiction, your best bet is to overcome the addiction first (which will help you not only for insomnia but for a lot more reasons) and then tackle your insomnia problem, which should already be much better with the loss of the addiction problem.
Listen to relaxing music. Music can guide our entire being into its tempo and mood. Same with relaxation music, and it can greatly help you feel at ease and stress free, which will help you fall asleep. You can also take it a step further and use self hypnosis or subliminal courses, which will help guide you mentally to overcome your insomnia, while also providing a relaxing music.
I particularly found that the listening to chilled out music helped me as one of the things that helped me gains some insomnia relief. I can particularly recommend a band called Lemon Jelly who are particularly chilled our even some of the Ibiza Chill out stuff - you can find from café del Mar on Amazon.
Dan Kennedy has written a free ebook on how to Cure Your Insomnia. To download it visit www.cure-your-insomnia.com
I thought it would be useful to remind you of a few simple things that it might be worth trying to hopefully give yourself some releief from insomnia. A number of the things have been discussed in previous blogs in more detail, but sometimes it’s useful to look back and review some of the information.
There are a few different techniques here or things that you can alter which you never know might just provide that elusive cure for insomnia or help some relief for your sleep depravation.
Clear your mind. Do not watch TV, or read a book or go on the internet right before sleeping. Your brain can feel overwhelmed with all the information it has just heard that it will all linger on for a few more hrs and thus deprive you of sleeping right away. A clear mind can fall asleep quite easier.
Breathing technique. Lay down on your back, comfortably, and breathe in and out, slowly, but deeply. Do this over and over again. This breathing ritual will help relax you and cleanse your being, thus making it ripe for a good night of sleep.
Visualization. Close your eyes, and imagine the most beautiful, and peaceful place you know. Picture yourself there, and submerge yourself into the amazing feeling it's giving you. This will give you something relaxing and soothing to focus on, which will help calm you down and make you ready to fall asleep.
Sleep at regular hours. If you're awake until 3am and wake up in the afternoon, then you'll never overcome this problem. You need a normal sleeping schedule, which is waking up early in the morning, and going to bed not too late into the evening. Try it, and you'll notice immediate improvement.
Get rid of any addictions. The thing with addictions, is that they are constantly bugging you, and this even translates to the time when you're supposed to sleep. Therefore, if you have a caffeine, smoking, alcohol, or drug addiction, your best bet is to overcome the addiction first (which will help you not only for insomnia but for a lot more reasons) and then tackle your insomnia problem, which should already be much better with the loss of the addiction problem.
Listen to relaxing music. Music can guide our entire being into its tempo and mood. Same with relaxation music, and it can greatly help you feel at ease and stress free, which will help you fall asleep. You can also take it a step further and use self hypnosis or subliminal courses, which will help guide you mentally to overcome your insomnia, while also providing a relaxing music.
I particularly found that the listening to chilled out music helped me as one of the things that helped me gains some insomnia relief. I can particularly recommend a band called Lemon Jelly who are particularly chilled our even some of the Ibiza Chill out stuff - you can find from café del Mar on Amazon.
Dan Kennedy has written a free ebook on how to Cure Your Insomnia. To download it visit www.cure-your-insomnia.com
Busting the insomnia myths
Busting the myths.
This week I thought I’d share with you some information I’ve taken from The National Institute of Health’s Guide to Healthy Sleep.
It takes 4 key myths about Sleep and tells you the truth about them. Here goes…
Myths and Facts about Sleep
Myth 1: Getting just 1 hour less sleep per night won’t effect your daytime functioning. You may not be noticeably sleepy during the day. But even slightly less sleep can affect your ability to think properly and respond quickly, and compromise your cardiovascular health, energy balance, and ability to fight infections.
Myth 2: Your body adjusts quickly to different sleep schedules. Most people can reset their biological clock, but only by appropriately timed cues—and even then, by 1–2 hours per day at best. Consequently, it can take more than a week to adjust after traveling across several time zones or switching to the night shift.
Myth 3: Extra sleep at night can cure you of problems with excessive daytime fatigue. Not only is the quantity of sleep important but also the quality of sleep. Some people sleep 8 or 9 hours a night but don’t feel well rested when they wake up because the quality of their sleep is poor.
Myth 4: You can make up for lost sleep during the week by sleeping more on the weekends. Although this sleeping pattern will help relieve part of a sleep debt, it will not completely make up for the lack of sleep. Furthermore, sleeping later on the weekends can affect your biological clock so that it is much harder to go to sleep at the right time on Sunday nights and get up early on Monday mornings.
Makes you think doesn’t it.
Dan Kennedy has written a free ebook on how to Cure Your Insomnia. To download it visit www.cure-your-insomnia.com
This week I thought I’d share with you some information I’ve taken from The National Institute of Health’s Guide to Healthy Sleep.
It takes 4 key myths about Sleep and tells you the truth about them. Here goes…
Myths and Facts about Sleep
Myth 1: Getting just 1 hour less sleep per night won’t effect your daytime functioning. You may not be noticeably sleepy during the day. But even slightly less sleep can affect your ability to think properly and respond quickly, and compromise your cardiovascular health, energy balance, and ability to fight infections.
Myth 2: Your body adjusts quickly to different sleep schedules. Most people can reset their biological clock, but only by appropriately timed cues—and even then, by 1–2 hours per day at best. Consequently, it can take more than a week to adjust after traveling across several time zones or switching to the night shift.
Myth 3: Extra sleep at night can cure you of problems with excessive daytime fatigue. Not only is the quantity of sleep important but also the quality of sleep. Some people sleep 8 or 9 hours a night but don’t feel well rested when they wake up because the quality of their sleep is poor.
Myth 4: You can make up for lost sleep during the week by sleeping more on the weekends. Although this sleeping pattern will help relieve part of a sleep debt, it will not completely make up for the lack of sleep. Furthermore, sleeping later on the weekends can affect your biological clock so that it is much harder to go to sleep at the right time on Sunday nights and get up early on Monday mornings.
Makes you think doesn’t it.
Dan Kennedy has written a free ebook on how to Cure Your Insomnia. To download it visit www.cure-your-insomnia.com
Sleep problems associated with the menopause
Sleep problems associated with the menopause.
Many women going through the menopause often experience insomnia, an inability to fall asleep or stay asleep at night. This is a normal side effect of the menopause and is usually caused by symptoms of the menopause, such as hot flushes.
I am not sleeping well at night. Do I have insomnia?
Symptoms of insomnia can include one or more of the following:
• Difficulty falling asleep
• Waking up frequently during the night, with difficulty returning to sleep
• Waking up too early in the morning
• Non-refreshing sleep (feeling tired upon waking and throughout the day)
Will drinking alcohol or warm milk help me to fall asleep?
Alcohol may help you relax and fall asleep, but it should not be used as a sleep aid because it does not induce a natural form of sleep, and it has a rebound effect. It can disturb your sleep later and can cause you to awaken in the middle of the night.
Milk contains a substance called tryptophan. The body uses tryptophan to make serotonin, a chemical in the brain. Serotonin helps control sleep patterns, appetite, pain, and other functions. Milk does not contain enough tryptophan to change sleep patterns, but drinking a glass of milk before bed may help you relax.
How is insomnia treated?
There are many steps you can take to get yourself sleeping soundly through the night.
Here are some tips:
• Do not nap during the day
• Exercise daily. However, be sure to avoid vigorous exercise from three hours before bedtime
• Avoid caffeine, alcohol and nicotine throughout the entire day
• Keep your bedroom cool to prevent night sweats
• Do not go to bed until you are tired
• Have a warm bath or shower at bedtime
• Do not watch television, eat or read in bed. Do these activities in another room until you feel sleepy
• Follow the same bedtime routine each night
• Avoid taking sleeping pills
When lifestyle changes such as these fail to cure insomnia, talk to your doctor. There may be other options that can help. The doctor may be able to prescribe temporary medicine to help you sleep and get you sleeping regularly. In addition, your doctor can rule out other conditions that may be causing your sleep problem.
For example, if depression is causing your sleep problems, your doctor may prescribe an antidepressant.
If your insomnia is a result of menopausal symptoms, you may also want to talk to your doctor about taking hormone replacement therapy for a short period of time. HRT may help alleviate symptoms that are causing your sleep problem.
Dan Kennedy has written a free ebook on how to Cure Your Insomnia. To download it visit www.cure-your-insomnia.com
Many women going through the menopause often experience insomnia, an inability to fall asleep or stay asleep at night. This is a normal side effect of the menopause and is usually caused by symptoms of the menopause, such as hot flushes.
I am not sleeping well at night. Do I have insomnia?
Symptoms of insomnia can include one or more of the following:
• Difficulty falling asleep
• Waking up frequently during the night, with difficulty returning to sleep
• Waking up too early in the morning
• Non-refreshing sleep (feeling tired upon waking and throughout the day)
Will drinking alcohol or warm milk help me to fall asleep?
Alcohol may help you relax and fall asleep, but it should not be used as a sleep aid because it does not induce a natural form of sleep, and it has a rebound effect. It can disturb your sleep later and can cause you to awaken in the middle of the night.
Milk contains a substance called tryptophan. The body uses tryptophan to make serotonin, a chemical in the brain. Serotonin helps control sleep patterns, appetite, pain, and other functions. Milk does not contain enough tryptophan to change sleep patterns, but drinking a glass of milk before bed may help you relax.
How is insomnia treated?
There are many steps you can take to get yourself sleeping soundly through the night.
Here are some tips:
• Do not nap during the day
• Exercise daily. However, be sure to avoid vigorous exercise from three hours before bedtime
• Avoid caffeine, alcohol and nicotine throughout the entire day
• Keep your bedroom cool to prevent night sweats
• Do not go to bed until you are tired
• Have a warm bath or shower at bedtime
• Do not watch television, eat or read in bed. Do these activities in another room until you feel sleepy
• Follow the same bedtime routine each night
• Avoid taking sleeping pills
When lifestyle changes such as these fail to cure insomnia, talk to your doctor. There may be other options that can help. The doctor may be able to prescribe temporary medicine to help you sleep and get you sleeping regularly. In addition, your doctor can rule out other conditions that may be causing your sleep problem.
For example, if depression is causing your sleep problems, your doctor may prescribe an antidepressant.
If your insomnia is a result of menopausal symptoms, you may also want to talk to your doctor about taking hormone replacement therapy for a short period of time. HRT may help alleviate symptoms that are causing your sleep problem.
Dan Kennedy has written a free ebook on how to Cure Your Insomnia. To download it visit www.cure-your-insomnia.com
Insomnia in older people
Insomnia in older people
The article below is from Sleepdex an online resource which has lots of information about sleep, but as insomnia appears to get worse with age – there is some quite interesting stuff as to possible causes. If you are over 60 and suffering from insomnia, then I’m sure you will find it an interesting read.
Insomnia is a common complaint in older adults. Chronic sleep difficulties affect older people more often than younger adults. The homoeostatic regulation of sleep changes as we age. Older adults typically have shallower sleep, and fragmentation is more common. Doctors prescribe sleeping aids to the elderly much more often than for young adults or kids.
Factors that contribute to insomnia in seniors may include medical illnesses and medication use, both of which are more common in older adults. Older people also have too little physical activity and reduced exposure to bright light.
There is also a fundamental age-related alteration in the neurobiology of circadian
rhythms, although scientists haven’t figured it all out.
Older people, even healthy ones, often complain about decreased sleep quality, and polysomnographic measurements of physiological indicators have confirmed the reality of these claims. Deep sleep, as a percentage of total sleep, decreases as people age, along with a decrease in growth hormone levels. During late life, REM sleep in a typical night declines about 10 minutes per decade. Wake time during the nocturnal period, a measure of sleep fragmentation, increases about 30 minutes per decade.
There’s also a chicken-and-egg question of the relationship between declining sleep quality and development of chronic illness in older adults. Does low quality sleep contribute to other physical problems or do illnesses cause the low quality sleep?
It can be unclear for any individual, and the two factors are intertwined in most people.
It is worth pointing out the distinction between insomnia and disturbed sleep. Insomnia refers to a subjective inability to fall or stay asleep, and chronic insomnia is due to circadian dysrhythmia, homeostatic dysregulation and hyperarousal.
A person can have insomnia but not disturbed sleep. When the person finally gets to sleep, he or she can sleep soundly. Young adults more typically have trouble falling asleep while old people have trouble staying asleep.
Insomnia, by this classification, often results in increased risk of depression, overall decreased productivity at work and in daytimes activities. Disturbed sleep results in symptoms like those of sleep deprivation.
As people get older, they are more apt to experience secondary insomnia due to medical conditions, and to experience sleep disorders such as apnea, restless leg syndrome, and circadian rhythm disorder. Primary insomnia and insomnia due to psychiatric problems do not increase with age.
Some common poor sleep habits are more prevalent in elderly populations – staying in bed all night even when not sleeping (leading to poor sleep efficiency) and daytime napping. This can be due to retirement or boredom. Good sleep practices can help.
Sleep medication use in the elderly differs from that in younger people only in the longer retention time in the body. A drug's half-life – the time it takes for the body to eliminate half the drug from the bloodstream – is higher in the elderly.
This means sleep inertia due to residual sleeping pills is more likely in older people.
In general, older people are more prone to movement during sleep and sedative drugs increase the risk of falls. This is why doctors take into account a patient's age when selecting a sleeping aid. Chloral hydrate is also used in the elderly more often than in young people.
WHAT SCIENTISTS KNOW
There’s a difference in the sexes. Men lose more of the deep sleep (stages 3 and 4) than women. Daytime sleepiness is more frequent in older men than in older women.
Young and middle-aged adults typically complain of difficulty falling asleep, seniors more often experience nocturnal awakening, early morning awakenings, and non-refreshing sleep.
Some of the sleep hygiene practices recommended for insomniacs are often ignored by older people. Retired people without the regular schedule of a job are more likely to engage in daytime napping, irregular arising time, and increased time in bed compared to employed people. These practices are not conducive to trying to beat insomnia.
Insomnia affects a third of older Americans. Restless leg syndrome and sleep-disordered breathing/apnea are also more common in older people. Sleep-disordered breathing is particularly of interest because there is evidence that connects it will dementia and cognitive deficits in the elderly.
It used to be believed that the human circadian clock had a period of about 25.25 hours and that this period declined as people got older. This explained why teenagers had trouble waking up in the morning while seniors get sleepy early in the evening. However, circadian rhythm amplitude sometime stays strong in very healthy older people. Now scientists think that the intrinsic period of endogenous human circadian pacemaker is not significantly different between health old and young adults and is much closer to 24 hours. Deterioration in the suprachiasmatic nucleus may represent a pathologic rather than a normal change. Another view is that older people tend to have a narrower window in the circadian cycle to get to sleep. They are literally more set in their ways. Young people can go to bed at a different time each night and move their sleep times around much more flexibility.
Older people spend more time in bed than younger ones, but nighttime sleep is typically shallow and fragmented. Scientific measurements confirm subjective reports of decline in sleep quality with age in otherwise healthy older people. Deep sleep decreased from 18.9% during young adulthood (ages 16 to 25) to 3.4% in midlife (36 to 50). The decrease in slow-wave sleep was accompanied by decreases in growth hormone levels.
During late life, REM sleep declines gradually by about 10 minutes per decade. Sleep fragmentation, as measured by wake time, increases by 30 minutes per decade during late life.
THERMOREGULATION AND THE ELDERLY
Dutch scientists have found that elderly bodies are less capable of thermoregulation than younger ones, and give the effect of skin temperature on the ability to fall asleep and stay asleep, this may explain increased insomnia rates in seniors. (More on thermoregulation and sleep.)
The prevailing hypothesis in sleep models is the two-process model, in which sleep is a affected by circadian and homeostatic processes . The decline in sleep quality that goes along with getting old is thought to be due to alterations in both processes. Researchers at Cornell's Laboratory of Human Chronobiology found that the homeostatic process starts to go off-kilter before the circadian process as we age.
They found this by studying people of different ages.
They also found that while young adults sleep longer than middle-aged and older adults, daytime napping is essentially unchanged as we age, in the absense of other restrictions (such as retirement.)
RESEARCH
When the U.S. government started the National Insitute on Aging in the 1970s, sleep was a low priority in the medical funding community. In the past few decades the importance of sleep has been recognized, both as an important part of quality of life and as a contributor to and symptom of diseases.
The most recent National Sleep Disorders Research Plan (2003) concedes that most of the research on sleep is conducted on young adults and that there has not been enough scientific exploration of how age affects sleep. There isn’t widespread agreement on what is “normal” age-related changes in sleep patterns and therefore no going agreement on whether any medical treatment is desirable.
Dan Kennedy has written a free ebook on how to Cure Your Insomnia. To download it visit www.cure-your-insomnia.com
The article below is from Sleepdex an online resource which has lots of information about sleep, but as insomnia appears to get worse with age – there is some quite interesting stuff as to possible causes. If you are over 60 and suffering from insomnia, then I’m sure you will find it an interesting read.
Insomnia is a common complaint in older adults. Chronic sleep difficulties affect older people more often than younger adults. The homoeostatic regulation of sleep changes as we age. Older adults typically have shallower sleep, and fragmentation is more common. Doctors prescribe sleeping aids to the elderly much more often than for young adults or kids.
Factors that contribute to insomnia in seniors may include medical illnesses and medication use, both of which are more common in older adults. Older people also have too little physical activity and reduced exposure to bright light.
There is also a fundamental age-related alteration in the neurobiology of circadian
rhythms, although scientists haven’t figured it all out.
Older people, even healthy ones, often complain about decreased sleep quality, and polysomnographic measurements of physiological indicators have confirmed the reality of these claims. Deep sleep, as a percentage of total sleep, decreases as people age, along with a decrease in growth hormone levels. During late life, REM sleep in a typical night declines about 10 minutes per decade. Wake time during the nocturnal period, a measure of sleep fragmentation, increases about 30 minutes per decade.
There’s also a chicken-and-egg question of the relationship between declining sleep quality and development of chronic illness in older adults. Does low quality sleep contribute to other physical problems or do illnesses cause the low quality sleep?
It can be unclear for any individual, and the two factors are intertwined in most people.
It is worth pointing out the distinction between insomnia and disturbed sleep. Insomnia refers to a subjective inability to fall or stay asleep, and chronic insomnia is due to circadian dysrhythmia, homeostatic dysregulation and hyperarousal.
A person can have insomnia but not disturbed sleep. When the person finally gets to sleep, he or she can sleep soundly. Young adults more typically have trouble falling asleep while old people have trouble staying asleep.
Insomnia, by this classification, often results in increased risk of depression, overall decreased productivity at work and in daytimes activities. Disturbed sleep results in symptoms like those of sleep deprivation.
As people get older, they are more apt to experience secondary insomnia due to medical conditions, and to experience sleep disorders such as apnea, restless leg syndrome, and circadian rhythm disorder. Primary insomnia and insomnia due to psychiatric problems do not increase with age.
Some common poor sleep habits are more prevalent in elderly populations – staying in bed all night even when not sleeping (leading to poor sleep efficiency) and daytime napping. This can be due to retirement or boredom. Good sleep practices can help.
Sleep medication use in the elderly differs from that in younger people only in the longer retention time in the body. A drug's half-life – the time it takes for the body to eliminate half the drug from the bloodstream – is higher in the elderly.
This means sleep inertia due to residual sleeping pills is more likely in older people.
In general, older people are more prone to movement during sleep and sedative drugs increase the risk of falls. This is why doctors take into account a patient's age when selecting a sleeping aid. Chloral hydrate is also used in the elderly more often than in young people.
WHAT SCIENTISTS KNOW
There’s a difference in the sexes. Men lose more of the deep sleep (stages 3 and 4) than women. Daytime sleepiness is more frequent in older men than in older women.
Young and middle-aged adults typically complain of difficulty falling asleep, seniors more often experience nocturnal awakening, early morning awakenings, and non-refreshing sleep.
Some of the sleep hygiene practices recommended for insomniacs are often ignored by older people. Retired people without the regular schedule of a job are more likely to engage in daytime napping, irregular arising time, and increased time in bed compared to employed people. These practices are not conducive to trying to beat insomnia.
Insomnia affects a third of older Americans. Restless leg syndrome and sleep-disordered breathing/apnea are also more common in older people. Sleep-disordered breathing is particularly of interest because there is evidence that connects it will dementia and cognitive deficits in the elderly.
It used to be believed that the human circadian clock had a period of about 25.25 hours and that this period declined as people got older. This explained why teenagers had trouble waking up in the morning while seniors get sleepy early in the evening. However, circadian rhythm amplitude sometime stays strong in very healthy older people. Now scientists think that the intrinsic period of endogenous human circadian pacemaker is not significantly different between health old and young adults and is much closer to 24 hours. Deterioration in the suprachiasmatic nucleus may represent a pathologic rather than a normal change. Another view is that older people tend to have a narrower window in the circadian cycle to get to sleep. They are literally more set in their ways. Young people can go to bed at a different time each night and move their sleep times around much more flexibility.
Older people spend more time in bed than younger ones, but nighttime sleep is typically shallow and fragmented. Scientific measurements confirm subjective reports of decline in sleep quality with age in otherwise healthy older people. Deep sleep decreased from 18.9% during young adulthood (ages 16 to 25) to 3.4% in midlife (36 to 50). The decrease in slow-wave sleep was accompanied by decreases in growth hormone levels.
During late life, REM sleep declines gradually by about 10 minutes per decade. Sleep fragmentation, as measured by wake time, increases by 30 minutes per decade during late life.
THERMOREGULATION AND THE ELDERLY
Dutch scientists have found that elderly bodies are less capable of thermoregulation than younger ones, and give the effect of skin temperature on the ability to fall asleep and stay asleep, this may explain increased insomnia rates in seniors. (More on thermoregulation and sleep.)
The prevailing hypothesis in sleep models is the two-process model, in which sleep is a affected by circadian and homeostatic processes . The decline in sleep quality that goes along with getting old is thought to be due to alterations in both processes. Researchers at Cornell's Laboratory of Human Chronobiology found that the homeostatic process starts to go off-kilter before the circadian process as we age.
They found this by studying people of different ages.
They also found that while young adults sleep longer than middle-aged and older adults, daytime napping is essentially unchanged as we age, in the absense of other restrictions (such as retirement.)
RESEARCH
When the U.S. government started the National Insitute on Aging in the 1970s, sleep was a low priority in the medical funding community. In the past few decades the importance of sleep has been recognized, both as an important part of quality of life and as a contributor to and symptom of diseases.
The most recent National Sleep Disorders Research Plan (2003) concedes that most of the research on sleep is conducted on young adults and that there has not been enough scientific exploration of how age affects sleep. There isn’t widespread agreement on what is “normal” age-related changes in sleep patterns and therefore no going agreement on whether any medical treatment is desirable.
Dan Kennedy has written a free ebook on how to Cure Your Insomnia. To download it visit www.cure-your-insomnia.com
Saturday, 6 November 2010
Depression and Insomnia
Depression and Insomnia
The information below is based on an article by Dr. Gregg D. Jacobs published recently in a US Medical Publication. If your insomnia is triggered by depression – the article may help you shed some light on the subject.
Bearing in mind the number of people suffering from depression, not just in America but Worldwide, the fact that insomnia is one of the main side effects means that depression is one of the major sources of insomnia. Recognising this and helping to treat the cause can be one of the key cures for insomnia.
I hope you find Dr Jacobs article interesting…
Everyone feels sad or blue at times. However, about 10-20% of Americans experience clinical depression at some point in their lives and the numbers are growing.
Insomnia is a hallmark symptom of depression; some depressed individuals may instead exhibit excessive sleep, called hypersomnia. Insomniacs also exhibit higher levels of depression than normal sleepers, although they generally do not have higher levels of depression than patients with other health problems such as pain, infertility, or heart diseases.
Furthermore, the majority of patients who visit their doctor with a primary complaint of insomnia do not have a diagnosable depressive disorder. And for those patients who do, research has shown that, for some of these individuals, depression can be the consequence of insomnia, not the cause.
Depressed people exhibit a number of other sleep disturbances in addition to insomnia, including reduced deep sleep, increased light sleep, and excessive dream sleep. They enter dream sleep earlier in the night and spend a greater percentage of time in dream sleep than nondepressed individuals. Research also suggests that the dream content of depressed people is more depressing than that of nondepressed people.
Another physiological abnormality associated with depression is a flattened body temperature rhythm; that is, a depressed person's body temperature does not rise and fall as much during the day as that of a nondepressed person. Interestingly, insomniacs exhibit the same problem with their body temperature rhythm. This irregular rhythm in depressed people, which may be the result of the increased fatigue and reduced physical activity that accompanies depression, may ultimately exacerbate insomnia and depressed mood.
To help you determine whether you have major depression, think about whether you have experienced either a relatively prominent, persistent depressed mood nearly every day for a two week period in the past few months or loss of interest or pleasure in almost all usual activities or pastimes. If you have experienced either of these two symptoms, you may have clinical depression and should consider seeking professional evaluation.
Although insomnia can be an important symptom of depression, it is not equivalent to depression. There has been a consistent tendency for both insomniacs and health professionals to conceptualize insomnia as a psychiatric problem, which is erroneous and leads to ineffective treatment. The majority of cases of chronic insomnia are caused by cognitive and behavioral factors, not psychiatric factors, and must therefore be treated with cognitive-behavioral therapy, not psychotherapy or antidepressant medication. . Regarding insomnia as a psychiatric disorder just reinforces the stigma associated with insomnia and diminished self-esteem.
Dan Kennedy has written a free ebook on how to Cure Your Insomnia. To download it visit www.cure-your-insomnia.com
The information below is based on an article by Dr. Gregg D. Jacobs published recently in a US Medical Publication. If your insomnia is triggered by depression – the article may help you shed some light on the subject.
Bearing in mind the number of people suffering from depression, not just in America but Worldwide, the fact that insomnia is one of the main side effects means that depression is one of the major sources of insomnia. Recognising this and helping to treat the cause can be one of the key cures for insomnia.
I hope you find Dr Jacobs article interesting…
Everyone feels sad or blue at times. However, about 10-20% of Americans experience clinical depression at some point in their lives and the numbers are growing.
Insomnia is a hallmark symptom of depression; some depressed individuals may instead exhibit excessive sleep, called hypersomnia. Insomniacs also exhibit higher levels of depression than normal sleepers, although they generally do not have higher levels of depression than patients with other health problems such as pain, infertility, or heart diseases.
Furthermore, the majority of patients who visit their doctor with a primary complaint of insomnia do not have a diagnosable depressive disorder. And for those patients who do, research has shown that, for some of these individuals, depression can be the consequence of insomnia, not the cause.
Depressed people exhibit a number of other sleep disturbances in addition to insomnia, including reduced deep sleep, increased light sleep, and excessive dream sleep. They enter dream sleep earlier in the night and spend a greater percentage of time in dream sleep than nondepressed individuals. Research also suggests that the dream content of depressed people is more depressing than that of nondepressed people.
Another physiological abnormality associated with depression is a flattened body temperature rhythm; that is, a depressed person's body temperature does not rise and fall as much during the day as that of a nondepressed person. Interestingly, insomniacs exhibit the same problem with their body temperature rhythm. This irregular rhythm in depressed people, which may be the result of the increased fatigue and reduced physical activity that accompanies depression, may ultimately exacerbate insomnia and depressed mood.
To help you determine whether you have major depression, think about whether you have experienced either a relatively prominent, persistent depressed mood nearly every day for a two week period in the past few months or loss of interest or pleasure in almost all usual activities or pastimes. If you have experienced either of these two symptoms, you may have clinical depression and should consider seeking professional evaluation.
Although insomnia can be an important symptom of depression, it is not equivalent to depression. There has been a consistent tendency for both insomniacs and health professionals to conceptualize insomnia as a psychiatric problem, which is erroneous and leads to ineffective treatment. The majority of cases of chronic insomnia are caused by cognitive and behavioral factors, not psychiatric factors, and must therefore be treated with cognitive-behavioral therapy, not psychotherapy or antidepressant medication. . Regarding insomnia as a psychiatric disorder just reinforces the stigma associated with insomnia and diminished self-esteem.
Dan Kennedy has written a free ebook on how to Cure Your Insomnia. To download it visit www.cure-your-insomnia.com
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