CIRCADIAN RHYTHM DISORDERS

The circadian rhythm sleep disorders also called sleep-wake rhythm, characterized by an inability to sleep due to the mismatch between the brain pacemaker that controls circadian rhythm sleep of the person and the sleep-wake schedule required or be normal in the environment in which the person develops. They can occur with insomnia or hypersomnia and frequently associated with nonspecific dysphoric symptoms such as malaise and lack of energy.
The circadian rhythm of sleep and insomnia difference hypersomnia by history and by the fact that usually improves if the subject is allowed to follow their own sleep-wake rhythm.
Loa different circadian thymic disorders are:
1. Phase delay Sindromde
Two. Lag syndrome Time Zones (Jet Lag)
Three. Worker to turnso
April. Phase advance syndrome
May. Sleep-wake rhythm irregular
June. Hipernictameral Syndrome


PHASE SYNDROME SLEEP DELAY

The patient falls asleep and wakes up later than the desired time, in a period exceeding one month. It occurs mainly in adolescents and young adults, and 2 times more males than females. Many patients have chronic sleep deprivation due to the need to wake up in the morning to meet their social and labor obligations, and thus have daytime sleepiness. It can lead to a depressive syndrome. During holidays insomnia disappears because it can go its own sleep-wake rhythm without any problem. He complains of inability to fall asleep or wake up spontaneously at the desired time, or tiredness. Presents a delayed sleep phase with respect to principal desired sleep time. These symptoms must be present for at least 1 month.
When not require any strict sleep pattern (eg., On holiday), the patient:
1. It has a habitual sleep period that is deep and lasting quality and standard.
Two. He wakes up spontaneously.
Three. Maintains a stable pattern of sleep-wake 24 h, although with a lag phase.
April. Evidence of temporary delay in usual sleep period sleep diaries for a period of at least two weeks.

LAG SYNDROME OF TIME ZONES (JET LAG)

Transient condition characterized by a series of biological, clinical and social regarding the rapid passage of time zones in intercontinental air travel. The fast travel long distances to the body undergoes a sharp mismatch between the physiological time, synchronous with the local time of the country of departure, and destination country time.
Clinically produces sleep disturbances (difficulty falling asleep and waking) and asthenia, as well as mood disorders, anxiety, decreased mental and physical performance and sometimes, digestive disorders. The severity of symptoms is proportional to the number of time zones crossed and the age of the individual. Also varies according to the direction of flight: traveling eastbound (which give rise to a sleep-wake rhythm advance) are more problematic than westward travel (delayed pace). Sleep efficiency decreases and the number of awakenings. Adapting to the local time zone requires 2-7 days depending on the length of travel and individual sensitivity. One problem is posed special interest riders (and other airline personnel) and executives who have to make these trips frequently.
The complaint of insomnia or excessive sleepiness. The symptoms began 1-2 days after air travel at least two time zones.

SHIFT WORK

The rotating work shifts have problems to adapt to a changing and circadian rhythm alterations increase with advancing age. Night workers or those who are subjected to frequent shift rotations generally show a marked deficit of sleep as daytime sleep is more fragmented and less restful than night, and this gives them with frequency, malaise, fatigue and irritability, an increased number of gastrointestinal and increased craving for alcohol, probably in order to attempt to control stress, and indiscriminate use of sedatives or hypnotics. There has been an increase in accidents and circulation in these workers. The symptoms occur especially the first days after the shift change. The situation can be worse if the worker does not follow a consistent pattern throughout the week and just keeps the cycle altered weekdays, returning to the normal cycle days off and vacations. The primary complaint is of insomnia or excessive sleepiness. The primary complaint is temporally associated with a work period (usually at night) that occurs during the normal sleep period.

ADVANCEMENT OF PHASE SYNDROME

It is much more exceptional than the phase delay. Is characterized by an irresistible sleep need, before the desired time, in the late hours of the evening, and waking up too early, at 2 or 3 am, with inability to return to sleep. The patient complains of unusually early hour they are awake. It occurs mainly in the elderly. Inability to stay awake until the desired time to sleep, or inability to remain asleep until the desired time of awakening. Symptoms are present for at least 3 months. Evidence of moving clocks forward in the usual sleep period by polysomnographic monitoring over a period of 24-36 hours. Not meet diagnostic criteria for any other sleep disorder causing inability to maintain sleep or excessive sleepiness.

RATE IRREGULAR SLEEP-WAKE

Is a circadian rhythm sleep due to deregulation of internal biological clocks notified of the time (for example, time to wake up every morning), that evolves over a minimum period of three months, resulting in sleep fragmentation , both day and night, which is variable and irregular. This anomaly of the temporal distribution of sleep has an important relationship with daily routines, so it may be more common in people who lead a less structured life-students, unemployed, poor lifestyle (as common in young people schedules often have irregular sleep-wake), or bedridden, or lose those routines-old. If the total sleep duration is within normal limits for age, does not usually cause drowsiness. In individuals whose dream is broken into 3 episodes or more within 24 hours, there is insomnia and hypersomnia. The complaint of insomnia or excessive sleepiness. Presesna an irregular pattern of at least three episodes of sleep during a 24 hour period for at least three months. Tamper evident cronobiológico rate by any of the following:
1. Demonstration of loss of regular sleep-wake pattern by
Two. polysomnographic continuous monitoring for at least 24 hours.


HIPERNICTEMERAL SYNDROME

This condition produces a sleep-wake cycle than 24 hours, in 1-2 hours a day, so sleep periods are spaced every day and progressively settings get socially required. Periodically the dream recovers its normal night time, with improvement of the discomfort. This rhythm desynchronized sleep resembles that seen in individuals deprived of the main external synchronizers. This syndrome is especially common in the blind, in the event that it is not essential psychometric and psychiatric examination to rule out psychiatric disorders (mental deficiency, schizophrenia, severe drug addiction) and a neurological examination with radiological techniques to investigate the hypothalamic region, in order to rule out neurological tumor type or harmful. The main complaint of difficulty falling asleep or waking up. There is a progressive delay in the start and end of the dream, with inability to maintain stable sleep-wake pattern of 24 hours for at least 6 weeks.


TREATMENT OF CIRCADIAN RHYTHM DISORDERS

The therapeutic goal is to adjust the biological rhythm with standard time in which the individual lives. It is very difficult to overtake the biological clock to synchronize the sleep-wake rhythm, trying to get the patient to sleep before the time that you normally do, but with relative ease may be delayed. Used:

Chronotherapy: circadian rhythm disorder most prevalent sleep syndrome, delayed sleep phase, is characterized by difficulty falling asleep at times that society advises and difficulty getting up in the morning. When it allows patients with this disorder go to sleep and wake up when they want, usually his dream seems normal, except that the schedule is delayed. In chronotherapy set a reference time and is delayed bedtime gradually until it reaches the optimal time synchronization of the sleep-wake cycle.

Phototherapy light has been identified as the most potent stimulus to change the phase of human circadian rhythms. Workers who change shifts must maximize their exposure to sunlight while awake and minimize exposure during sleep. The artificial light radiation using special bulbs may reinforce internal rhythms adapt to the new change. Light therapy is a relatively new treatment, but effective for circadian rhythm disorders of sleep. Can be used in patients with delayed sleep phase and also in advance of those sleep phase (Table 2). The light management to wake up in the morning can advance circadian rhythms in patients with the syndrome of delayed sleep phase. Similarly, it has also been used to bright light exposure in the evening to treat patients with early evening sleepiness and early morning awakening. This form of therapy is a procedure that requires time and it has to be administered at a specific time of day. Consequently, monitoring can be a problem.
Jet lag can be prevented or treated with the administration of a hypnotic middle-short half-life. Normally suffice 1 or 2 doses.

Melatonin: It has demonstrated its involvement in regulating the sleep-wake cycle, improving the symptoms of jet-lag and phase lag syndrome. Its mechanism of action is unknown, but may relate to the interaction with melatonin receptors suprachiasmatic nucleus. Studies of hypnotic efficacy are inconclusive, and no data on the optimal dose, schedule of administration, indications, contraindications and toxicity. His prescription is not authorized in Spain, but has been introduced in the market in the United States and other Western countries.

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Eight steps to sleep well

"To sleep well, you must first proposed sleep and get some sleep," says Antonio Vela, Professor of Psychiatry at the Faculty of Medicine of the Autonomous University of Madrid, specializing in neurology and neurophysiology, one of the pioneers in the study of sleep in Spain and CEO of Circadies, an institution owned by the General Foundation of the Autonomous University of Madrid and the Madrid science Park, created in order to transfer knowledge and technologies in sleep and chronobiology from the scientific to the corporate world . And do not sleep well. It also notes the sleep disorders unit of the Spanish Society of Neurology and Thoracic Surgery. Studies that did a few years ago in Spain found that 30% of the population suffers insomnia. And also handles data like World Health Organization, which states that 40% of the population does not rest well.

Here we enumerate some factors that can help improve sleep quality, but not everyone will influence the same way. Also demystify some topics, such as the need to sleep eight hours to rest well. Nothing like self-observation and experimentation. By the way, alone or with sleep also affects the rest. But studies do not agree on what can be better. Maybe because we're still in bed. According to experts, we move between five and ten times every hour.

1. No light

It is essential to regulate the hormonal system that the room is dark, no lights open, no windows through which light from the street lamps. The pineal gland is sensitive to light. When it gets darker, secretes more melatonin (also known as the sleep hormone), which induces the state of relaxation and drowsiness. It is a hormone that regulates sleep, so if there is light at night, melatonin will segregate less and cost more rest well. At sunrise, is inhibited and increases segregation of serotonin, which is involved in precisely the production of melatonin. The intensity of artificial light at night in the cities does not help regulate the natural sleep cycle. This feature of our age and nightlife culture derived from it have changed sleep patterns. The natural rhythms are disrupted.

2. Food and drink

Experts recommend dinner at least 90 minutes before going to sleep, a meal that does not cause indigestion. Also advise against going to bed hungry. Nor would help at the break. When dining, best foods that fulfill the dual condition of light and rich in tryptophan, an amino acid associated with the production of melatonin, the sleep hormone mentioned in point. The sweets, avoid them. They may cause blood sugar spikes after hypoglycemia will become, making it impossible to rest well. On the other hand it is also recommended to avoid exciting drinks such as cola, coffee and tea.

3. Electromagnetic Pollution and technologies

Watching TV before bed or computer screen, have the phone charging at the head of the room or other devices that require a transformer can produce alterations, according to warnings Lluís de Lecea, Sleep neurobiology specialist at Stanford University and Magda Havas, a researcher of the biological effects of electromagnetic pollutants associate professor of environmental studies at Trent University in Canada. Experts say that the screen images excite the brain, although it is true there who is completely asleep in front of some television programs. Moreover, the brightness of the display confusing the pineal gland, which is secreted melatonin.

4. The myth of the eight hours

Sleep eight hours can be counterproductive. At least that is what emerges from a study by the American Cancer Society and confirms Daniel Kriped, professor emeritus in the department of psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego, in an article published in 2002 in Archives of General Psychiatry . In this study involved one million one hundred thousand people for six years and was focused on the hours of sleep and its relation to the frequency of sleep disorders such as insomnia and other possible consequences. The results were surprising because they found that people who sleep seven hours each night have a lower death rate than those who sleep eight hours or more.
He said apparently wiser than the day divided ideally eight hours for work, eight hours for leisure time and the remaining eight hours for rest breaks down, not because of the economic crisis, where there are those who do not work and others who do too many hours, but because some experts say that sleep eight hours is not ideal. In this study, nearly half of all people sleeping eight hours or more.
"The old concept that the optimal duration of eight hours sleep is not supported scientifically," says Daniel Kriped. Then add to the risk of increased mortality as a result of increased sleep may be related to "Sleep Apnea", which could block the patient's breathing and cause major alterations in health. In the above study, the risk of mortality rates of women who regularly slept seven hours were 13% lower than those who slept eight hours, 23% lower than those who slept nine hours and 41% lower than that slept tenfold. In the case of men descended rates 12%, 17% and 34%, compared to those who slept eight, nine and ten hours respectively.
In short, they sleep much can backfire. By the same token, if you believe that to achieve eternal life would not have to sleep any time, also wrong, but sleep deprivation is not as dangerous. Daniel Kriped notes that women who slept only five hours, the hazard rate increased by 5%, while in men this percentage is 11%. He concludes that sleeping an average of 4.5 hours is associated with lower mortality than half the study sample who slept eight hours or more. According to this study, the ideal to have a lower mortality rate is between 6.5 hours and 7.4 hours.
Are you sure? Some studies corroborate while others come to different conclusions. Experts do not agree and say that depends on the individual and of course, age. "The hours we need to sleep, like the color of your hair, are largely determined by genetics," says Matthew Edlund, physician specializing in biological rhythms of rest, director of the Center for Circadian Medicine in Florida and author of , among other books, Active Rest (Ed. Uranus). Edlund studies mentioned about three years ago, in 2009, with a mother and a daughter with a rare version of the gene DEC2, affecting circadian rhythms (the body's natural internal rhythms). "These studies showed that both (mother and daughter) was normal and refreshing sleep from 10 pm to 4 am, six hours. It was the amount of time needed to sleep. " The same authority states that, if you want a reference, for babies is between 16 and 18 hours for children 2-4 years old, 12 hours nap, from 4 to 6 years, 12 hours 6 to 11 years, between 10 and 11 hours, from 11 to 14 years, nine hours, from 15, between 7 and 8 hours. And older people can drop to six hours. But he insists that each person is different. Matthew Edlund points out that he has a colleague who needs sleep only two to three hours a day to feel like new, "but as you get older sometimes prefer to sleep four hours."

5. Schedules

So far everyone to some extent is clear that it is best to sleep but the hours are followed and to wake up at night is a waste of time and a sure sign of stress accumulated during the day. Maybe, but what the body would in normal conditions is another matter. This is what ensures Roger Ekirch, a history professor at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) who has specialized in researching all you have to do on sleeping throughout history. In his book At day's close: night in the past includes several references. Among the most striking are the investigations by the psychiatrist Thomas Wehr twenty years ago. The conclusion is that the body's natural pattern is to sleep three to four hours, wake up and stay awake between one and two hours, and go back to sleep three or four hours. Apart from this experiment, Roger Ekirch has collected a large amount of historical references also support this experiment. It was from the nineteenth century that the reference was lost sleep in two stages. Thus, maybe people would be less anxious if within three hours of bedtime his eyes open wide. At least before it was normal. It is now common, but it is considered normal.

6. Activity

Exercising regularly is good, but not before bedtime (except relaxation exercises), which can act as an exciting given that stimulates the body. Ideally exercise should be done by mid-afternoon. It is when he is most benefited by the natural cycle of the hormonal system, which puts the body in a position to get more from exercise. Additionally, you can become a good de-stressing after work.

7. Shot? Mattress?

It is certainly important to the mattress, and no less important is maintenance. People young and not so young people complain of back pain after sleeping. Sleeps recommended hours and, instead, wake up tired and stale body. Not well rested despite following all recommendations identified. Mattress comes into play. According to the Spanish Association of Bed, Spain is the European country where most people rely on old mattresses. They change every 12.6 years on average, while in Europe the figure is around ten years, as reflected in a study by the European Bedding Industries Association. While it is true that the quality of the mattress also determines its duration, it is advisable to keep in mind a few tips to keep in good condition, as stated in the Spanish Association of Bed.
What to do? Ventilate every day. It is better to wait for 5-10 minutes (and with the window open if possible) before bed. Turn the cushion at least four times a year, from left to right and top to bottom. Cleaning a mattress is difficult, so the best option is to protect and always use a 100% cotton breathable cover. Also, if possible, it is preferable to use a cover model that leaves the bottom of the mattress outdoors for proper ventilation of the whole team off. Clean with a vacuum the mattress surface, if possible every two weeks, so it is guaranteed that at least part of the mites and particles accumulated leave. Before buying it is advisable to test the mattresses, pillows and simulating the positions taken during sleep. For couples should consider occupied spaces and consider the freedom of movement that interference will not occur during sleep. Always change the mattress every ten years or less. After that time, the firmness and health conditions have changed original and provide not only function properly, but could even be harmful to health.
What not to do? It is advisable to clean the mattress dry and soak the rest of the team upholstery. Nor is it advisable to use baking or other chemicals that can damage the surface and even penetrate inner layers and damaging them. The ancient practice of hitting the mattress to loosen dust and dead cells is not recommended for modern equipment that could be damaged. Never bend or fold a mattress (except articulated mats), even for a short time, as it will damage irreversibly. Do not place heavy or sharp objects, although the mattress seems an ideal surface for supporting furniture, could cause irreparable damage. The mattress is designed to rest, not to jump on it. Do not use the mattress on a basis that does not cover at least 60% of its surface or is in poor condition. Never use tables between the mattress and the bed base, that can reduce the life of the mattress and even invalidate the warranty terms.

8. Natural materials

We know how to keep a mattress in top condition. But what are the most suitable materials? Posts to dream of an ideal bed, Jose Castillo, CEO of Hastens to Spain, Andorra and Portugal, recommended mattresses that are made from natural products (see accompanying text). Highlights include horsehair, cotton, flax and wool. Now only the most important: lie down and review what has been done during the day as a spectator in a movie. They sleep almost certain.

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7 rules and tips for sleeping well

In addition to the number of sufficient sleep to allow the body to rest hours, here are some important tips that can help you improve your sleep to make it better.

These elements are part of a healthy sleep and are an added advantage for a refreshing rest.

While sleep is often a matter of common sense and here for a few important rules.

 7 rules and tips for sleeping well

Rule 1: to ensure sufficient energy expenditure during the day

Tips for sleeping well

Exercise promotes deep that function to restore the physical body sleep.

For example, a brisk walk of 30 minutes is sufficient to meet the need for daily exercise. Cycling, swimming and gymnastics are also easily usable by all.

Rule 2: exposure to bright light during the day and sleep in the dark

sleep well with light therapy and light therapy lamps
light therapy lamp DAYVIA

The bright contrasts trigger natural cycles of wakefulness and sleep. It is therefore recommended to include activities outside or near a bright window during the day and to ensure the darkest possible place to sleep.

Melatonin (sleep hormone that sleeping hormone) is secreted in darkness and regulates sleep / wake cycles.

Comment Solvital Pole Sante: The day / night rhythm biological clock, which is why the mere exposure to bright light during the day and isolation in total darkness at night is a matter of common sense to sleep well and overcome insomnia.

The light therapy can have the optimum amount of light especially for people who work as live indoors under artificial light. see shop

Rule 3: Avoid alcohol, caffeine and nicotine

Alcohol is a depressant that decreases the quality of sleep, caffeine is an exciting barriers to entry falling asleep, and nicotine is a stimulant that causes many awakenings during the night.

Rule 4: ventilate the bedroom before going to sleep and lower the temperature

It is recommended to sleep between 15 and 17 ° C. The oxygen chamber is necessary because the brain is hyperactive during dreams, require oxygen consumption during REM sleep. Then sleep is more refreshing in a cool room in a heated place.

Rule 5: to keep a moment of relaxation before sleep

This transition can be a disconnect between the stress of the day and relax at night. A calm state of mind induced sleep. Listen to soothing music, read or meditate are ways to calm the restless mind by everyday stress.

Rule 6: wake up before the alarm clock

This natural back to reality prevents a sudden awakening in the middle of a deep sleep cycle. The brain is more alert after a completed, the deep sleep or REM sleep natural cycle. Just give the order to awaken a few minutes before the alarm clock. This suggestion or programming is done before going to bed.

Rule 7: Enjoy the daytime relaxation to reduce the fatigue

The technique consists of 5 minutes break whenever fatigue or one pump arises. Merely close your eyes and let the mind wander product instant regeneration. In addition, a short 20-minute nap after lunch or later in the day allows for quick recharging of vital energies.

By adding one or more of these things to your regular habits, you'll notice that your sleep is improving gradually. Allow yourself to do first tests to verify the effectiveness and apply these tips to your needs.

As each person is made differently, the needs are also individual. The more you observe, the more we discover ways to promote better rest. Whether by day or night periodic triggers a sleep adapted to our own pace (bed early or stay up late), we can be very creative in our sleep habits. Through dreams, we also have the opportunity to develop our creativity to a more effective level.

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How Much Sleep Is Enough?

Animal studies suggest that sleep is as vital as food for survival. Rats, for example, normally live 2–3 years, but they live only 5 weeks if they are deprived of REM sleep and only 2–3 weeks if they are deprived of all sleep stages—a timeframe similar to death due to starvation. But how much sleep do humans need? To help answer that question, scientists look at how much people sleep when unrestricted, the average amount of sleep among various age groups, and the amount of sleep that studies reveal is necessary to function at your best.

When healthy adults are given unlimited opportunity to sleep, they sleep on average between 8 and 8.5 hours a night. But sleep needs vary from person to person. Some people appear to need only about 7 hours to avoid problem sleepiness whereas others need 9 or more hours of sleep. Sleep needs also change throughout the lifecycle. Newborns sleep between 16 and 18 hours a day, and children in preschool sleep between 10 and 12 hours a day. School- aged children and adolescents need at least 9 hours of sleep a night.

The hormonal influences of puberty tend to shift adolescents’ biological clocks. As a result, teenagers are more likely to go to bed later than younger children and adults, and they tend to want to sleep later in the morning. This sleep–wake rhythm is contrary to the early-morning start times of many high schools and helps explain why most teenagers get an average of only 7–7.5 hours of sleep a night.

As people get older, the pattern of sleep also changes—especially the amount of time spent in the deep sleep stages. Children spend more time than adults in these sleep stages. This explains why children can sleep through loud noises and why they might not wake up when they are moved from the car to their beds. During adolescence, a big drop occurs in the amount of time spent in deep sleep, which is replaced by lighter, stage 2 sleep. Between young adulthood and midlife, the percentage of deep sleep falls again— from less than 20 percent to less than 5 percent, one study suggests— and is replaced with lighter sleep (stages 1 and 2). From midlife through late life, people’s sleep has more interruptions by wakefulness during the night. This disruption causes older persons to lose more and more of stages 1 and 2 non-REM sleep as well as REM sleep.

Many older people complain of difficulty falling asleep, early morn- ing awakenings, frequent and long awakenings during the night, daytime sleepiness, and a lack of refreshing sleep. Many sleep problems, however, are not a natural aspect of sleep in the elderly. Because older people are more likely to have many illnesses that can disrupt sleep, their sleep complaints often may be due, in part, to illnesses or the medications used to treat them. In fact, one study found that the prevalence of sleep problems is very low in healthy older adults. Other causes of some of older adults’ sleep complaints are sleep apnea, restless legs syndrome, and other sleep disorders that become more common with age. Also, older people are more likely to have their sleep disrupted by the need to urinate during the night.


Some evidence shows that the biological clock shifts in older people, so they are more apt to go to sleep earlier at night and wake up earlier in the morning. No evidence indicates that older people can get by with less sleep than younger people.

people is linked to excessive daytime sleepiness, attention and mem- ory problems, depressed mood, and overuse of sleeping pills.
Despite variations in sleep quantity and quality, both related to age and between individuals, studies suggest that the optimal amount of sleep needed to perform adequately, avoid a sleep debt, and not have problem sleepiness during the day is about 7–8 hours for adults and 9 or more hours for school-aged children and adolescents. Similar amounts seem to be necessary to avoid further increasing the risk of developing obesity, diabetes, or cardiovascular disorders.

Quality of sleep is as important as quantity. People whose sleep is frequently interrupted or cut short may not get enough of both non- REM sleep and REM sleep. Both types of sleep appear to be crucial for learning and memory—and perhaps for all the other restorative benefits of healthy sleep, including the growth and repair of cells.

Many people try to make up for lost sleep during the week by sleeping more on the weekends. But if you have lost too much sleep, sleeping in on the weekend does not completely erase your sleep debt. Certainly, sleeping more at the end of the week does not make up for the hampered performance you most likely had at the beginning of or during that week. Just 1 night of inadequate sleep can adversely affect your functioning and mood during at least the next day.

Daytime naps are another strategy some people use to make up for lost sleep during the night. Some evidence shows that short naps (up to an hour) can make up, at least partially, for the sleep missed on the previous night and improve alertness, mood, and work performance. But naps don’t substitute for a good night’s sleep. One study found that a daytime nap after a lack of sleep at night did not fully restore levels of blood sugar to the pattern seen with adequate nighttime sleep. If a nap lasts longer than 1 hour, you may have a hard time waking up fully. In addition, late afternoon naps can make falling asleep at night more difficult.

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What Makes You Sleep?

Although you may put off going to sleep in order to squeeze more activities into your day, eventually your need for sleep becomes overwhelming and you are forced to get some sleep. This daily drive for sleep appears to be due, in part, to a compound known as adenosine. This natural chemical builds up in your blood as time awake increases. While you sleep, your body breaks down the adenosine. Thus, this molecule may be what your body uses to keep track of lost sleep and to trigger sleep when needed. An accumulation of adenosine and other factors might explain why, after several nights of less than optimal amounts of sleep, you build up a sleep debt that you must make up by sleeping longer than normal. Because of such built-in molecular feedback, you can’t adapt to getting less sleep than your body needs. Eventually, a lack of sleep catches up with you.

The time of day when you feel sleepy and go to sleep is also governed by your internal “biological clock” and environmental cues—the most important being light and darkness. Your biological clock is actually a tiny bundle of cells in your brain that responds to light signals received through your eyes. When darkness falls, the biological clock triggers the production of the hormone melatonin. This hormone makes you feel drowsy as it continues to increase during the night. Because of your biological clock, you naturally feel the most sleepy between midnight and 7 a.m. You may also feel a second and milder daily “low” in the midafternoon between 1 p.m. and 4 p.m. At that time, another rise occurs in melatonin production and might make you feel sleepy.

Your biological clock makes you the most alert during daylight hours and the most drowsy in the early morning hours. Consequently, most people do their best work during the day. Our 24/7 society, however, demands that some people work at night. Nearly one- quarter of all workers work shifts that are not during the daytime, and more than two-thirds of these workers have problem sleepiness and/or difficulty sleeping. Because their work schedules are at odds with powerful sleep-regulating cues like sunlight, night shift workers often find themselves drowsy at work, and they have difficulty falling or staying asleep during the daylight hours when their work schedules require them to sleep.


The fatigue experienced by night shift workers can be dangerous. Major industrial accidents—such as the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl nuclear power plant accidents and the Exxon Valdez oil spill—have been caused, in part, by mistakes made by overly tired workers on the night shift or an extended shift.

Night shift workers also are at greater risk of being in car crashes when they drive home from work. One study found that one-fifth of night shift workers had a car crash or a near miss in the preced- ing year because of sleepiness on the drive home from work. Night shift workers are also more likely to have physical problems, such as heart disease, digestive disturbances, and infertility, as well as emo- tional problems. All of these problems may be related, at least in part, to the workers’ chronic sleepiness.

People are creatures of habit, and one of the hardest habits to break is the natural wake and sleep cycle. A number of physiological factors conspire to help you sleep and wake up at the same times each day. Consequently, you may have a hard time adjusting when you travel across time zones. The light cues outside and the clocks in your new location may tell you it is 8 a.m. and you should be active, but your body is telling you it is more like 4 a.m. and you should sleep. The end result is jet lag—sleepiness during the day, difficulty falling or staying asleep at night, poor concentration, confusion, nausea, and general malaise and irritability.

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The Sleep Deprivation Gender Gap

Being deprived of sleep while your partner slumbers on can lead to feelings of resentment if the sleep arrangement that the two of you have worked out starts feeling like an unfair deal to the partner who is repeatedly doing night duty—typically Mom. (The National Sleep Foundation 2004 Sleep in America Poll found that mothers get up 89 percent of the time with infants, 85 percent of the time with toddlers, and 71 percent of the time with preschoolers.)

Sleep—how much and of what quality—is the main source of conflict for us,” says Samantha, the 31-year-old mother of eight- month-old Sadie. “My husband gets way more sleep—and by that I mean uninterrupted sleep. I can’t even remember what that is, and I get very bitter about the inequality of our situation.” “I was so resentful of the fact that he was lying there sleeping while I was getting up for the third time that night to breast-feed,” recalls one mother of two.

When I’d come back to bed, I’d get in bed as noisily as possible in the hope that I’d manage to wake him up. I practically used the bed as a trampoline as I bounded back into it at 4:00 a.m. If he didn’t wake up, I’d lie in bed feeling incredibly angry at him for not waking up, and that resentment would build in me until I felt like I was going to explode. And all the while, he would be having a good night’s sleep without a care in the world.” “We agreed before the baby was born that while I was off work, I would get up with the baby and hubby would sleep because he had to go to work the next day,” recalls Amanda, the 23-year-old
mother of 11-month-old Jace. “But agreement or not, there were nights that I hated my husband when I had to get up and he could stay in bed, drooling and snoring into his pillow. Now that I’m back at work, too, we take turns getting up in the night. That’s a much better idea.

If you and your partner find yourself exchanging angry words in the night or icy glares over the breakfast table, maybe it’s time to clear the air about nighttime parenting issues. Here are some tips from other parents who have successfully negotiated the 3 a.m. treaty (or whatever treaty it is that needs to be negotiated to restore peace on the parental front).

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Why Sleep Is Such a Huge Issue for So Many Parents

Is sleep deprivation worthy of an SOS? It can certainly feel that way, particularly if you’ve been without a decent night’s sleep for many days and nights. Here’s why.

You Never Know When Your Sleep Is Going to Be Disrupted Next

Sleep deprivation is bad enough. Falling asleep and not knowing when your sleep is going to be disrupted again is even worse, according to Stanford University biology professor Robert Sapolsky, who is quoted in Katherine Ellison’s book The Mommy Brain: How Motherhood Makes Us Smarter. 

Many mothers find that it’s hard to relax and enjoy a restful sleep knowing that they could be roused from sleep again at a moment’snotice. That’s the downside to having a powerful “mother radar” that allows you to be highly responsive to your baby’s needs around the clock.

It’s the randomness and unpredictability of sleep disruption that really starts to wear you down over time. “When our reluctant napper does finally go down for a nap, I never know how long I will have: 10 minutes or two hours,” says Jennifer, 30, the mother of 12- month-old Amanda. 

“Falling asleep and having to get up five min- utes later is much worse than not napping at all.

” So just how often can you expect your sleep to be interrupted at night during the baby, toddler, and preschool years? According to the National Sleep Foundation’s 2004 Sleep in America Poll, 80 percent of parents of infants, 70 percent of parents of toddlers, and 64 percent of parents of preschoolers are awakened in the night at least once a week by their child. 

According to the sleep experts, you’d lose even more sleep if it weren’t for the filtering work that your brain does while you’re slumbering away. The frontal lobe of your brain processes sound information and then activates your body’s “emergency-response system,” letting you know whether the sound that you just heard warrants a four-alarm hop-out-of-bed response on your part or whether you can merrily happily doze on: “I still don’t wake up from thunderstorms, or our cats running and playing, like other people tend to do,” says Sabrina, 27, mother of one. “But I hear any peep that my child makes.” Note: If your built-in “baby surveillance system” forces you to be on hyper-alert 24 hours a day, you could be suffering from postpartum anxiety or one of the other postpartum mood disorders. Talk to your doctor or another trusted person about how difficult it is for you to relax and unwind.

You Get Conflicting Advice from the Experts

 The experts have always liked to duke it out over child-rearing issues, but rarely have their views been as polarized as they are right now. As Susan Cheever notes in her motherhood memoir As Good as I Could Be: “In every generation, the pendulum swings wildly back and forth between child-raising experts who advocate discipline and structure, and the experts who tell us to listen to our instincts. Currently both methods of raising children ... are being aggres- sively promoted.” 

 Ah, the experts. A worried mother’s best friend and worst enemy all at once. “First-time mothers—particularly of my own 30s generation—have such a strong tendency to search for the one true answer to motherhood in books and periodicals that we tend to trip all over ourselves on the way to the local bookstore. We are so education-driven, we have such a strong need to be ‘in control’ at all times, and we have not been taught as women to trust ourselves and our intuition, that the inherent instability and craziness of infant rearing feels unnatural and wrong to us,” says Nathalie, a 34-year-old mother of two. 

“It frightens many. And, unfortunately, the books out there tend to do one of two things: They either give us conflicting information on any imaginable topic (one says schedule, the other tells us to be totally child-driven) or they are written so matter-of-factly that they make the millions of choices one needs to make seem as if they should be as easy as opening a can.” “There were extremes in approaches that I found unhealthy and disturbing,” adds Kristi, a 27-year-old mother of one. “In the end, I decided to listen to my newfound motherly instincts and to go with what felt right for me and my daughter.” 

And a Lot of Unsolicited Advice, Period

 As you’ve no doubt noticed by now, the fact that you’re a mother with a young child makes you an advice magnet. Even random strangers on the street feel compelled to pass along child-rearing tips and—naturally—to ask you how well your child is sleeping. 

“The first question everyone asked during the first six months was how my daughter was sleeping,” adds Kimberly, 31, mother of 12-month-old Nora. You may not mind answering that question when things are going well on the sleep front, but it’s not quite so fun to deal with people’s reactions when your baby’s getting up a lot in the night. Maggie, a 30-year-old mother of one, explains: “At eight weeks old, Ewan started sleeping eight hours straight and I was getting sleep, and it was wonderful. But what was even more wonderful was when people would ask me how he was sleeping and I could say, ‘Great, he sleeps through the night.

People would give me these wonderful looks of approval. Then when he started sleeping horribly at five months and he was getting up every hour to two hours and people asked how he was sleeping, the looks quickly changed. I thought for sure I would get looks of pity, but I got the ‘Oh, you’re a terrible parent’ look. The ‘What are you doing wrong’ look.” Of course, parents sometimes get competitive about how much sleep they’re not getting, adds Elisabeth, 38, who is currently pregnant with her second child:

 “I think there’s some sense for some parents that being sleep deprived is expected, necessary, and almost a badge of honor.” Aside from the pressure to have a baby who sleeps, the sleep advice can be laced with scary predictions about what will happen if you don’t get on top of your child’s sleep problems pronto. 

“What I really hated were the dire warnings people would give,” recalls Jennifer, the 28-year-old mother of one. “Like, ‘If you don’t have the baby sleeping through the night by six months of age, the baby will never sleep through the night.’” And as for the advice that comes your way from family mem- bers, however well meaning, that can prove to be a source of frustration, too. 

“You would think our own mothers would be able to offer some guidance, considering their experience, but they can’t,” says Patricia, a 31-year-old mother of one. “Mothering was so much different back then.” Marla, a 36-year-old mother of one, agrees: “If you ask my mother and my aunts and their friends, all of whom are in their sixties, ‘sleeping through the night’ means the baby goes in the crib at 7:30 and you leave her there until 8 the next morning, no matter what. Their memories are frustratingly revisionist.

Perhaps the most maddening thing of all about the sleep-related advice that tends to come your way is the fact that it tends to be heavy on the criticism, but sorely lacking in practical solutions. “I felt like everyone was dishing out advice on how much Mikaela should be sleeping, but no one was giving us the formula to get it done,” says Michele, a 30-year-old mother of two. Leanne, a 35-year-old mother of two, agrees: “Everyone seems to know exactly what we’re doing ‘wrong,’ but no one can tell us how to fix the problem.”

Your Child’s Sleep Problems Can Take a Toll on Your Parenting Self-Esteem

 In her book Mothering from the Heart: Lessons on Listening to Our Children and Ourselves, Bonnie Ohye notes that society continues to value independence in even very young children: “In spite of revisionist ideas and research, the image of the independent child as the child esteemed above all others remains a cornerstone of our understanding of children and of ourselves as mothers. It is the gold standard, the litmus test of whether a child is a good and admirable child, and whether a mother is a good mother.”  It’s hardly surprising then that mothers of older babies and toddlers who still aren’t sleeping through the night can feel like they’ve somehow failed as mothers. Krysta, a 28-year-old mother of one, remembers feeling this way while her daughter Gianna was repeatedly waking in the night: “I often felt that I just be doing something wrong as a mother if I couldn’t get my daughter to sleep through. I’d think, ‘I have a master’s degree, but I can’t get a one-year-old to stay asleep for more than four hours at a stretch.’” 

Lorraine, a 37-year-old mother of one, thinks that the standards that society sets for mothers—and that mothers set for themselves— are often impossibly high: “Our society places so much stress on mothers. It’s kind of like the beauty myth—that ideal body type presented by the media that genetically occurs in maybe 1 percent of the general population. All these girls and women striving to meet the impossible ideal are left feeling inadequate, depressed, unworthy. I think the same applies to parenting today.” Naomi Stadlen, author of What Mothers Do: Especially When It Looks Like Nothing, thinks it’s time that we turned the stereotype of the sleep-deprived-mother-as-failure on its head: “If a mother says she is short of sleep, this could be a sign not of her failure, but of how well she may be mothering.”

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Learning about Sleep Might Not Have Seemed That Important While You Were Pregnant

Something else that conspires against new parents finding out the facts about babies and sleep before they find themselves in the sleep-deprivation trenches is the fact they have a hard time focusing on anything beyond childbirth until they get past that particular hurdle.

In her book, Talking with Mothers, Dana Breen talks about how expectant mothers tend to apply “the hurdle model” to preparing for childbirth.
They focus so much energy on trying to prepare for what they perceive to be the marathon of mother- hood—giving birth—that they tend to momentarily overlook the fact that they’re actually going to need to know what to do with the baby after the birth.

“All of the books I read before I gave birth were about pregnancy,” says Michelle, 31, who gave birth to her first child nine months ago.
“In retrospect, I should have been reading about sleep habits and other aspects of baby care before he was born.” And even those parents who do manage to hit the baby books prior to giving birth tend to gravitate toward subjects other than sleep.

“We never had a game plan for encouraging healthy sleep patterns for our baby, even though we were conscientious about everything else, like safety and nutrition—even the toys she played with and the books we read to her,” recalls Sarah, the 32-year-old mother of 13-month-old Lilith. “I guess we thought sleep was something that would happen naturally.”

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Power Naps - The Secret to Energy With Little Sleep

If done correctly, taking regular day-time naps will give you a huge boost of energy throughout the day. As you may recall, there is a natural “slump” in body temperature during the mid afternoon. This slump is what makes a lot of people sleepy during the day, and why so many people feel the need to take an afternoon nap! However, is taking a nap good for strengthening your sleep system? The answer is yes, and no. 

In many siesta countries, taking a regular nap is a normal part of the culture, i.e.: Spain, Mexico. This has several effects: 

As you remember, we sleep through certain sleep stages, and sleep cycles. During the first sleep cycle, our body enters deep sleep for the longest period of time, it's at this point that our body temperature begins to drop really low, our respiration, heart rate and blood pressure decreases.  
If you've ever been woken up out of “deep sleep”, you know that it’s almost impossible to get up. Waking up during or after a major deep sleep phase makes you feel lethargic, slow, and disoriented i.e.: when you wake up during the night to go to the bathroom, you stroll in there like a Zombie, and don't even remember it the next morning.

It takes about 45 minutes to enter the first deep sleep phase. If you limit your nap to 45 minutes, you will sleep mainly in Stage 2 sleep. Stage 2 sleep also plays a major role in restoring physical energy, as you look at the previous chart, 50% of sleep is spent in Stage 2 sleep. This is why you may have heard before that a simple 10 minute nap can totally re-charge you. If you limit a nap to 45 minutes, you will wake up feeling re-charged, and ready to go. 

However, if you take a nap for longer than 1-2 hours, you will most likely enter deep sleep. Your temperature will begin to drop, and you'll wake up feeling very sleepy and disoriented. Also, when you enter deep sleep during the day, you put your body temperature rhythm out of whack, it may be difficult for you to go to sleep later on in the night. You'll have difficulty sleeping deeply at night, which will have negative consequences for the day ahead, such as poor energy, headaches and nausea. Most likely resulting in more naps.

As you see, taking long naps is not the way to go as you can enter a cycle of behavior resulting in poor energy levels and poor quality sleeps. This would affect your health and your life in big ways. Taking irregular naps is one way that sleeping disorders develop. 

The correct way to take naps is to keep them ultra short. This will prevent deep sleep and re-charge you physically. Some studies even show that taking short naps can reduce the incidence of coronary heart disease by as much as 30%. 

I would personally recommend that you do take a short nap during the day, you'll be surprised at how energized you feel for the rest of the day when you do take one! Limit the nap to 45 minutes, if you still feel tired after the nap,
then shorten the nap time. The amount of time required to enter deep sleep varies from person to person.

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How Nicotine, Caffeine, and Alcohol Affect Sleep

Some People Wonder How Nicotine, Caffeine, and Alcohol Affect Sleep. ok let's get started with :

Coffee

Ironically, the substance that most of us chose to consume to help “wake us up”, keeps us from experiencing proper restful sleep. If everyone simply learned the secrets to sleeping properly in this articel, there wouldn't be a need for coffee! 

Coffee contains caffeine, which is also present in a wide variety of junk our bodies don't need: Cola, Pop, Candy Bars... 
Caffeine increases heart rate and blood pressure, it promotes alertness and reduces fatigue. These effects can last for a few minutes or can last for up to seven hours! If you're currently drinking caffeine, you're putting unnecessary pressure on your awake system, which is weakening your sleep system. 

Different people have different tolerance levels to caffeine, so caffeine doesn't affect everyone's sleep in the same way. Also, if you drink one or two cups of coffee in the morning, it’s unlikely your sleep will be affected. However, seeing how caffeine can stay in the blood stream for hours at a time, if you drink caffeine at least 6 hours prior to sleeping, it will affect the quality of your sleep, it will be difficult for your body to enter deep sleep or spend a lot of time in deep sleep because of the stimulative effects. You might also experience frequent night time awakenings out of Stage 2 sleep. 

Caffeine 

People who drink caffeine tend to frequently get up in the middle of the night to urinate. This is the result of the body trying to detoxify itself. 
The energizing effect that caffeine gives you in the morning is only temporary.  Getting just 10 minutes of high intensity light would be 10x more energizing for the rest of your day, more beneficial to your sleep system, and your health. 

Nicotine 

If you currently smoke, you might want to strongly consider the following. Nicotine harms sleep in many ways, like caffeine, nicotine produces faster brain waves, heart rate, and breathing rate, and an increased amount of stress hormones in your blood. 

Generally, if you smoke you can't expect to get quality sleep, the stimulant effects of nicotine will prevent you from sleeping deeply, as nicotine is a poison to your whole body. Nicotine puts your whole system, including your body temperature rhythm, totally out of balance.  If you want to improve your sleep, your best choice would be to quit smoking.

Alcohol 

Some people think that a “night cap” of alcohol will help you sleep; this couldn't be further from the truth. 
While alcohol may temporarily relax some muscles in your body, it's extremely detrimental to your sleeping system.

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How Much Sleep Do You Really Need and what is Quality Sleep

 

How Much Sleep Do You Really Need? 

This is the first belief about sleep you will consciously dispel in this post. The Questions you should be asking yourself instead are really: 

“What Actions can I take to raise the QUALITY of My Sleep?” 
“How long does Quality Sleep Take for Me?” 
“If I increase the Quality of my Sleep - Will it be possible to gain more energy, enough to reduce my sleeping time and do all the extra things I want to do in life?” 

There are people who get an average of 8 to 10 hours of sleep, and always feel tired, drowsy, low on energy, and complain about “poor sleep”, or “sleep deprivation”, and try to compensate by sleeping even longer! In reality, they are sleeping TOO MUCH, and decreasing the “quality” of their sleep as well as their energy levels. This happens because there is an underlying energy and sleep mechanism in their body that they're not even aware of. 

You see, it is not a question of Quantity, but rather Quality :) This is the most important aspect about sleep you should grasp, and throughout comming posts, we'll be exploring the secrets of this little known understanding in detail.

So what is Quality Sleep?  

As you may have already guessed, quality sleep consists of being able to sleep deeply. For our minds to easily slide into the deep stages of sleep, and stay there for the time needed. Easier said than done. 

So I've got a question for you: What controls how long and how deep you sleep? 

There's an underlying mechanism in our bodies called our “body clock”. However, I don't like the name so I will simply refer to it as the sleep clock.
Your sleep clock is a system inside of you which controls how you sleep, how deep you sleep, when you sleep, and how awake you feel during the day. Once you understand this system you'll be able to take control over your sleep and your energy!

The challenge in our society is that our sleep systems have been weakened by so many outside stressors that we're not even aware of, that our sleep clocks are totally out of whack.
This is why so many people can't sleep deeply, why they may suffer from insomnia, poor day-time energy levels, or find themselves waking up several times in the middle of the night.
Usually when you wake up in the middle of the night it is at the end of a sleep cycle in Stage 2 or REM sleep when our brain waves are highest and we're most wakable. This happens because of a weakened sleep system.

"How To Get A Good Night's Sleep Tonight And Every Night Naturally...Without Habit-Forming Drugs Or Sleeping Pills..."

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How Does Stress Affect Your Sleep

Stress is entirely triggered by our mind when we're faced in a situation that could mean possible pain. In the cave man age stress was very useful at keeping us from harm and alerting us to danger, it helped us survive through very intense conditions. In today's society, stress is often a very annoying habit which has major effects on our health and keeps us from achieving the things we really want in life. Firstly, what happens in your body when you're “stressed”?  

 

When we're stressed, our adrenalin hormone levels instantly increase. This gives our nervous system a huge bolt, our level of alertness and muscle tension instantly increases.  

Our heart rate, blood pressure, respiration, and blood sugar levels increase drastically. Our brain waves increase for a higher level of alertness and sensory acuity. 

Right off the bat you can probably already see how stress can prevent us from experiencing quality sleep, or even falling asleep! One huge drawback of stress is a constant high level of brain waves that keep our minds racing all the time. As you will learn in a later section, this can be very detrimental to your sleep system and can cause insomnia.  

The other reason why stress prevents us from sleeping deeply is because of all the heightened “stress” hormones. These hormones make our sleep lighter and less restful. In the cave man ages this would actually be very beneficial, in times of stress you would be able to awaken quickly and be ready for battle with predators who are likely out to kill you. However, this isn't the daily situation for us today.  

Stress creates a similar sleep pattern as those of mothers with babies, who also have a higher wakefulness system, allowing them to wake up during the night to the slightest stir of their kids.  However, this isn't always linked to stress.  

If we were to go into methods of reducing stress in this post, it would obviously become a very big post - so we won't explore that much. However, there are a few simple relaxation methods you can employ on a daily basis that will have a huge effect on these hormone levels.  

It's been proven that practicing daily relaxation can have a very beneficial effect on the levels of your stress hormones, consequently improving your sleep and your health. We'll explore mental relaxation in other post.

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factors up above control how long you sleep

Factors up above control how long you sleep, and how deep your sleep is. To summarize, the factors that affect your sleep the most.   

Understanding how the body temperature rhythm affects your sleep is the key to optimizing your sleep. The body temperature rhythm is really what makes the sleep clock a... “Clock”.  

Usually, your body temperature follows the same pattern regardless of when you go to sleep. For instance, if you routinely get up at 8 am every day, this means your body temperature begins to rise at 8 am. If you feel drowsy for the next 3 hours, this means your body temperature is slowly rising during this time, and hasn't reached it's peak point. For most people the optimum peak point of body temperature is at around 6 PM to 7 PM, this is when we are naturally most active and have the most energy. Study the previous graph if you still aren't clear about how the body temperature rhythm flows. 

If all of a sudden you revert to waking up at 6 AM instead of 8 AM, this doesn't mean that your body temperature will begin to rise at 6 AM, it will remain low and begin to rise at 8 AM like it usually did, and possibly making you feel drowsy for 5 hours instead of 3. Unless you expose yourself to high-intensity light, as we'll explore soon. 

This is why it is so hard to force yourself to wake up early, and why the popular belief persists that waking up earlier than usual is painful!  

This natural “clock” is also why some people do not need an alarm clock to wake up at PRECISELY the same time every day. This isn't a mysterious psychic force they have; their body temperature simply rises at precisely the same time everyday. In the next section we'll examine all the details of optimizing your sleep clock.

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How Food Affects Your Sleep

There are a small changes you can make to your diet to sleep shorter and more deeply. While I am not a professional nutritionist, and I do not want to get into talking about dieting in this book too deeply, here are the facts:  

Your digestive system slows down at night, and it becomes harder to digest food. During deep sleep, a lot of energy is required by our body to pump blood through our muscles and replenish physical energy. Most of the energy during sleep is sucked up by our digestive system, therefore, the more demand you put on your digestive system during the night, the poorer the quality of your sleep will be. 

If you currently have any heavy food in your diet, especially food that’s high in saturated fat, it's most likely diminishing the quality of your sleep.

Other foods that could diminish the quality of your sleep are: 

Foods high in sugar and simple carbohydrates, which raise blood-sugar levels and can cause bursts of energy (obviously disturbing the sleep system).  

Food that cause gas, heartburn, or indigestion. E.g. Spicy, Fatty foods. Some research also has brought to attention that the lack of vitamin B and folic acid can impair sleep. Lack of calcium and magnesium can also decrease the quality of sleep. The brain uses calcium and magnesium to produce a calming chemical in the brain, lack of these will make it harder to sleep deeply.

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How to Deal with Sleep Apnea - The Sleep Apnea Exercise Program

The Only Easy And Painless Cure For Sleep Apnea - Proven In Scientific Studies To Cure Sleep Apnea. http://goo.gl/8gWup

Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), a condition in which the upper airway collapses during sleep, causing breathing to periodically stop at night, is an under diagnosed disorder that can lead to serious health problems as well as impaired quality of life. However, with proper treatment, you can conquer your apnea and improve your heath tremendously. Here are some guidelines on what to do if you suspect that you have apnea.

The Sleep Apnea Exercise Program http://goo.gl/8gWup

How to Deal with Sleep Apnea

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DISEASES: CIRCADIAN RHYTHM DISORDERS

what is "CIRCADIAN RHYTHM DISORDERS"

We all need sleep several hours a day. The sleep-wake cycle is repeated as a constant in our lives is governed by a "biological clock" itself that dictates when to wake and when to sleep. This cycle is called a circadian rhythm (Latin circa dies, meaning approximately one day). The circadian cycle spanning 24 hours, divided into eight for sleep and 16 for the vigil.

Not yet know the exact mechanism that regulates the circadian rhythm, but is thought to be the hypothalamus, a region located in the brain. Furthermore, it was found that light influences this cycle through a substance (melatonin) secreted by the pineal gland (located in the cerebellum). Recently, it has been located a gene controlling the circadian rhythm. Researchers at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute have found that the sleep-wake cycle is regulated by the gene hPer2.

CAUSES

The circadian rhythm can be produced by the following circumstances:

Delayed sleep-appears between people that advance stages of sleep-wake cycle. They wake and sleep schedules consistent but delayed. You can correct themselves, because the internal clock forward naturally with age.
Jet lag: a desynchronization due to the time change that occurs when you travel to other countries. Specialists advise always adapt to the schedule of where you come up to the circadian clock is recovered.
Shift work: the people who work night shifts have disorders in sleep-wake cycle that normally set a few weeks elapsed since recovered normal rhythm.

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the best 5 effective Ideas for Better Sleep

A recent study indicates that 1 of every 4 teenagers have difficulties sleeping. Lack of sleep can affect everything: from our emotions to concentration in different tasks, like driving. It can affect athletic performance, increase the chances of getting sick and, in some people, can relate to weight gain.

How we can sleep the amount of hours that we need? Then, we give you 5 Ideas for Better Sleep:

1. Remain active during the day. You have probably noticed how young children run around... and the depth of his dream.Following the example of the small and do physical exercise at least 60 minutes per day. Physical activity can reduce stress and help you feel more relaxed. But don't exercise close to the time to go to sleep because you can fall without reducing your speed.
   5 Ideas for Better Sleep
2. Do not consume drugs or alcohol. Many people believe that alcohol and drugs relax them and produce drowsiness, but not so. Alcohol and drugs disturb sleep and the chances of waking up in the middle of the night.
3. Give you good night to electronic devices. Experts recommend using the bedroom only for sleep. If you can not turn your bedroom into a technology-free zone, at least it turns off all an hour or longer before turning off the lights.Nothing says "wake up, is happening something!" more explicitly than the buzz of a text message or an instant message alert sound.
4. Have a routine to sleep. Go to bed the same time every day helps the body to wait for sleep. Establish a set routine for sleep can increase this relaxing effect. So relax every night reading, listening to music, spending time with a pet, writing in a journal, playing sudoku or doing any other thing that you relax.
   5 Ideas for Better Sleep
5. Expects a good night's sleep. Stress can cause insomnia: the more you despair for not being able to sleep, the more risk you run stay awake looking at the ceiling. Rather than worry about because you can not sleep, remind you that you can do it. Say, "Tonight, I will sleep well" several times during the day. It can also help to practice breathing exercises or gentle yoga poses before bed.

One night we all have blank every now and then. But if you have difficulty sleeping and believe that they are affecting your mood or performance, see your doctor. 5 Ideas for Better Sleep

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How to Tell If You Have a Sleep Disorder

There are many people that have an undiagnosed sleep disorder. They may feel very sleepy during the day. They may have trouble falling to sleep or staying asleep. Friends or relatives may tell them they look very tired. They may experience mood changes, irritability or become overly emotional. Often they have difficulty paying attention, concentrating, or remembering things that are important.  These are all symptoms of sleep deprivation, and possibly of a sleep disorder.

A person that has an undiagnosed sleep disorder will usually answer the question, "What is the problem with your sleep," with one of five answers. Those answers will be; "I have trouble falling asleep," " I have trouble staying awake," "I can't get up in the morning," "I seem to do strange things in my sleep" or  "I can't sleep because of my partner." The particular answer chosen helps to narrow down the possibility of a specific type of sleep disorder.

When someone says "I can't fall asleep" it can mean several things. There could be a problem when first going to bed, after waking up in the middle of the night, or in the early morning hours.
Many people have the problem of not being able to fall asleep when they go to bed. This is called sleep latency. Sleep latency can be a very serious symptom of certain sleep disorders, including sleep onset insomnia, delayed sleep phase disorder, shift work, restless leg syndrome or paradoxical insomnia. Many times the problem is not being able to stay asleep, which is sleep fragmentation.  Often a person with this complaint can fall to sleep easily when they go to bed, but wake up often throughout the night. Sleep disorders may include sleep maintenance insomnia,  shift work. If a person wakes up very early in the morning and cannot get back to sleep, it could be a sign of advanced sleep phase disorder or sleep maintenance insomnia.

If the answer to the question is "I can't stay awake" and the person is falling asleep at inappropriate times there may be a  sleep disorder such as narcolepsy , obstructive or central sleep apnea, periodic limb movement disorder, restless leg syndrome, shift work or advanced sleep phase disorder.

Those that say "I can't get up in the morning" and take an hour or more to fully wake from their sleep may suffer from excessive sleep inertia. They are having difficulty making the transition from sleep to being awake. Sleep disorders that could be responsible for excessive sleep inertia  are sleep apnea and delayed sleep phase disorder.

A person that answers the question with "I do strange things in my sleep" may find that their sleep is full of surprises. Sleepwalking, Sleep terrors, confusional arousals, REM sleep behavior disorder, nightmares, sleep-related eating disorder and bruxism are all types of sleep disorders known as parasomnias.

If a person answers "I can't sleep because of my partner" snoring, sleep apnea, bruxism, restless leg syndrome, or periodic limb movement disorder may be the sleep disorder to blame.

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Types of Insomnia : Short Term Insomnia and Chronic Insomnia

There are two types of Insomnia, short-term insomnia and chronic Insomnia. 

Short Term Insomnia

Short term Insomnia IS quite common, everyone in their life suffers from Insomnia at some

point or another, and it is in reflect to the natural occurrences in our lives, stress, family and relationship problems, finances. Depression, medical and health problems are also very common causes of short term Insomnia. 

Here's where the real important thing you must understand comes into play. For most people, short term Insomnia lasts only a few days, afterwards their normal sleep patterns return. 

For others, that period never ends, short term Insomnia becomes a part of their daily lives, perpetuated by the Insomnia Cycle Effect

Chronic Insomnia

If you have regular sleeping problems, then you have chronic Insomnia. Regular drowsiness, headaches, depression, and low energy is now a daily part of your life, falling asleep is pure torture. Don't worry, I've been there, and I know how it feels.  

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