LACK OF SLEEP DESTROYS GOOD HEALTH part1

LACK OF SLEEP DESTROYS GOOD HEALTH part1

Are you like over half of Americans and have trouble getting enough sleep or falling asleep? We are becoming a nation of wandering zombies. It is estimated that over 100 million Americans have sleep disorders. Our changing lifestyles, our increased work hours, financial pressures, and our stressed-out senior citizens causes this.

 It costs our health care system currently $16 billion in treatment for current sleep disorders. 3 million people suffer from sleep apnea, and 95% of these are untreated and undiagnosed.

THE DYNAMICS OF SLEEPING

 As you sleep, changes occur in your brain waves and your muscular activity, body temperature, respiration, heart rate, and hormonal secretions.  The sleeping brain is often more active than the awake brain, and must regulate immune functions and re-energize your body, and reorganize and eventually retrieve information that is already in your brain.

The sleeping brain has low frequency and high amplitude brain waves. As you awake, your beta waves increase. Once you are ready for sleep and shut your eyes, your brain waves become slow, and frequently higher in voltage and more regular. Your breathing slows, your heart rate drops, and your breathing becomes shallow and irregular.

 It takes you about 10 to 20 minutes when you start falling asleep to become insensitive to outside stimulation, and the blood supply to your muscles also increases. 

After 30 minutes, your brain produces delta brain waves and you are in stage III sleep. Once you get the deep sleep, stage IV, muscle relaxation is complete and your blood pressure drops. It is difficult for you to be aroused from this delta wave sleep.

REM SLEEP

About an hour and a half after you fall asleep, you fall back into a twilight sleep. Your brain blood flow increases, your body temperature rises, you may have an erection, and your closed eyes begin to role back and forth.

 Despite not being awake, you fall into REM SLEEP ( rapid eye movements).   This stage of sleep lasts about 10 minutes.

During this REM sleep, you may have vivid and emotional dreams.  If your sleep becomes disrupted, your brain has difficulty transferring short-term memory into long-term memory.  During sleep, you cannot learn new things.

However, in REM sleep, your brain files important memories of the previous day into long-term storage. At this stage, you often solve problems and during this stage of sleep, and may have your most creative thinking.   At this time, there is easy access to memory and emotions, and novel ideas and solutions wander through your head.

During this sleep cycle male sexual function is improved, with men typically develop penile erections with blood sent back into your penis and helps maintain your. Incidentally, if you have REM erections, you can rule out the physiological causes for possible impotence

This  REM sleep cycle repeats nightly every 90 minutes until you wake up.  If you sleep eight hours, you usually have five cycles through the night.

HOW MUCH SLEEP DO YOU NEED?

It normally takes a well-rested person 20 minutes to fall asleep.  Half of us Americans have sleep deprivation. 

 If you fall asleep instantly, you too may have a serious sign of sleep deprivation. Since most of us do not value sleep, we need at least one more hour of sleep every night; some of us may need of much as 10 hours of sleep.

If you require an alarm clock to wake up, struggle to get out of bed, feel tired when you wake up, fall asleep while watching TV or after eating a heavy meal, and fall asleep within five minutes of hitting the bed, you have sleep deprivation.

Physically, you have dark circles around your eyes, feel you need a nap during the day, on weekend sleep extra hours, and are drowsy when you’re driving in the afternoon,

 GETTING MORE SLEEP

 Start developing a regular bedtime schedule, and avoid long naps.  Admit your life is full of stress, and realize that the only stress free state is death.

 Smoking disturbs your ability to sleep and stay asleep. It stimulates brain wave activity and increases your blood pressure and heart rate.  It is a stronger stimulant than coffee, and withdrawal starts to three hours after your last smoke. Alcohol within three hours of bedtime will also ruin your sleep.

 Leave the all nighters and late time partying to others.

Your bedroom should be your refuge, -- restful and pleasurable. Make it quiet, dark, and cool. Set your temperature for sleeping down to 65°, and turn up the relative humidity between 60 and 70%.  Put some pastoral scene paintings, or photographs from vacations, in your bedroom to create a peaceful ambience.  Sleep on your side or on your back.

Get a good pillow to support your head and make sure it lets you float rather than squishing you into a unique sleeping position.  Your pillow should fit like a shoe.  Once a pillow loses his fluffiness get rid of it. A mattress is only good for 8 to 10 years.

Your bed should be 6 inches longer than your height. As you sleep, you move around 50 times a night.  If you have a sleeping partner, don’t settle for anything less than a queen size bed; everyone needs room to move around freely without awakening their partner.

The only exercise before bedtime is sexual orgasm. This should help promote a deep and restful sleep. Endorphins are released during sexual stimulation, and enhance the peaceful nature of sleep.

 Watch out for over-the-counter nonprescription sleeping pills since they are primarily anti-histamines and will make you tired and groggy.

                            

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As a medical physician for over 51 years, I strive to give you the best medical information on controversial medical subjects, and help your read betwwen the lines. You must come to your own conclusions. I have no ties to any organization, pharmaceutical, or lobby group. As an practicing medical acupuncturist since 1982, I find western medicine and medical acupuncture are very complimentary. This results in astounding healing in pain management, addictions to cigarettes and food, and a host of other maladies. Visit drneedles is blogging" at the end of each blog for a complete alphabetical list of all my blogs Visit http://www.americanacupuncture.com/ for more detailed information on mind, body, and spirit healing.