Sleep disorders can be alarming

Today, I’m going to discuss a valuable commodity that everybody needs and most of us can’t get enough of – sleep. 

As a general rule, adults need between six and nine hours of sleep a night. Most adolescents and teens do best with at least nine hours a night. There are, of course, exceptions. Some people can function well on less than six hours and others need more than nine.

Generally, there are a few things that affect your sleep requirements, including illness, emotional stress, and the time of year (some folks need more sleep during winter months). If you’re pregnant you might require more sleep, especially during your first trimester.

So, how do you know if you slept enough? The easy answer and the best answer is you feel tired when you first wake up, you probably aren’t getting sufficient sleep. It’s best to observe how you feel immediately upon awakening rather than after you’re up and moving around.

Those first few moments of wakefulness, before your mind fully kicks into gear, are a better measure of how your body is feeling.

Here are some tips for getting a good quality night sleep:

• Avoid before-bed snacks, particularly grains and sugars. This will raise blood sugar and inhibit sleep. Later, when blood sugar drops too low (hypoglycemia), you might wake up and not be able to fall back asleep.
• No TV right before bed. Even better, get the TV out of the bedroom or even out of the house, completely. It is too stimulating to your brain and it will take longer to fall asleep. 
• Wear socks to bed. Your feet will often feel cold before the rest of your body. A study has shown that wearing socks reduces night waking.  
• Get to bed fairly early. Our systems, particularly our adrenals, do a majority of their recharging or recovering during the hours of 11 p.m. and 1 a.m.  
• Keep the temperature in your bedroom no higher than 70 degrees F. Many people keep their homes and particularly the upstairs bedrooms too hot.  
• Eat a high-protein snack several hours before bed. This can provide the L-tryptophan need to produce melatonin and serotonin.  
• In order to get the highest quality sleep, you need to be in a room that is dark as possible. Even the slightest bit of light can disrupt your body’s circadian rhythm and production of melatonin and serotonin, two hormones vital to your health. Many people are not aware that exposure to the smallest amount of light at night will cause your body to shut down further.

For most people who don’t sleep well, it has become a pattern and not just an occasional night of restlessness. A chronic lack of high-quality sleep simply cannot be recovered. You can’t stockpile a supply to use later, nor can you pay your body’s sleep debt back. You may feel rested and sharper after sleeping in, but the benefit is temporary and can be compared to depositing money in your account then withdrawing it again a day or two later. Most sleep is lost forever, and persistent lack of sleep has a cumulative effect when it comes to the havoc it can wreak on your health.

Sleep deficit can have serious and far-reaching affect on your health. A single night of sleeping only four to six hours can impact your ability to think clearly the next day.

· Good sleepers and poor sleepers experience about the same number of daily minor stressful events, but good sleepers are less disturbed by them. Poor sleepers experience life events as being more negative than do those who sleep well.

· Sleep deprivation can cause changes in your brain activity similar to those experienced by people with psychiatric disorders.

· Sleep deprivation puts your body into a pre-diabetic state, and makes you feel hungry, even if you’ve already eaten.

· Interrupted sleep can dramatically weaken your immune system 

Exposure to light while your body is trying to sleep activates your stress response and weakens your immune system, which is why irregular sleep cycles can lead to stress-related disorders including:

· Constipation

· Stomach ulcers

· Depression

· Heart disease

A disrupted body clock can wreak havoc on your weight. Losing sleep raises levels of two hormones linked with appetite and eating behavior. Sleep deprivation reduces leptin, a hormone that tells your brain you’re satiated, and increases ghrelin, a hormone that triggers hunger.
 
Lack of sleep can also destroy your memory. If your internal clock isn’t functioning properly, it causes the release of too much GABA, the brain inhibiting neurotransmitter. According to the results of s study, an excess of GABA inhibits the brain in a way that leads to short term memory problems and the inability to retain new information.

Most often, you can tell people do or don’t sleep well just by looking at them Sleep deprivation ages you. Lack of sleep interferes with metabolism and hormone production in a way that is similar to the effects of aging and the early stages of diabetes. Chronic sleep loss may speed the onset or increase the severity of age-related conditions such as Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, obesity and memory loss.
 
We adults aren’t the only ones with sleep problem. There is a lot of evidence that younger people also have sleep disorders. According to a 2007 survey of 12-to-16 year-olds, 25 percent fell asleep with the TV, computer, stereo, iPod headphones or other electronic gadgets on. The same survey revealed these teens only received four to seven hours of sleep each night.
 
The hormone melatonin is produced later at night for teens, which can make it hard for them to fall asleep at an earlier hour. This temporary adjustment in their body clocks is one of the reasons young adults don’t get the amount of sleep they require. In addition to a shortage of rest, the quality of sleep these kids get can be very poor.
 
Chiropractic care is great for patients who have sleep disturbances. Spinal adjusting takes pressure off the nervous system and reduces spinal pain which will increase comfort and restore a patient's normal sleeping pattern. It's not uncommon for patients who will begin care with headaches or lower back pain to comment that they sleep much better since they‘ve been getting adjusted.
 
Melatonin and fish oil are also great supplements to help with disturbed sleep.

I also recommend meditation or relaxation techniques to help quite your mind. Many people try to go to sleep with a thousand things floating through their head. Stress about the work day, plans for the weekend or how your kids are getting to baseball practice are things that can keep the brain awake and not allow patient's sleep. It's important to learn how to shut off the brain when it gets to be too active.