Family Chiropractic Clinic Of Hillsborough

Sleep is extremely important to your health. When you are having a good night's sleep, your whole body is being repaired and rejuvenated. This helps your body, your mind and your emotions for the night, the next day and can even affect your body for the rest of your life.

 

Good sleep helps prevent all kinds of diseases and degeneration. While you are a sleep, your body releases various hormones that help your body. All your tissues, cells, organs, and systems are healing, regenerating, and dumping toxins. A good night sleep helps your energy level, your mood, creativity, will power, adaptability, and stamina.

To eliminate muscle and many other sources of pain, it is critical to get 8 to 9 hours of solid, deep sleep each night on a regular basis. Disordered sleep is, in my opinion, a major underlying process that perpetuates fatigue and pain.

Inadequate sleep can occur for a number of reasons. Many Americans simply do not make enough time for adequate sleep. One hundred years ago, the average American was getting 9 hours of sleep a night. Anthropologists tell us that 5000 years ago, the average night's sleep was 11 to 12 hours a night. When the sun went down, it was dark, boring, and dangerous outside, so people went to bed. When the sun came up, they woke up. The average time from sunset to sunrise is 12 hours. The use of candles initially shortened sleep time. Then light bulbs were developed followed by radio, TV, computers, etc. We are now down to an average of six and one half to seven hours of sleep a night, and this is simply not adequate to allow proper tissue repair.

Some people get inadequate sleep because of poor sleep hygiene, often occurring because pain keeps them awake. Others have insomnia because the sleep center in the brain (called the hypothalamus) is suppressed by the same process that is causing the pain.

A 2001 poll conducted by the National Sleep Foundation found that 58 percent of Americans had sleep difficulties. This had increased from 51 percent the year before. Fifteen percent of Americans use a prescription or over-the-counter sleep aid. In addition, those who slept less than six hours a night felt more stressed, angry, sad, and tired than the people who got more sleep. The survey of over 1000 adults also found that only 30 percent of people reported getting the recommended 8 hours of sleep a night, down from 38 percent the year before. The average amount of sleep also decreased to less than seven hours.

If you get 7 hours of sleep or less, or have a poor night's sleep many negative things happen.
1)    Hormones
      a) Your body is supposed to make and excrete hormones at night. A poor night's sleep can result in the body not making or excreting the right hormones.
      b) Your body will produce cortisol, which makes you hungry for fats and sugars.
      c) Cortisol causes you overweight and puts the weight around your waist
      d) Cortisol makes you angry, tired and moody.
2) Tissue repair and rejuvenation may not occur or may be incomplete.
      a) A poor night's sleep can prevent the muscles from cleansing and repairing, which causes more aches and pains, delays healing of injuries and can cause Fibromyalgia.
     b) Research show that people who sleep 7 hours or less live fewer years
     c) The immune system is not kept working properly.
     d) Night shift workers are more susceptible to cancer according to research.
     e) Various cells are not replaced and made for the needs of the body
      f) Increased susceptibility to diseases and degeneration occurs
3)   In adequate sleep affects your mood, will power & adaptability
4)   Lack of sleep diminishes your energy level and stamina.
5)   Poor sleep alters your ability to think, and be alert, clear minded, focused and creative.

Good Sleep Hygiene
1)   Get up at the same time every day 7 days a week, so the light sets our biological clock.
      a) This is the most important thing you can do to help you get to sleep and sleep better.
      b) Getting up every day at the same time causes melatonin to be produced around 10 pm so you can get sleepy and go to sleep easier.
2)   Get to sleep at the same time every night so you can get 8-9 hours of sleep and have a 1/2 hour to get to sleep.
3)   Make sure your environment is quiet and dark.
4)   Have a good bed.
5)   Do not drink any caffeine after 4 pm.
6)   Do not drink any wine, beer or alcohol in the evening. In the second part of the night the alcohol will disturb your sleep stages, even if you do not wake up.

      sleep cycles, alter the time required to fall asleep and total sleep time.
7)    Avoid naps that are any longer than 20-30 min. Naps may make it harder to get to sleep at night.
8)    Avoid exercising in the evening. Exercise increases your blood pressure for the next 12 hours
9)    Do not use your bed for anything but sleeping & hanky panky. No TV, reading, studying, problem solving or working. These activities are too arousing and may interfer with
10)  Keep your bedroom cool.
11)  If your partner snores, sleep in a separate bedroom (after tucking in or being tucked in by your partner) or get a good pair of earplugs and use them. The wax plugs that mold to the shape of the ear are often the best ones.
12)  If you frequently wake up to urinate during the night, do not drink a lot of fluids near bedtime. Most pain patients wake during the night because their sleep center is not working properly or because of the pain. Because they also have a full bladder, they think they are waking up because they have to urinate. This is not the case. They are waking up because of their pain syndrome. There is a simple way to remedy this problem. If and when you wake up during the night and you notice your bladder is full, just talk to it (in your mind, so your spouse doesn't think you're nuts) and tell it, "Nighttime is for sleeping. We will go to the bathroom in the morning when it is time to wake up." Then roll over and go back to sleep. If you still have to urinate five minutes later, go to the bathroom. Most of you will find that your bladder will happily go back to sleep, and when you wake up in the morning, you won't even have to urinate as badly as you did when you woke up in the middle of the night.
13)  Do not allow any disharmony before Bed
      a) If you argue, watch upsetting TV, or read upsetting information before bed you will sleep with that upset and wake up in that same state. Therefore, what you do before bed affects you the whole next day.
14)  Have the alarm clock turned away from the bed. If you look at the clock every time you wake up you may think that you did not sleep between the last time you looked and this time, which is often not true.
15)  Delta Wave Sleep CD To fall asleep, you can play deep sleep-inducing tapes or CDs. If you wake up during the night, you can push your sound system's replay button. Better yet, get a CD or tape player that can replay continuously throughout the night. These CDs are available in our web store.
16)  For more information on natural sleep information go to endfatigue.com
17)  The fear of not being able to fall asleep leads to a self fulfilling prophecy so look forward to sleeping like you would a good meal.
18)  If you have trouble going to sleep try some of the following suggestions.
      a)  Use a mental distraction such as counting sheep.
      b)  Say a soothing phrase of words, or a word or mantra or prayer.
      c)  Meditation
      d)  Complete relaxation techniques
      e)  Gentle stretching or gentle yoga
       f)   Think of a quiet thought or picture a soothing place or experience.
      g)  Deep breathing
      h)  Play a relaxation CD
      i)   Play a meditation CD
      j)   Play soothing music
      k)  Use aroma therapy, such putting lavender on your pillow or on a face mask, or in a warm bath
      l)   Take a warm bath before bed
     m) Use a cervical pillow
     n)  Talk to Dr. Berju about good sleep posture to prevent aches and pains at night.
Some of the above info is from Isleep at isleep.com and other info is from Dr.Jacob Teitelbaum MD at EndFatigue.com & some is from ISleep.com.

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Lack of sleep has life-altering consequences Our 24/7 society longs for sleep, but we view it as expendable. We get by on too little, promising to catch up on weekends. But we never do. We stack up our sleep debt like an unlucky gambler. And the consequences are often life-altering.   Research shows that lack of sleep impairs memory, affects moods and undermines the ability to make quick, rationale decisions. Sleep dept hurts work performance and causes over 100,000 traffic crashes each year. Not to mention contributing to obesity, Type II diabetes and other serious health conditions. In fact, if you chronically deprive yourself of sleep—just an hour or two every night—ultimately you will be as sleep-deprived as someone who has been awake for 40 hours. That's like being legally intoxicated. But it's not just a matter of getting enough sleep. According to the American Sleep Research Institute, the quality of our sleep is critical. You can do something about this serious health hazard by making simple changes that have far-reaching results. Sleep Apnea Sleep apnea is a cause of poor sleep because it interrupts sleep hundreds of times a night and prevents you from getting into a deep sleep. People with sleep apnea tend to snore loudly, wake up gasping, and are very sleepy during the day. Sleep apnea can cause serious health problems and can be life threatening if not treated. Effects of sleep apnea: *Memory problems *Weight gain *Impotence *Headaches *High blood pressure and cardiovascular disease. *Muscles aches and pains *And much more If you or a family member think you have sleep apnea see your MD for testing and treatment options.		People need at least 8 hours of quality sleep each night. But last year, as a nation, we racked up a sleep debt of 105 billion hours. That means the average American needs to sleep 24 hours a day, for two weeks to break even.