September 2010 - The Sleep Blog

5 Things you need to know in order to get a good night’s sleep.

Getting a good night’s sleep is vital for maintaining our health and well being. Sleep allows us to function better in our daily lives and also serves a variety of purposes from restorative purposes to memory processing. That said, we’ve probably all had times when we’ve found it difficult to sleep, and many people suffer recurring sleep problems or even primary insomnia. So what can we do to get a good night’s sleep?

Of course, there are many over-the-counter remedies available to help you combat sleeplessness, but there are also plenty of tried and tested methods to help ensure that you get the best sleep you can get.

Stress: By far and away one of the most common causes of temporary or longer term insomnia is stress. Worrying about something and having an overly active mind can impinge on our ability to get a good night’s sleep.
There are a number of ways to combat stress, and many of them depend on the kind of stress you are suffering from. Most physicians recommend keeping a notepad by the bed to write down any worries before bed.

Exercise: is a great way to encourage sleep since by working your muscles and making them tired you can induce sleepiness by increasing your body’s need for rest. If you find it hard to sleep, try taking a brisk walk or going for a bicycle ride in the evening before bed. Raising your overall level of activity, especially if you lead a fairly sedentary life, will also help your longer term sleeping patterns, as well as having positive effects on your health!

Relaxation: It may sound almost contrary to the above, but relaxation should also be an important part of your daily life. If you’re someone who’s “on the go” all the time, you might find it hard to relax when it comes to bed time because your mind is still busy with the day’s events. Wind down in the evenings by reading a book before bed, taking a warm bath or even practicing slow stretching and deep breathing exercises.

Avoid caffeine, not just before bedtime, but also large quantities of caffeine during the day. Not only does the stimulant effect of caffeine in drinks such as coffee, tea or energy drinks keep you awake for longer, but caffeine also reduces your ability to get good quality sleep. Light, fitful sleep is almost as bad as not having any sleep at all.

Quality of bed: A good quality, comfortable bed and supportive pillows can make all the difference too and can stop you feeling achy and tired the next morning. Make sure that you have some thick blackout curtains to shut out the light, especially in summertime when the evenings are light – after all, it’s just as important to prepare your sleeping environment for a good night’s sleep as well as preparing your body.

Cole Watts writes on behalf of Golden Rest beds one of the largest online suppliers of adjustable beds,

--
Important:
The Sleep Blog does not provide medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Instead, this website provides general information for educational purposes only. Always seek the advice of a qualified health care provider if you have questions or concerns regarding any medical condition or treatment.

When You Sleep – Where Does Your Body Go?

Guest Post by Genevieve who works in affiliation with Universal Health Services, Inc which has a variety of healthcare management companies.

Sleep walking is not at all unusual for children and young adults and mostly disappears with age. Minor sleep walking is no problem in children. They are safely locked in their house and any actions they may take are often instantly counteracted by the adults in the house. But what if you are one of the individuals who continue to sleep walk into adulthood? And what if you live by yourself?

I am one of those adults. The sleepwalking I engage in is entirely harmless and pointless and really does not require any sort of sleep therapy, but can actually cause a series of small annoying problems if not controlled. No matter how many times I double check my alarm clock before I go to bed, it is frequently turned off and occasionally turned to another time entirely when I wake. “Put it across the room,” you say? I will simple walk across the room to make the change.

For those who have digital dexterity while sleeping, sometimes moving an alarm clock across the room or programming more than one is enough. If you still manage to sabotage your wake up, using a phone or computer are options. These devices are far more difficult to change without being aware enough to go through several menus and pressing specific buttons. If you are worried about cold dialing your friends in the middle of the night, using a touch screen device can work magic. Not only do you have to select the right button, but you have to do it without any tactile clues! If you are not interested in purchasing electronics, look into getting a wakeup call service.

Sleepwalkers often engage in the most common behaviors they perform each day. For most people, eating occurs many times each day. A small snack probably isn’t harmful, but it is never fun to wake up to find your refrigerator has been open all night and there are crumbs on the counters and floor. If you find yourself making the occasional foray to the kitchen, consider placing the items you most frequently go for in multiple bags, preferably ones that make noise. Making sure that your refrigerator doors swings all the way closed without help can save on replacing perishables. Child locks on cupboards and drawers are a great way to prevent unconscious snacking.

Most of the problems caused by sleepwalking can be easily contained with a few small precautions. If you are prone to leaving your house, over eating or any number of more serious behaviors, it may benefit you to go to a sleep therapy center and see if they can provide any options.

Motor Skill Efficiency is Tied to Sleep

If you’ve ever felt klutzy after missing out on sleep, there’s scientific evidence to back you up. It’s a fact that, when learning a new action pattern involving motor skills, performance improvement can continue for up to 24 hours after training. Recent research shows that getting some sleep can make that window of improvement even more effective. In a study by Matthew Walker and his team from Harvard’s Laboratory of Neurophysiology, it was discovered that a night of sleep can increase motor skill speed by 20% without losing accuracy.

Stage 2 NREM Sleep

Walker and his team designed an experiment involving five groups, whose members underwent different combinations of training for a skill involving fine finger tapping movements, wakefulness, sleep, and finger rest. The researchers found that Stage 2 NREM sleep was the most effective way of improving motor skills, especially when this stage of the cycle occurred late at night. Stage 2 NREM, or Non-Rapid Eye Movement, can be described as an intermediate stage of sleep in which the sleeper descends progressively deeper into unconsciousness. This stage is characterized by larger brain waves than Stage 1 NREM, accompanied by occasional episodes of quick activity. Someone who is in this stage of sleep would not be able to see even if their eyes were opened, would be unlikely to be awakened by sounds, and would have slower bodily functions.

Sleep Stages and Motor Skill Development

There was a considerable amount of variance between subjects who slept and those who didn’t, and the researchers found that 52% of that difference in improvement could be accounted for by Stage 2 NREM sleep. But the amount of improvement by sleep stage could change depending upon the complexity of the task being learned. When subjects have been instructed to learn skills that involve more finely tuned movements, they have been shown to react negatively to REM sleep deprivation. Walker and his team hypothesize that the level of complexity that characterizes a learned task is associated with a certain sleep stage, with more difficult tasks responding to REM stages and less challenging tasks responding to NREM sleep. Either way, getting enough sleep while you learn can help you increase the level of your performance on a variety of tasks.

Walker, Matthew P. et al. “Practice with Sleep Makes Perfect: Sleep-Dependent Motor Skill Learning.” Neuron 35 (July 2002): 205-211.

Bio: Alexis Bonari is a freelance writer and blog junkie. She spends much of her days blogging about Education and CollegeScholarships. In her spare time, she enjoys square-foot gardening, swimming, and avoiding her laptop.