Beauty Sleep
Posted on | July 19, 2009 | No Comments
As we rush to meet life’s demands, we often miss out on badly needed beauty sleep. When our heads finally hit the pillow, our minds whirl out of control, or our spouses snore, or our kids call out for comfort in the night. Instead of drifting off to dreamland, we toss and turn and then wake up the next morning looking bedraggled, with a sallow complexion, sagging posture, and puffy, dark rimmed eyes.
“Everyone has had the experience of not getting enough sleep and looking terrible the next day,” says Michael Twery, PhD, director of the National Center on Sleep Disorders at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. Our mothers told us to get a good night’s sleep to avoid catching a cold, and while that certainly seems to be the case, Twery says, our looks may suffer as well. “Resistance to infection seems to decline when we don’t get adequate sleep, and that doesn’t help our appearance.”
But is there any real science behind the myth of beauty sleep? More and more experts say yes. Scientific studies haven’t looked at how sleep affects appearance directly-for example, the way the lack of it impacts skin renewal-but we do know that our bodies repair cells and tissues while we sleep. Research also supports the notion that poor sleep patterns lead to poor health-and poor health can make us look a little less beautiful.
“You need sleep to look good because of the way it affects muscle growth, body weight, your risk for heart disease, your ability to age well, and so many other things,” says Sara Mednick, PhD, a research scientist at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, and author of Take a Nap! Change Your Life (Workman, 2006). Even a quick catnap reduces the effects of stress by lowering the hormone cortisol, and stress plays a major role in aging.
More importantly, in a study of more than 23,000 adults conducted at Harvard School of Public Health, those who took regular naps had a 37 percent lower risk of dying from a heart attack than people who didn’t nap, and taking occasional naps lowered the risk by 12 percent.
When we fall short of our optimum eight hours, napping helps our bodies carry out the regenerative tasks that only occur during sleep to keep us healthy, alert, and, yes, looking our best.
Is Your Child Sleepwalking?
Posted on | July 19, 2009 | No Comments
If your child is a sleepwalker, you may be wondering what causes it. Sleepwalking usually begins during the preschool years, continues through elementary school, and is mostly outgrown by adolescence. Affecting half of young children and up to three percent of adults, sleepwalking is worsened by environmental factors, stress, and fatigue. Though sleepwalking seems to run in families, until now scientists didn’t know why.
In a recent study, reported in the journal Molecular Psychiatry, researchers discovered the first genetic marker for sleepwalking, bringing them a step closer to finding a treatment. Researchers believe the marker, which is related to a genetically determined element of the immune system, is hereditary. Dr. Mehdi Tafti, a Swiss scientist involved in the study, found a strong association between sleepwalking and a newly discovered gene variation in a family of genes known as HLA genes. HLA genes provide the information needed to allow the body to create immune cells.
“This is not a sleepwalking gene but if you have this variant, you have a 3.5 times higher risk of sleepwalking,” says Tafti. “The figure is even higher if there is a history of sleepwalking in your family.” A sleepwalking child will usually get up during the first two or three hours of sleep and stumble around for a few seconds or as long as hall an hour. He may walk around the house in a daze with eyes open, but will forget the whole incident by morning.
Some children just sit up in bed as if they’re awake, but they’re actually asleep. Most of the time sleepwalkers will stay in their bedrooms, foraging in drawers or closets for a few minutes. If left alone, they will go back to bed. During a sleepwalking episode, children have a heightened ability to navigate by remembering the exact layout of the room, an ability lost when the child is awake and blindfolded.
If a sleepwalking child thinks he is somewhere else, he may walk into walls and doors that are not where he remembered, and risk falling down stairs or through windows. Some children urinate in inappropriate places–in a closet or a toy box–thinking they are in the bathroom. Sleepwalking occurs when the brain has trouble making the transition from non-REM to REM sleep, the dreaming stage. While immaturity may be a factor in children’s sleepwalking, researchers believe adult sleepwalking may be associated with REM sleep behavior disorder. During REM, or rapid eye movement sleep, our bodies have a mechanism that keeps us still so we won’t act out our dreams. This safety feature seems to be missing in people with REM sleep behavior disorder.
Although sleepwalking is not a sign of emotional illness, the risk of injury is real. Wandering children may have accidents. Sleepwalking adults can pose a danger not only to themselves, but to others as well. In Tafti’s study, 19% of patients reported injuries and 32% reported violent incidents occurring during sleepwalking. People with severe problems have tried changing their sleep patterns with psychotherapy, behavior therapy, hypnosis and anti-anxiety medication with dubious results. While most children outgrow sleepwalking, further research is needed before scientists can develop an effective treatment. In the meantime, careful management of your sleepwalker and his environment can minimize stress on the entire family.
Click here to read 5 ways to help your sleepwalking child
5 ways to help your Sleepwalking Child
Posted on | July 19, 2009 | No Comments
If you child is a sleepwalker, here are some tips to lessen the risks:
- To remove the risk of accidental injuries, install appropriate locks on doors and windows, rearrange bedroom furniture to discourage tripping, and, for younger children, place gates across stairs.
- Since stress and sleep deprivation can trigger sleepwalking, encourage an early bedtime and, if possible, an afternoon nap. A full bladder may cause an episode, so consider restricting fluids before bedtime.
- A sleepwalking child is difficult to wake up, and even the gentlest attempts to rouse him can cause involuntary emotional outbursts. Parents are better off just carrying or steering their sleepwalker back to bed. Since most episodes occur in the first few hours of sleep, parents are usually still up.
- Consider changing the child’s bedroom or moving the bed to a safer location. If the new location is mole comfortable for the child, it may encourage better sleep with fewer episodes. If your sleepwalker has other health issues, treating those often improves of resolves the sleepwalking as well.
- Punishing a child for sleepwalking only makes it worse. Some parents, not understanding the situation, see their child’s roving and unresponsiveness as signs of disobedience, and their outbursts on attempts to wake them as tantrums. With understanding and greater parental support, these episodes often resolve themselves.
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Welcome to Sleep on the Cheap
Posted on | July 9, 2009 | No Comments
At any age, from infant to old age, people have trouble sleeping. Rather than fall for all the bad advice, fall asleep naturally with common sense and science supported advice here at Sleep On The Cheap, edited and published by professional health journalist for major health magazines, newspapers, and books.