Include this in your sleep diary

Time you went to bed and woke up;
Total sleep hours;
Quality of sleep;
Times that you were awake during the night and what you did (e.g. stayed in bed with eyes closed or got up, had a glass of milk and meditated);
Amount of caffeine or alcohol you consumed and times of consumption;
Types of food and drink and times of consumption;
Feelings - happiness, sadness, stress, anxiety;
Drugs or medications taken, amounts taken and times of consumption.

Insomnia and diabetes

A recent research study conducted by Boston University School of Medicine found a connection between insomnia and diabetes. Study participants that reported sleeping less than 6 hours or more than 9 hours a day had an increased incidence of diabetes, compared to those who reported sleeping 7-8 hours. Tips for a better sleep environment
Make sure your bed is large enough and comfortable. If you are disturbed by a restless bedmate, switch to a queen- or king-size bed. Test different types of mattresses. Try therapeutic shaped foam pillows that cradle your neck or extra pillows that help you sleep on your side. Get comfortable cotton sheets.
Make your bedroom primarily a place for sleeping. It is not a good idea to use your bed for paying bills, doing work, etc. Help your body recognize that this is a place for rest or intimacy.
Keep your bedroom peaceful and comfortable. Make sure your room is well ventilated and the temperature consistent. And try to keep it quiet. You could use a fan or a "white noise" machine to help block outside noises. Hide your clock. A big, illuminated digital clock may cause you to focus on the time and make you feel stressed and anxious. Place your clock so you can't see the time when you are in bed.

Over 1.6 Million Americans Use Alternative Medicine For Insomnia Or Trouble Sleeping

A recent analysis of national survey data reveals that over 1.6 million American adults use some form of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) to treat insomnia or trouble sleeping according to scientists at the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), part of the National Institutes of Health. The data came from the 2002 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In 2002 the NHIS, an in-person, annual health survey, included over 31,000 U.S. adults aged 18 years and older. A CAM supplement to the survey asked about the use of 27 types of CAM therapies, as well as a variety of medical conditions for which CAM may be used, including insomnia or trouble sleeping. Survey results show that over 17 percent of adults reported trouble sleeping or insomnia in the past 12 months. Of those with insomnia or trouble sleeping, 4.5 percent--more than 1.6 million people--used some form of CAM to treat their condition.

"These data offer some new insights regarding the prevalence of insomnia or trouble sleeping in the United States and the types of CAM therapies people use to treat these conditions," said Dr. Margaret A. Chesney, Acting Director of NCCAM. "They will help us develop new research questions regarding the safety and efficacy of the CAM therapies being used."
Those using CAM to treat insomnia or trouble sleeping were more likely to use biologically based therapies (nearly 65 percent), such as herbal therapies, or mind-body therapies (more than 39 percent), such as relaxation techniques. A majority of people who used herbal or relaxation therapies for their insomnia reported that they were helpful.

The two most common reasons people gave for using CAM to treat insomnia were they thought it would be interesting to try (nearly 67 percent) and they thought CAM combined with a conventional treatment would be helpful (nearly 64 percent).
In addition to looking at the data on CAM use and insomnia, the researchers also looked at the connection between trouble sleeping and five significant health conditions: diabetes, hypertension, congestive heart failure, anxiety and depression, and obesity. They found that insomnia or trouble sleeping is highly associated with four of the five conditions: hypertension, congestive heart failure, anxiety and depression, and obesity.

Other key points reported in the analysis include:
* Nearly 61 percent reporting trouble sleeping were women versus about 39 percent men.
* Insomnia peaks in middle age (45-64 years old) and a second increase appears in people 85 and older.
* African Americans and Asians appear less likely to report trouble sleeping or insomnia than whites.
* Those with higher education also are less likely to report insomnia or trouble sleeping.

Advantages and Disadvantages

What are the advantages and disadvantages of the various types of treatment for sleep apnea?
Choosing the right treatment for your case of sleep apnea is an important decision. Following is a summary of the main advantages and disadvantages of each type of treatment for sleep apnea. Always consult a sleep specialist when making this decision.
Advantages and Disadvantages of the Various Treatments for Sleep Apnea
Treatment
Advantages
Disadvantages
Self-help
Inexpensive
Private, not embarrassing; unobtrusive to your bed partner
The lifestyle changes you make can improve more than just your sleep!
Only works for mild sleep apnea

CPAP (Continuous Positive Airway Pressure)
Safe
Effective
Immediate relief
Difficult to use, so many drop use within the first year
Mask may be uncomfortable, claustrophobic, or embarrassing. Proper fit avoids discomfort.
Many side-effects
Machine may be noisyA lifelong treatment
Dental devices
Easier to use and maintain than CPAP, so people stay with this treatment longer and are therefore more likely to experience relief.
Small size, more convenient for traveling than CPAP.
More effective than surgery for some airway obstructions.
Not as effective as CPAP
Proper use is essential for treatment to be effective
Not very effective for severe sleep apnea and for some types of airway obstructions
Many possible side-effects: soreness; damage to the jaw, teeth, and mouth; saliva build-up; nausea; permanent change in the position of the jaw or teeth.
Surgery
Can permanently cure your sleep apnea problem, and no more treatment is necessary.
Anesthesia and operations are inherently risky. May require a sequence of surgeries over time.
Performing surgery on the wrong tissue might not have improve sleep apnea.
If unsuccessful, can impede the success of other kinds of treatments.
Side-effects can be severe, such as pain and throat swelling.
Oxygen administration
Life-saving treatment for people with heart-related breathing problems. Allows the person to sleep safely through the night.
Only helps during the administration period.
Must be carefully adjusted, or it can increase apnea.
Waking episodes still occur during sleep.
Doesn’t improve daytime sleepiness.

Sleep Aids for Adults

PillowPositive is a unique positional sleeping aid - a patented cervical pillow that has been clinically tested and shown to be helpful in reducing snoring. PillowPositive encourages you to position your head so that snoring is reduced whether sleeping on your back or in a side position.
The Nelson Sound Sleeper - The Nelson Sound Sleeper is an ergonomic pillow with optional internal speakers. It is designed to support the entire body from the lumbar to the head. The Sound Sleeper provides an inclined sleeping position which supports the spine in its natural curvature while a person is sleeping on the back. Its unique and patented design allows the sleeper to roll to either side and supports the body in such a way that it takes the pressure off the shoulder and distributes the weight along the head, neck, shoulder, and rib cage. Since music can be heard through the pillow, both back and side sleeping positions provide a pleasant and restful environment.

Deep into Sleep

Deep into Sleep
While researchers probe sleep's functions, sleep itself is becoming a lost art.
by Craig Lambert

Not long ago, a psychiatrist in private practice telephoned associate professor of psychiatry Robert Stickgold, a cognitive neuroscientist specializing in sleep research. He asked whether Stickgold knew of any reason not to prescribe modafinil, a new wakefulness-promoting drug, to a Harvard undergraduate facing a lot of academic work in exam period.
The question resonated on several levels. Used as an aid to prolonged study, modafinil is tantamount to a “performance-enhancing” drug—one of those controversial, and often illegal, boosters used by some athletes. In contrast to wakefulness-producing stimulants like amphetamines, modafinil (medically indicated for narcolepsy and tiredness secondary to multiple sclerosis and depression) does not seem to impair judgment or produce jitters. “There’s no buzz, no crash, and it’s not clear that the body tries to make up the lost sleep,” reports Stickgold. “That said, all sleeping medications more or less derange your normal sleep patterns. They do not produce normal sleep.” Even so, the U.S. military is sinking millions of dollars into research on modafinil, trying to see if they can keep soldiers awake and on duty—in Iraq, for example—for 80 out of 88 hours: two 40-hour shifts separated by eight hours of sleep.
“No—no reason at all not to,” Stickgold told the psychiatrist. “Not unless you think sleep does something.”

When people make the unlikely claim that they get by on four hours of sleep per night, Stickgold often asks if they worry about what they are losing. “You get a blank look,” he says. “They think that sleep is wasted time.” But sleep is not merely “down time” between episodes of being alive. Within an evolutionary framework, the simple fact that we spend about a third of our lives asleep suggests that sleep is more than a necessary evil. Much transpires while we are asleep, and the question is no longer whether sleep does something, but exactly what it does. Lack of sleep may be related to obesity, diabetes, immune-system dysfunction, and many illnesses, as well as to safety issues such as car accidents and medical errors, plus impaired job performance and productivity in many other activities.
Although the modern era of sleep research started in the 1950s with the discovery of REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep, the field remained, well, somnolent until recently. Even 20 years ago, “The dominant paradigm in sleep research was that ‘Sleep cures sleepiness,’” says Stickgold. Since then, researchers have developed a far more complex picture of what happens while we snooze. The annual meetings in sleep medicine, which only this year became a recognized medical specialty, now draw 5,000 participants. Harvard has long been a leader in the area. The Medical School’s Division of Sleep Medicine, founded in 1997 and chaired by Baldino professor of sleep medicine Charles Czeisler, has 61 faculty affiliates. The division aims to foster collaborative research into sleep, sleep disorders, and circadian biology, to educate physicians and the lay public, to influence public policy, and to set new standards of clinical practice, aiming, as its website (www.hms.harvard.edu/sleep) declares, to create “a model program in sleep and circadian biology.”

A Culture of “Sleep Bulimia”
Imagine going on a camping trip without flashlights or lanterns. As the sun sets at the end of the day, daylight gradually gives way to darkness, and once the campfire burns down, you will probably go to sleep. At sunrise, there’s a similar gradient in reverse; from the beginning of time, human beings have been entrained to these cycles of light and dark.
Homo sapiens is not a nocturnal animal; we don’t have good night vision and are not especially effective in darkness. Yet in an instant on the evolutionary time scale, Edison’s invention of the light bulb, and his opening of the first round-the-clock power plant on Pearl Street in Manhattan in 1882, shifted our time-and-light environment in the nocturnal direction. At the snap of a switch, a whole range of nighttime activity opened up, and today we live in a 24-hour world that is always available for work or play. Television and telephones never shut down; the Internet allows you to shop, gamble, work, or flirt at 3 a.m.; businesses stay open ever-longer hours; tens of millions of travelers cross multiple time zones each year, worldwide; and with the growth of global commerce and communication, Wall Street traders may need to rise early or stay up late to keep abreast of developments on Japan’s Nikkei exchange or at the Deutsche Bundesbank.
Consequently most of us now sleep less than people did a century ago, or even 50 years ago. The National Sleep Foundation’s 2005 poll showed adult Americans averaging 6.8 hours of sleep on weeknights—more than an hour less than they need, Czeisler says. Not only how much sleep, but when people sleep has changed. In the United States, six to eight million shift workers toil regularly at night, disrupting sleep patterns in ways that are not necessarily amenable to adaptation. Many people get only five hours per night during the week and then try to catch up by logging nine hours nightly on weekends. “You can make up for acute sleep deprivation,” says David P. White, McGinness professor of sleep medicine and director of the sleep disorders program at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. “But we don’t know what happens when people are chronically sleep-deprived over years.”
“We are living in the middle of history’s greatest experiment in sleep deprivation and we are all a part of that experiment,” says Stickgold. “It’s not inconceivable to me that we will discover that there are major social, economic, and health consequences to that experiment. Sleep deprivation doesn’t have any good side effects.”
All animals sleep. Fish that need to keep swimming to breathe sleep with half their brains while the other half keeps them moving. It is uncertain whether fruit flies actually sleep (“We can’t put electrodes in their brains,” says White), but they seem at least to rest, because for extended periods they do not move. When researchers stopped fruit flies from resting by swatting at them, the flies took even longer rest periods. When lab technicians added caffeine to the water that the flies drank, they stayed active longer—and also rested longer after the drug wore off, evidence that the caffeine had disrupted their resting patterns.
Sleeping well helps keep you alive longer. Among humans, death from all causes is lowest among adults who get seven to eight hours of sleep nightly, and significantly higher among those who sleep less than seven or more than nine hours. (“Those who sleep more than nine hours have something wrong with them that may be causing the heavy sleep, and leads to their demise,” White notes. “It is not the sleep itself that is harmful.”)
Sleep is essential to normal biological function. “The immune system doesn’t work well if we don’t sleep,” says White. “Most think sleep serves some neurological process to maintain homeostasis in the brain.” Rats totally deprived of sleep die in 17 to 20 days: their hair starts falling out, and they become hypermetabolic, burning lots of calories while just standing still.
There once was a fair amount of research on total sleep deprivation, like that which killed the rats. Doctors would keep humans awake for 48, 72, or even 96 hours, and watch their performance deteriorate while their mental states devolved into psychosis. For several reasons, such studies rarely happen any more (“Why study something that doesn’t exist?” asks White) and researchers now concentrate on sleep restriction studies.
In this context, it is important to distinguish between acute and chronic sleep deprivation. Someone who misses an entire night of sleep but then gets adequate sleep on the following three days “will recover most of his or her normal ability to function, ” Czeisler says. “But someone restricted to only five hours of nightly sleep for weeks builds up a cumulative sleep deficit. In the first place, their performance will be as impaired as if they had been up all night. Secondly, it will take two to three weeks of extra nightly sleep before they return to baseline performance. Chronic sleep deprivation’s impact takes much longer to build up, and it also takes much longer to recover.” The body is eager to restore the balance; Harvard undergraduates, a high-achieving, sleep-deprived population, frequently go home for Christmas vacation and pretty much sleep for the first week. Stickgold notes that “When you live on four hours a night, you forget what it’s like to really be awake.”
Sleep researcher Eve van Cauter at the University of Chicago exposed sleep-deprived students (allowed only four hours per night for six nights) to flu vaccine; their immune systems produced only half the normal number of antibodies in response to the viral challenge. Levels of cortisol (a hormone associated with stress) rose, and the sympathetic nervous system became active, raising heart rates and blood pressure. The subjects also showed insulin resistance, a pre-diabetic condition that affects glucose tolerance and produces weight gain. “[When] restricted to four hours [of sleep] a night, within a couple of weeks, you could make an 18-year-old look like a 60-year-old in terms of their ability to metabolize glucose,” Czeisler notes. “The sleep-deprived metabolic syndrome might increase carbohydrate cravings and the craving for junk food.”
Van Cauter also showed that sleep-deprived subjects had reduced levels of leptin, a molecule secreted by fat cells that acts in the brain to inhibit appetite. “During nights of sleep deprivation, you feel that your eating goes wacky,” says Stickgold. “Up at 2 a.m., working on a paper, a steak or pasta is not very attractive. You’ll grab the candy bar instead. It probably has to do with the glucose regulation going off. It could be that a good chunk of our epidemic of obesity is actually an epidemic of sleep deprivation.”
Furthermore, “Many children in our society don’t get adequate amounts of sleep,” Czeisler says. “Contrary to what one might expect, it’s common to see irritability and hyperactivity in sleep-deprived children. Is it really surprising that we treat them with wake-promoting drugs like Ritalin?” Schools and athletic programs press children to stay awake longer, and some children may be chronically sleep-deprived. Czeisler once took his daughter to a swim-team practice that ran from eight to nine o’clock at night, and told the coaches that this was too late an hour for children. “They looked at me like I was from another planet,” he recalls. “They said, ‘This is when we can get the pool.’”
Stickgold compares sleep deprivation to eating disorders. “Twenty years ago, bulimics probably thought they had the best of all worlds,” he says. “They could eat all they wanted and never gain weight. Now we know that they were and are doing major damage to their bodies and suffering major psychological damage. We live in a world of sleep bulimia, where we binge on weekends and purge during the week.”

See the rest of the article here

Sleep Disorders and Aging Overview

Are you one of millions of seniors in the US who think life would be pretty good….if you could just get some sleep? Sleep disturbances are very common in older people. Changes in sleep patterns may be a normal part of aging, but many other factors common in older people contribute to sleep problems. These include physical illness or symptoms, medication side effects, changes in activity or social life, and death of a spouse or loved one. Sleep disorders decrease quality of life in older people by causing daytime sleepiness, tiredness, and lack of energy.

Poor quality of sleep also can lead to confusion, difficulty concentrating, and poor performance on tasks. Sleep disorders also are linked with premature death. The biggest sleep problem in older people is a feeling of not getting enough sleep (insomnia) or not being rested.
Many take longer to fall asleep than they did when younger.
Elderly people actually get the same amount of sleep or only slightly less sleep than they got when younger, but they have to spend more time in bed to get that amount of sleep.


The sensation of insomnia often is due to frequent nighttime awakening. For example, older people tend to be more easily wakened by noises than younger people.
Daytime napping is another cause of nighttime wakefulness. Older people are more likely to be sleepy during the day than younger people, but too much sleepiness during the day is not part of normal aging.

Why You Need Sleep

The average kid has a busy day. There's school, taking care of your pets, running around with friends, going to sports practice or other activities, and doing your homework. Phew! It's tiring just writing it all down. By the end of the day, your body needs a break. Sleep allows your body to rest for the next day.

Everything that's alive needs sleep to survive. Even your dog or cat curls up for naps. Animals sleep for the same reason you do - to give your body a tiny vacation.
Not only is sleep necessary for your body, it's important for your brain, too. Though no one is exactly sure what work the brain does when you're asleep, some scientists think that the brain sorts through and stores information, replaces chemicals, and solves problems while you snooze.

Most kids between 5 and 12 get about 9.5 hours a night, but experts agree that most need 10 or 11 hours each night. Sleep is an individual thing and some kids need more than others.
When your body doesn't have enough hours to rest, you may feel tired or cranky, or you may be unable to think clearly.

You might have a hard time following directions, or you might have an argument with a friend over something really stupid. A school assignment that's normally easy may feel impossible, or you may feel clumsy playing your favorite sport or instrument.
One more reason to get enough sleep: If you don't, you may not grow as well. That's right, researchers believe too little sleep can affect growth and your immune system - which keeps you from getting sick.

What are the types of sleep apnea?

There are three types of sleep apnea.
Types of Sleep Apnea
Type
Description
Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA)
The most common type of sleep apnea. Caused by a breathing obstruction, which stops the air flow in the nose and mouth.
Central Sleep Apnea (CSA)
A rare type of sleep apnea which occurs when the brain signal that instructs the body to breathe is delayed. This central nervous system disorder can be caused by disease or injury involving the brainstem, such as a stroke, a brain tumor, a viral brain infection, or a chronic respiratory disease.
Mixed sleep apnea
A combination of the two other types of sleep apnea, Obstructive Sleep Apnea and Central Sleep Apnea.
source-helpguide.org

Snoring vs. sleep apnea

Is snoring the same as sleep apnea?
Snoring and sleep apnea are not the same thing. Snoring is simply a loud sound that you make during breathing while asleep. Snoring may accompany sleep apnea, but snoring by itself does not mean that breathing has stopped.

What are the signs and symptoms of sleep apnea?
Warning signs and symptoms of sleep apnea are:
Frequent cessation of breathing (apnea) during sleep. Your sleep partner may notice repeated silences from your side of the bed.
Choking or gasping during sleep to get air into the lungs
Loud snoring
Sudden awakenings to restart breathing
Waking up in a sweat during the night
Feeling unrefreshed in the morning after a night’s sleep
Headaches, sore throat, or dry mouth in the mornings after waking up
Daytime sleepiness, including falling asleep at inappropriate times, such as during driving or at work