Sleep

Getting your mind to stop racing so that you can settle down and fall asleep is a problem that has probably existed for as long as man has walked on two feet – in fact, it has probably been around since the very first parent found themselves worrying about their child’s errant behavior or their relationship with their spouse.

Whatever it is that is keeping you awake, you are not alone. According to a study done by IMS Health, a company based in Parsippany, New Jersey, your fellow Americans spent over $32 billion dollars during the year 2012 exclusively on sleep aids, and that’s just items like white noise machines to bedding that claims to help you get to sleep. That doesn’t even touch the amount spent by nearly 9 million people who took sleeping medicine (both prescription and over the counter). Continue reading →

British researchers have just published the results of a study that they conducted on over 4,300 adults over the age of fifty, and their findings point to another risk that comes with not getting adequate sleep as we get older. According to their study published in Arthritis & Rheumatology, the scientists were able to determine that when patients reported that the sleep that they got was nonrestorative, they were more likely to experience widespread body pain. Nonrestorative sleep is defined as sleep that does not give any kind of relief for tiredness and which leaves people still feeling worn out afterwards. Widespread body pain is the type that is felt over multiple body parts, such as is experienced from fibromyalgia or the flu.  Continue reading →

With winter hard upon us and the holiday season well past, many of us are finding ourselves struggling to get a good night’s sleep. There are plenty of reasons for this. First and foremost, our work schedules are crazy, and between working long hours and stress haunting our dreams, sleep is a rare commodity. If you have kids their holiday breaks are over and they’re back in school, with projects and meetings that make them overbooked, and by extension so are you. Add to that the facts that come with the cold weather and shorter days: fewer hours of daylight can cause a mild form of seasonal affective disorder, and sleep apnea can be exacerbated by colds, flu, and the dry air from our heating systems. It’s no wonder that our sleep is so disturbed! Continue reading →

No matter how hard we try to make sure that we get the sleep that we need, there will always be those nights that – for whatever reason – we just don’t get the sleep that our bodies need. The problem with this is that most of us are not able to just call in to work or school and just ask for the day off, even though that’s what we’d most like to do.  Continue reading →

We spend about one third of our lives sleeping, so you’d think that it would be something that we would be good at. But many of us have a lot of trouble falling asleep or staying asleep, while others aren’t necessarily doing it in the right position. Though the truth is there isn’t a right or wrong way, there are some positions that are better for some people. Medical conditions can be exacerbated or improved depending on how you sleep, and sometimes sleeping in a specific position can create its own problems. Continue reading →