Making Changes to Prevent Sleep Apnoea

Sleep apnoea is a disorder that causes the sufferer to stop breathing during sleep for a short period of time. There are different types of sleep apnoea, but the most common is OSA (obstructive sleep apnoea), and is caused by a blockage of soft tissue in the throat. OSA causes the sufferer to move from deep sleep into a lighter stage of sleep, or even wake up for a short period of time. This means they will need time to reach deep sleep again, which is where they gain the most benefit during sleep.

There are treatments for OSA, including CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) machines, surgical splints and even some lifestyle changes. These methods can help ease OSA, and even stop it altogether in some cases, but it will cause less stress and suffering if it can be prevented in the first place.

While OSA can affect anyone, there are factors that will make it more likely, which include being overweight, smoking, drinking alcohol regularly and sleeping on your back. If you fall under one or more of these categories, then you may want to take measures to help prevent the potential onset of OSA. Plus, cutting down on alcohol and smoking, as well as taking on a healthier diet, can offer a number of other benefits to your overall health.

Another way to help stop the onset of OSA is to improve your general quality of sleep and your sleep routine. This is partly because a good sleep routine will allow the most restful night’s sleep possible, but also because OSA can be caused by taking sedatives to help you sleep. Having a natural bedtime and time to wake up will help you achieve a restorative and re-energising night’s sleep.

While these precautions can help stop or delay OSA, will sometimes offer little benefit, as there are other potential factors that can cause it. For example, being male and being over 40 increases the chance of developing OSA. If you think you have OSA, which will show in symptoms such as daytime tiredness, irritability and poor concentration, then you must visit your doctor with your problem.

Tips for Relieving Stress to Help You Sleep

One of the most common reasons for a poor sleeping pattern is feeling stressed. This is because when you are feeling stressed, you will struggle to let your mind relax. Without a relaxed mind, you will then find it difficult to fall asleep. This can become quite a vicious cycle, because a poor night’s sleep will make you more stressed leading to another restless night. There are a number of ways to help ease the feeling of stress, and while they may not be able to relax you completely, they may allow you to at least get a good night’s sleep.

Write Down Your Thoughts – This is one of the best tips for helping to get nagging thoughts off your mind. If you are struggling to sleep because of a particular idea or thought that you are trying to work through, you should write it down in a notepad. This will allow you to organise your thoughts, and also allow you to put them safely aside when it is time for bed.

Switch Your Nightcap – If you drink alcohol before you go to bed as a way of trying to relax yourself, you are really just setting yourself up for a poor night’s sleep, because it dehydrates you during the night, leading to disruptions in your sleep. Swap the alcohol for cherry juice, which has been shown by researchers at Northumbria University to promote healthy sleep, as it contains melatonin, a sleep-promoting chemical.

Exercise at the Right Time – Exercise can be one of the best ways to bust stress, especially if you’re taking part in some form of sport. However, exercising in the three hours before bed can make it harder to sleep, because it will raise your adrenaline levels, making it more difficult to relax. Outside of this three hour period, make the most of your exercise, as you will feel more relaxed and inevitably tired, making sleep a much easier process.

Stick to a Routine – This is a tip that should be followed regardless of your current quality of sleep, as it is so simple and useful. Choose a consistent time for going to bed and for waking up. While it may be difficult at first, once you have kept to the routine for a few nights, it will soon become the norm, meaning you will find sleep comes naturally at these set times.

While these tips can help reduce stress or at least make it easier to deal with, the nature of your problems may mean that they cannot help you get a healthy night’s sleep on a regular basis. If you are feeling very stressed and anxious, especially if it is affecting your work and home life, then a visit to the doctor is a must. They may suggest other methods of coping with stress, such as medication to help the problem, or possibly therapy to help you work through your troubles.

How to Stop Snoring – Part Three

In parts one and two of our useful tips to help stop snoring, we talked about changes that you can make yourself to ease the problem. However, for some people, even drastic self-help may not offer any solution to their snoring. As is the case with any sleep problem or sleep disorder, you should always visit your doctor when it becomes a strain on your everyday life. If this is the case with snoring, and you have tried all other avenues, your doctor may suggest medical treatment. Here are a few different treatments that may help your snoring:

Continuous Positive Airways Pressure (CPAP) – A CPAP machine is a type of breathing apparatus that you wear while you sleep. It is often used for people with sleep apnoea (a sleep disorder that causes lapses in breathing during sleep), but can also offer a benefit to snorers. This is because it will help keep the airways more fully open, reducing the intensity of the snoring.

Surgery – For many snorers, the idea of surgery to correct the problem can seem quite drastic, but those with persistent and severe snoring could really benefit from some simple procedures. Uvulopalatopharyngoplasty (UPPP) is an example of a common surgical procedure, which increases the airways by removing some of the excess soft tissue in the throat.

Dental and Facial Appliances – These are simply the collective names for a number of devices that attach to the face or part of the mouth. They are often similar to temporary braces or sports mouth guards. They usually work by helping to keep the mouth and tongue in a position that does not put unnecessary pressure on your airways.

As you can see, medical treatment can offer a lot of benefits to people who snore, and for some people, it is their only option for getting a consistent and healthy night’s sleep. Many people may feel wary of visiting the doctor for something as common as snoring, but you must ask yourself honestly if it is affecting you or your partner’s life. If the answer is yes, you owe it to yourself to arrange an appointment.

Benefits of Being an Early Bird

Sleep routines and good quality sleep are both important factors, any excuse that most people have for not doing important things is lack of time, therefore the answer to that is too wake up earlier. Getting up early in the morning has many benefits to your day and the way that you feel. You will feel more positive if you wake up early, as you will be able to accomplish more. You are also much more productive first thing in the morning after a good nights sleep so even waking up that extra hour earlier you will be able to get much more done during your day. Here are some good reasons for waking up that little bit earlier in the mornings:

1. Work on Yourself
First thing in the morning is great for personal development. You can use that extra time in the morning to read or learn something new or to take on a new hobby. Many people enjoy going to the gym or running at that time in the morning to start your day off with some exercise which will make you more alert throughout the day. Doing work in preparation for your day will help to get your mind active and make you feel organised at work.

2. Increase your Productivity
Starting earlier will make your day longer, giving you plenty of time in the late afternoon and evenings to spend doing things that you enjoy and having more social time. You become much more efficient during the day and do things to the best of your ability.

3. Clear Morning Thinking
“The quiet of the morning is often the time when your mind is at its clearest and most well-suited to solving important problems”. — Jim Citrin. Your best solutions and ideas can often come in the morning. It is much more beneficial to forget about your problems at night and have a long restorative nights sleep, waking up with a clear mind in the morning when you are more rational to deal with any issues.

4. Avoid the Traffic
Waking up earlier will allow you to set off to work a little bit earlier so that you miss the morning rush. If you sit in traffic jams in the morning it can put you in a bad mood for the rest of the day and make you feel tired. Avoiding the traffic will give you time to calmly get to work and enough time when you arrive and relax before you start.

In order to have an early morning you need to get a relatively early night. Ensure that you leave at least eight hours before your alarm goes off so that your body can rest and restore itself and you wake up feeling refreshed and ready to take on your daily tasks.

The Relationship between Exercise and Sleep

One rule we always stress about getting a restful night’s sleep is that you shouldn’t exercise in the three hours before you go to bed. The problem with doing this is that when you begin exercise, your adrenaline levels will increase, which raises your heart rate and blood pressure. This means it will be more difficult to relax in the hours after exercise. However, exercise at other times of the day can actually help you to get a more restful and relaxing night’s sleep.

There are many types of exercise that you can undertake to help you sleep better, and if you’re looking to begin a healthier lifestyle, then better sleep will just be an added bonus to a new exercise regime. One type of exercise that is particularly useful when it comes to sleep is yoga. Yoga helps to relieve stress and tension by carrying out a number of different stretching exercises, which will help you ease effortlessly into sleep.

All cardiovascular exercise is also good for sleep, as long as it is not in the three hours before bedtime. You can do this at the gym, or even just go for a simple jog or power walk. If you can raise your heart rate for just 20-30 minutes a day, you will notice the benefit when it comes to your sleep.

Always remember not to exercise in the three hours before bed time, because you will essentially be doing the opposite of promoting healthy sleep, but exercise outside of this is always useful. Not only does it help you sleep better, but it will offer a number of benefits towards an overall healthier lifestyle.

How to Stop Snoring – Part Two

As mentioned in part one, snoring can be caused by many factors, and it can sometimes be helped by simple tips that you can try out at home. However, sometimes it takes more than one night to ease your snoring, and if the tips in part one were unsuccessful, you may want to try out some more long-term lifestyle changes to help you with your problem:

Lose Weight – Being overweight is one of the most common causes of snoring, because the weight gain causes excess fat tissue to build in the back of the throat, which impedes your airways. Even losing a small amount of weight can sometimes help. If you have been gaining weight and have recently began snoring, then this change could really help you and your bed partner.

Quit Smoking – Smoking is another common cause of snoring, because your airways can become blocked when the smoke irritates the membranes in the nose and throat. Quitting smoking, or at least cutting down can show a significant improvement on your snoring, as well as a number of other health benefits.

Exercise – As long as it is not in the three hours before bed, exercise, over a period of time, can help you to stop snoring. Any upper body work, such as on your arms, shoulders, chest and core, will also help improve muscles in the neck and throat. After a period of regular exercise, these muscles will become firmer, helping you to stop snoring in the process.

Develop a Sleep Routine – Developing a consistent and regular sleep routine has so many benefits to your quality of sleep, potentially including reducing snoring. Going to bed at the same time every night and waking up at the same time on a morning can help give you a more restful sleep and cut out any disturbances in your sleep. These disturbances can often be what lead to snoring in the first place.

Making a change to your lifestyle can often help to reduce or even stop snoring if you stick to them, as well as offering a wide range of other benefits. Hopefully these tips will be of benefit to you. If you don’t notice an improvement using these changes, or if persistent snoring is having an effect on you or your partner’s everyday life, then you should visit your doctor, who may be able to suggest a more effective form of treatment.

Tips to Help Stop Snoring – Part One

Snoring is the most common sleep disorder, and is estimated to affect roughly 30 percent of people. It can be a common cause for arguments amongst bed partners if one or both are regular snorers. Determining the cause of snoring can be a big part of overcoming it, and it can often be attributed to multiple factors.

Common causes of snoring include being overweight, smoking, sleep position and eating before bed. It can even be caused by simply getting older, as your throat becomes narrower and your muscle tone in the throat and neck weakens as you age.

There are many tips for stopping snoring, from quick changes, to drastic measures. This article deals with the simplest tips that can easily be tried out for one night to see what effect it has. If these don’t work, then it may be time to move on to more significant measures.

Elevate Your Sleeping Position – While most of us will have a comfortable sleeping position, it could be the root cause of snoring for many people. Try sleeping with a thicker or extra pillow to elevate your sleeping position, which could help open your airways while you sleep.

Sleep on Your Side – Sleeping on your back means your tongue can obstruct your airways, which is a common cause of snoring. For many people, switching to sleeping on their side can be difficult, but using the ‘tennis ball technique’ can help. This involves placing a tennis ball in the back of your pyjama shirt or t-shirt. You are then unable to roll onto your back, and eventually become accustomed to sleeping on your side.

Use a Humidifier – A room with no moisture can dry out your mouth and throat, which in turn can lead to snoring. Using a humidifier adds moisture to the room, helping to stop your throat becoming dry.

Avoid Heavy Meals Before Bed – If you regularly enjoy a large meal or drink shortly before bed, you should try to have your meal earlier and then avoid eating anything significant in the three hours before bed. In particular, avoid a lot of dairy before bed, as it can increase the amount of mucus in your airways.

These are some very simple tips that you can try over the course of a few nights to see whether there is any positive effect on your snoring. If you notice an improvement, then continue on with the particular exercises that have helped. If there is no improvement whatsoever then it may be time to try some more long-term changes that will be detailed in part two.

Better Sleep and Brighter Futures

Getting back to school and back to the normal routine can often be difficult to fall back into. With your children going back to school it is important for you to help them to adopt regular bedtimes. Research conducted in the 1990s suggested that sleep and wake patterns amongst teenagers are biologically determined, giving adolescents a natural disposition to go to bed late and wake up late in the morning, not fitting in with school and college start times. It is important for them to change their sleep cycle so that they can get into school on time and still be productive throughout the day, stopping their current sleep cycles contrasting with their daily routine.

Evidence from research at the National Sleep Foundation found that 60% of children 18 and under were tired during the day and 15% fell asleep in school. A large amount of teenagers are sleep deprived stopping them from working effectively and concentrating during the day.

Some high school students also have part time jobs and work more than 20 hours a week. According to a study at the University of Washington, University of Virginia and Temple University found that this will decrease their engagement and increase problem behaviour. According to researcher Kathryn Monahan, who led the study at the University of Washington. “Students are still most likely to be employed in restaurants, fast food and the service industry, and tend to get paid minimum wage.” Working this many hours will prevent them from getting the sleep they need of at least eight hours a night, they will accumulate sleep debt through the week that they try and get back at the weekend, this can cause them to enter a bad sleep routine and making it difficult to have a healthy sleep hygiene.

Encouraging them to go to sleep at a reasonable time through the week and getting up in time for school will help them have regular sleeping patterns which will stop them from being sleep deprived. It is important to try and encourage them to maintain this routine over the weekend so that they find it easier to stay in a good cycle. Concentration, focus and ability to think clearly are some of the positive effects good sleep can have. It will improve progress and performance in school overall giving better results and a brighter future.

Creating a Healthy Sleep Routine for Students

If you’re a student at college or university, it’s likely that you will have at least one exam or essay to study for in the next few weeks. If this is the case, then things can get very stressful. Most of us who’ve already experienced this will know of the all-night revision sessions, last minute cramming and poor sleep routines. While it can of course be very difficult to avoid these factors, mostly because of the stress that exams and essays create, you are essentially causing yourself problems that could be remedied with better scheduling and a healthy sleep routine.

A typical teenager needs about nine and half hours of sleep a night, falling to about eight hours as they reach adulthood. While everyone is different, most students will fall somewhere between these two figures. However, many students will acknowledge that they do not regularly reach this amount of sleep, and if this is the case, their ability to focus and concentrate during the day will suffer. This is especially worrying during revision and exam time, when good concentration and focus is vital.

There are a few simple ways to help improve your concentration and focus as a student, primarily through improving your sleep pattern. To do this, you should focus on creating a routine. While it will be difficult at first, going to bed at the same time every night and maintaining a consistent waking time can help you develop this routine. A routine will help you feel more refreshed and rejuvenated for the day ahead, meaning you will get more out of time spent revising for exams and essay writing.

Other tips for a better sleep pattern include turning off any electronic devices in the hour before bed, and instead use the time to read a book or just relax. Also, if you revise until the moment you go to bed, you will struggle to let your mind rest, so it is best to allow yourself some time to wind down. While creating a healthy sleep routine may take longer than you have before your January exams, continuing with the process will help you in time for spring and summer exams. The importance of healthy sleep should not be overlooked, and could make a real difference on the outcome of exams and essays.

Powernap Your Way to Feeling Refreshed and Rejuvenated

While the recommended amount of sleep a night is eight hours, many of us will be unable to reach this figure, and some people need even more than eight hours every night to feel fully refreshed and ready for the day ahead. Whether it’s because of responsibility at work and at home, or just an inability to fall asleep easily, the sleep that you are missing out on could have a knock-on effect on your everyday life. This is where a short powernap could really benefit your daily routine.

A nap is a short sleep taken during the day to help you feel more awake. A powernap is essentially the same thing, but taken specifically to have an immediate improvement on your alertness and concentration. A typical powernap, or any nap for that matter, should last no more than twenty minutes. Any longer than this and you will start to enter deep sleep. If this happens, you will wake up feeling groggy, meaning you will feel even more tired immediately after the nap.

If you’re starting to feel a bit sluggish at work, you could take a powernap on your break or at lunch. It is not always easy to find a suitable place to have a nap, especially if you work in an office or retail environment, but a quiet room is usually suitable. A powernap will give you a quick boost, meaning you will notice an immediate effect straight afterwards. To ensure you do not sleep for longer than twenty minutes, you can use the timer or alarm functions available on most mobile phones.

A powernap can never be used as a substitute for a healthy sleep routine, but if you’ve had a poor night’s sleep, or even if you’re just feeling a bit sleepy, it can help your productivity in the short term. In conclusion, you should not feel guilty about wanting a nap during working hours, because it doesn’t automatically make you lazy. As long as you are entitled to a break, there is no reason why you should enjoy the benefits of a powernap.