Tag: insomnia depression

The Struggle Is Real If You Can’t Sleep

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We all can’t wait to hit the bed after working or studying so hard during the day. Our feet take us to faraway places and we get to push our body’s limit but our body badly needs to rest and recuperate once night time falls. You can only do so much during the day and the effort and exertion will take its toll on your body.

However, there are instances when going to sleep is easier said than done. Aside from too much preoccupation with smart gadgets and social media, there are sleeping conditions that affect our sleeping patterns big time. Have you ever heard of sleep apnea? Probably not. However, you have likely heard snoring people for years now, right?

Sleep apnea refers to interrupted breathing during sleep. Obstructive sleep apnea is the most common form of sleep apnea. It is a serious disorder that causes the throat to close until airways become blocked and breathing gets interrupted or stops for a varying amount of time during sleep. This may decrease oxygen supply to the brain, causing people to wake up multiple times in the middle of the night.

Common symptoms are breath pauses, frequent snoring and choking or gasping sounds during sleep. Those who suffer from sleep apnea often feel fatigue throughout the day and, in some cases, people will unintentionally fall asleep at undesired times. The lack of sleep causes people to wake up feeling unrefreshed and with morning headaches. Untreated sleep apnea can worsen and in some cases result in medical problems including high blood pressure, diabetes, stroke and depression.

(Via: http://triblive.com/news/healthnow/inaheartbeat/12210626-74/how-to-identify-and-treat-sleep-apnea)

While snoring is a symptom of sleep apnea, not all snorers actually have the condition. It is why getting yourself checked in a sleep clinic is crucial if you are worried and want to confirm diagnosis so you can get appropriate treatment as well.

Bonk, a Hockessin resident, dismissed his symptoms as a side effect of working too hard at his former job as public relations director for the Blood Bank of Delmarva. But things kept getting worse. He began to fall asleep while driving at night, only narrowly avoiding collisions on a few occasions. While on a camping vacation with his daughters, Bonk was kicked out of the tent for snoring too loudly.

Finally, he decided to get professional help. His doctor ordered him to get a test for sleep apnea, a disorder that disrupts a patient’s breathing while sleeping. The test revealed Bonk stopped breathing as much as 30 times an hour.

“I was shocked,” Bonk said.

Bonk is one of 22 million Americans who suffers from sleep apnea, according to data from the American Sleep Apnea Association. The same organization estimates that more than 80 percent of sleep apnea cases are undiagnosed

Sleep apnea is characterized by loud snoring that occurs before a person stops breathing. The breathing pause can last a few seconds or several minutes and may happen many times during the night. It has been linked to daytime sleepiness and a host of other diseases.

(Via: http://www.delawareonline.com/story/money/2017/04/21/businesses-benefit-sleep-apnea-awareness/100706878/)

It is not only your health that is compromised with sleep apnea but your safety, as well as other bothersome symptoms, can put your life at risk, not to mention the scary part of breathing pauses while sleeping at night. As awareness about the condition increases, more and more people who have sleeping issues get themselves checked in sleep clinics to save themselves from potentially deadly complications. Partners of snorers also lose sleep because the snoring is just too loud that falling asleep is virtually impossible.

Fortunately, newer technologies also enabled the experts to come up with innovative solutions to this annoying and deadly problem of sleep apnea. Anti-snoring mouthpieces like https://snoringmouthpiecereview.org/good-morning-snore-solution can offer relief from snoring and save the snorer from those deadly breathing pauses while you can also look into https://snoringmouthpiecereview.org/snorerx as a possible solution. There are much more similar products in the market so you can be sure you’ll be able to find one that can offer you relief without having to go under the knife or use an inconvenient old remedy like CPAP.

If You Build It: Can Our Offices Impact Our Sleep?

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For those who work outside the home, you spend more time in a potentially cold, square building than you do in your comfortable home. The average person works 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. That’s a lot of time to spend out of the house. We all know that the relationships we have at work can influence our home lives, but can the buildings themselves hold any power over how we sleep or how we feel after we’ve punched out for the day? The answer to that is a bit astounding:

The key to working better, sleeping better, and feeling better could be rooted in the design, maintenance, and operation of the buildings where we spend the majority of our time, a new Harvard study has found.

The national study, conducted by researchers at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s Center for Health and the Global Environment (CHGE) and SUNY Upstate Medical, is the first to show that working in high-performing, green-certified buildings can improve employee decision-making using objective cognitive simulations.

Researchers looked at 10 high-performing buildings in five cities across the United States, including Harvard’s double LEED Platinum Blackstone Southbuilding. The team collaborated with the Office for Sustainability (OFS) and Harvard Real Estate to use Blackstone as a “living laboratory” to study the relationship between building conditions and occupants’ productivity and well-being.

The study found that occupants in high-performing, green-certified office environments scored 26 percent higher on tests of cognitive function, had 30 percent fewer symptoms of sick building syndrome, and had 6 percent higher sleep quality scores than those in high-performing but noncertified buildings.

“Our University is the perfect test bed for innovation and research related to buildings and health. Through our partnership with the Office for Sustainability, we were able to kick off our study at the Blackstone buildings at Harvard before scaling our research to four other cities across the U.S.” said Piers MacNaughton, a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Chan School and project manager for the study.

Twenty-four Harvard employees agreed to participate in the weeklong health assessment, which included two cognitive function tests, daily surveys, and wearing watches that tracked sleep quality. On each testing day, environmental conditions, such as thermal conditions and lighting, were also monitored in each participants’ workspace.

In addition to the overall effect from being in a better building, several specific factors were found to have impacts on participants’ cognitive function scores. The high-performing, green-certified buildings used in the study had environments more frequently within the thermal comfort zone defined by the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) organization, which resulted in 5.4 percent higher cognitive function scores. Brighter, blue-enriched lighting, such as daylighting, in the green-certified buildings was also associated with better sleep quality at night, which in turn led to better cognitive performance the following day. This finding supports research showing the impacts of lighting on circadian rhythm; a bigger contrast in daytime and nighttime light exposures can help regulate the release of melatonin, the hormone responsible for inducing sleep.

Via: http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2017/02/study-opens-the-door-to-better-sleep-work-and-health/

It seems that no matter how hard we try to keep our work lives and our home lives separate, it’s interesting to see how the buildings that we actually work in can have such an impact on more than just our productivity. If you’re feeling extra sleepy at work, maybe you need to anonymously forward this study to your boss. Small changes like light and greenery can have such a huge impact on how we work and what we can accomplish. If you’ve got that boss whose constantly riding everyone and demanding production be sped up, this may be something they need to consider. Instead of that corner office for themselves, maybe they need to look at changing those lightbulbs.

Suicidal Thoughts and Sleep Problems: A Deadly Combination

posted by under Sleep Health ,

depressionHave you ever wondered what happens while you sleep? It’s simple really: your brain cells replenish, your body grows and your mental state resets for the day ahead. There are recommended hours of sleep for specific age groups for a reason. The younger you are the more your body needs to develop and therefore the more sleep you need. Ignoring your sleep, like most teenagers and young adults do, can impact your health in ways you probably haven’t thought about before.

There are various disorders that can affect your sleep like insomnia, sleep apnea and snoring but did you know sleeplessness can severely impact those suffering from depression? Depression on it’s own can be a debilitating illness. Couple that with sleeplessness and you’re facing a huge wall:

The link between sleep problems and suicidal thoughts and behaviors is made starkly clear in new research from The University of Manchester, published in the BMJ Open.

In this study, conducted by researchers from the University’s School of Health Sciences alongside the University of Oxford, 18 participants were interviewed about the role sleep problems have on suicidal tendencies.

Three inter-related pathways to suicidal thoughts were identified arising from sleep problems. The first was that being awake at night heightened the risks of suicidal thoughts and attempts, which in part was seen as a consequence of the lack of help or resources available at night.

Secondly, the research found that a prolonged failure to achieve a good night’s sleep made life harder for respondents, adding to depression, as well as increasing negative thinking, attention difficulties and inactivity.

Finally, respondents said sleep acted as an alternative to suicide, providing an escape from their problems. However, the desire to use sleep as an avoidance tactic led to increased day time sleeping which in turn caused disturbed sleeping patterns – reinforcing the first two pathways.

Via: http://www.news-medical.net/news/20160824/Night-time-sleep-problems-increase-risk-of-suicidal-thoughts-and-attempts.aspx

If you or someone you know suffers from depression you are most likely painfully aware of how difficult it can be to lead a normal life. There are plenty of treatments available, with or without medication, that can make depression manageable. But it’s difficult to completely get rid of it. When your enemy is your own mind it’s very difficult to win the war.

When you can’t sleep, you can’t quiet your mind. The dark thoughts tend to plague you in the night when you’re defenseless. Human beings are not meant to be nocturnal. We’re meant to sleep in the night and be productive in the day. Failure to adhere to this causes disruptions in our sleep patterns and makes it difficult to function as a member of society.

That is not to say that those who work strictly at night aren’t productive. Those who work during the night tend to sleep during the day for the recommended number of hours they are supposed to be getting. That’s completely different than someone who sporadically sleeps during the day in order to recover from the loss of sleep during the night.

Those who suffer from depression need to make sure they are sleeping properly. It may help to keep a sleep journal and log the amount of time, and when, they are actually sleeping and take it to their health care provider. If their sleep is too fragmented their health care provider can suggest other ways to obtain a consistent amount of sleep. What is the underlying sleep problem? Does the patient suffer from sleep apnea or snoring? There are simple ways to manage those disorders. The more information you can bring in with you to a medical appointment the better your health care provider can help you.

Let’s all try to get the best sleep we can to keep the dark thoughts at bay.