Circadian rhythms is the changes in your body over the course of a day. For example, in the morning your body changes the levels of the hormones which create the feeling of being awake and alert. In the evening, these levels change again, making you feel sleepy. Circadian is a combination of two Latin words: circa meaning ‘around’ and dies meaning ‘day.’
You body needs to know what time it is. It uses cues like daylight ...
Continue Reading →With the average worker losing 11.3 days of productivity to insomnia each year, employers should be losing sleep
Not sleeping enough can have serious health costs. But it can have pretty big financial costs, too, according to a new study in the journal Sleep. Insomnia is “an under-appreciated problem,” says lead author Ronald Kessler, at Harvard Medical School. “Americans are not missing work because of insomnia,” but they are doing lousy work because they’re tired. “It’s difficult to find a condition ...
Continue Reading →There are five phases of sleep: stages 1, 2, 3, 4 and REM (rapid eye movement). Usually when you are sleeping, you begin at stage 1 and go through each stage until reaching REM sleep, and then you begin the cycle again. Each complete sleep cycle takes from 90 to 110 minutes. Your brain acts differently in each stage of sleep. In some of the stages, your body may make movements, but in others your arms and legs will be ...
Continue Reading →We sleep about one-third of the day, but we know very little about sleep. Understanding these 10 sleep myths will help you clear up misunderstandings and get more and better sleep each night.
Sleep is more than simply a period of rest; it is an essential time for your body to perform routine maintenance, creating long-term memories and repair damage from your day. Sleep brings many health benefits. Getting 7 to 9 hours of sleep each night ...
Continue Reading →Dreams happen during the rapid eye movement (REM) stage of sleep. In a typical night, you dream for a total of 2 hours, broken up by the sleep cycle. Researchers do not know much about how we dream or why. They do know that newborns dream and that depriving rats of REM sleep greatly shortens their lives. Other mammals and birds also have REM sleep stages, but cold-blooded animals such as turtles, lizards and fish do not.
Once reserved for holidays and houseguests, air beds have recently carved out a much broader niche in the bed world, due largely to the efforts of the Sleep Number mattress company, maker of the popular Sleep Number bed. Today’s more robust, upscale air beds look similar to innerspring mattresses, but use air in lieu of coils. For aficionados, the air bed’s most attractive feature is its adjustable firmness, which can be easily tweaked by increasing or decreasing the air pressure ...
Continue Reading →Sleep, we all love it, especially when you wake up from a great night’s sleep. In the past, sleep was often ignored by doctors and surrounded by myths, but now we are beginning to understand the importance of sleep to overall health and well-being. In fact, when people get less than 6 or 7 hours of sleep each night, their risk for developing diseases begins to increase.
Heart attacks and strokes are more common during ...
Continue Reading →“Dreams are the touchstones of our characters.” – Henry David Thoreau
Dreams have fascinated philosophers for thousands of years, but only recently have dreams been subjected to empirical research and concentrated scientific study. Chances are that you’ve often found yourself puzzling over the mysterious content of a dream, or perhaps you’ve wondered why you dream at all.
First, let’s start by answering a basic question – What is a dream? A dream can include any of the images, thoughts and emotions that ...
Continue Reading →Night terrors are a common sleep problem among children. By some estimates, about 15% of younger children have occasional night terrors. Although most common in children between the ages of 2 and 6 years, they can occur at almost any age.
Although usually considered to be normal or benign, they are often very scary and distressing to parents who often overreact, especially during a child’s first night terror.
When you hear how most experts describe night terrors, it is easy to see ...
Continue Reading →According to the American Psychiatric Association, sleep disorders are major disturbances of normal sleep patterns that lead to distress and disrupt functioning during the day (APA, 2000). Not only are sleep disorder extremely common, affecting virtually everyone at some point in their lives, but they can also lead to serious stress and other health consequences.
According to a major survey by the National Sleep Foundation, more than half of Americans reported experiencing at least one symptoms of insomnia several times a ...
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