It is said that it is probable that most Americans and northern Europeans do not get enough sleep. A deficiency in sleep can lead to a shortage of concentration (which means being more accident prone); a weaker immune system (more illness) and depression. It is crucial to have enough quality sleep. We all need sufficient decent quality rest, sufficient good quality food and sufficient decent quality exercise.
Aging, or senescence, has its own peculiar effects on the body. In general, the body’s ability to carry out particular functions slows down – it takes it longer to do things or get over things.
Sleep can become one of the functions that suffers and we call it insomnia. It is very often said that old people need less sleep. This is not necessarily true, but what is the case is that they do often get less sleep.
lots of people suffer from insomnia, not only older people. Worrying is a cause of sleeplessness; younger people tend to worry about financial issues, older folk tend to worry about health complaints. Women tend to suffer from insomnia over than men, maybe they worry more.
Lack of sleep can cause high blood pressure, because the heart is supposed to be resting at night as well, that is it beats more slowly for about eight hours. High blood pressure brings more problems. Unfortunately, we tend to shrug off a bad night’s sleep as if it were a case of bad luck. The truth is it can have much more serious consequences than you first think.
In fact heart disease can be brought about by over sleeping as well as by under sleeping. One of the most common sleeping disorders and also one of the most difficult to detect is sleep apnoea. Doctors cannot detect it without the patient sleeping in hospital. Sufferers do not normally know that they have it.
The spouse is normally the first person to notice the difficulty: the partner wakes up spluttering with a gasp for air like a drowning man. The sufferer usually stops breathing for between ten seconds and two minutes. It can be very frightening for the partner, but the sufferer hardly ever wakes up because of it. This can happen dozens of times a night.
If you experience hardship sleeping for an extended length of time, you ought to seek professional help, but here are a couple of pointers you can try out. Do not do anything after 7 PM to raise your metabolism or blood pressure, so no strenuous exercise and no high calorie foods (like chocolates). A warm drink of cacao or hot milk helps a lot of people to get to sleep, but not if you have to get up often to go to the toilet.
A sherry or a whisky helps others. An alcoholic drink like this at night is not going to turn you into a gibbering alcoholic (some individuals talk such drivel), but it can make sleep reliant on a drink. If you can sleep easily after merely one drink, you will be alright, if you need a great deal more, then the cure is getting to be more of a problem than the illness.
Owen Jones, the writer of this piece, writes on several subjects, but is now involved with obstructive sleep apnea syndrome. If you want to know more, please go to our website at Sleep Apnea Surgery Techniques