Dr. Curtis McElroy

Category: Sleep Disorders

  • Dealing With Insomnia Naturally

    10 Natural Ways To Deal With Insomnia

    Almost all of us suffer from insomnia at some point in time.

    Insomnia can be transient and related to everyday stressors. It can also become chronic, so that nearly every night you have problems getting to sleep or staying asleep throughout the night.

    6 to 10% of the US population suffers from some type of insomnia.

    Women experience this condition two times more than men do.

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    Lack of sleep can lead to serious health problems and consequences including, heart disease and diabetes. It is also a contributing factor to obesity and can increase chances of work and driving related accidents.

    Anyone who has ever experienced insomnia or even poor sleep knows that the day after can be pure misery and can affect work, relationships, and social life.

    The following are ten ways to help yourself get some sleep and avoid the long-term consequences of sleep deprivation brought on by too many nights without proper sleep:

    1. Set a sleep ritual. This means you go through the same behaviors before going to sleep at the same time of night. Rituals train the mind, which regulates the body, and a nightly ritual can go a long way to facilitating a healthy sleep cycle. Your sleep ritual can involve self-care like brushing your hair and teeth, putting on some soothing music, taking a bath with aromatherapy candles, and reading by candle light or even fluffing your pillows before sleeping.

    2. Use a white noise machine. White noise machines are all natural methods to elicit sleep and to ensure a healthy sleep pattern. These machines emit white noise to block out extraneous noises that might interfere with your sleep. There are also those that offer the sound of waterfalls, the ocean, or a babbling brook. Choose a sound that appeals to you and go to sleep with that sound playing all night long or just for a half hour to 90 minutes, depending on whether or not your machine has an automatic stop timer.

    3. Practice meditation. Many people meditate before going to sleep. Meditation involves having a strong mind-body connection, focusing on your breath, relaxing all of your muscles and calming the mind. When your muscles are relaxed completely, you will have less musculoskeletal pain and will sleep better. Meditation is very effective for reducing anxiety, which is a major contributor to insomnia.

    4. Practice hypnosis. Self-hypnosis is similar to meditation except that with self-hypnosis, you will focus on a specific goal, such as getting a calm night’s sleep. You work with your subconscious in order to bring about a state of relaxation conducive to sleep.

    5. Drink lavender or chamomile tea. Both of these herbal remedies can help you feel more rested and ready to sleep. Lavender can be drank in tea form, taken as a capsule containing the dried plant components, or used in essential oil form in an aromatherapy diffuser.

    6. Try qi gong. Qi gong is an ancient Chinese martial art that involves gentle and graceful movements attached to deep meditation and breathing. This can be learned at a health club or from a home DVD. Just about everyone has the skill it takes to do this soothing form of exercise right before bedtime.

    7. Avoid large meals before bedtime. Eating too much before you go to bed can make it uncomfortable to get a full night’s rest. Eat at least 3-4 hours before bedtime, reserving nighttime for a small pre-sleep snack.

    8. Practice Tai chi. Tai chi is an ancient Chinese martial art form that has become a popular exercise for better health. It is a bit more stimulating when compared to qi gong but involves similar movements. Tai chi should probably not be done right before bedtime, instead, do tai chi about 4 hours or more before going to sleep.

    9. Try passion flower. Passion flower is a well-known herbal sleep aid that can be taken alone or used with other herbal sleep aids. It relaxes the mind and frees it from anxieties that plague your nighttime hours. Take it as a tea or use standardized capsules containing dried passionflower.

    10. Practice yoga. Yoga can be a good exercise to do right before bedtime. Yoga involves various poses while concentrating on breathing and mindfulness.

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                   Treating Insomnia With Yoga

    There are several poses, which specifically help to induce sleep and aid with insomnia:

    • Utthan Pristhasana (Lizard Pose)
    • Salabhasana (Locust Pose)
    • Uttanasana (Standing Forward Bend)
    • Prasarita Padottanasana (Wide-Legged Standing Forward Bend)
    • Janu Sirsasana (Head-of-the-Knee Pose)
    • Savasana (Corpse Pose)
    • Paschimottanasana (Seated Forward Bend)
    • Supta Baddha Konasana (Reclining Bound Angle Pose)
    • Parsva Upavistha Konasana (Side Seated Wide Angle Pose)
    • Supta Virasana (Reclining Hero Pose)
    • Supta Padangusthasana (Reclining Big Toe Pose)
    • Savasana (Corpse Pose)
    • Setu Bandha Sarvangasana (Bridge Pose)
    • Viparita Karani (Legs-up-the-Wall Pose)
    • Siddhasana (Adept’s Pose)

    Take a yoga class to see if you like it or purchase a yoga DVD. Establish a routine that you can implement as a nightly ritual before retiring to sleep.

  • Improving Heart Health By Getting The Right Amount Of Sleep

    Get the Right Amount of Sleep to Help Your Heart

    Watching what you eat and making sure you get plenty of exercise are both great health habits to have. But all your hard work can be undone if you don’t get the amount of sleep that you need.

    In fact, studies have shown that people who don’t get enough sleep have the same potential health risks as someone who doesn’t follow a healthy diet or exercise, or as someone who is obese.

    When you don’t get enough sleep, your organs are affected, including your heart. You can’t have a fully healthy heart if you don’t get enough sleep every night. Many people associate cardiovascular disease with genetics, smoking, diabetes, or a diet rich in red meat.

    Surprisingly enough, without getting the sleep your body needs, you’re at risk for cardiovascular disease and it doesn’t matter how old you are, whether you’re at a good weight for your body, or even whether or not you have bad habits that ordinarily contribute to poor heart health such as smoking.

    To lessen your chance of developing heart related disease, you can make sure you get at least seven hours of sleep every night. Studies have shown that not getting enough sleep can cause the health issues that you do have to worsen.

    Someone with diabetes may experience trouble keeping his or her levels within range. That in turn, can raise the risk of a heart attack or stroke. Not getting enough sleep changes the way that your body functions and causes elevated blood pressure and even widespread inflammation.

    You might think that in order to make sure you get enough sleep, that sleeping ten to twelve hours or more would be even better than getting at least seven. But that’s not necessarily true.

    When you sleep too long, you can raise your risk of heart related health problems. If you’re a young adult or adult, you need at least seven hours sleep but not more than nine.

    If you’re a senior citizen, then you need between seven to eight hours of sleep. The amount of sleep that teenagers need is different. Because their bodies and brains are still developing, they need between eight to ten hours up to eighteen years of age.

    Younger children between six and preteen need at least nine but not more than eleven. Before they start school, children should have between ten and thirteen. Toddlers need at least eleven but it’s normal for them to sleep as much as fourteen hours.

    Babies should sleep between twelve and fifteen hours depending on their age. One study showed that people who either didn’t get enough sleep or slept too much had greater odds of dying from heart attacks or heart failure.

    There are many reasons why many people don’t get the right amount of sleep. While some of it can be due to an underlying health problem such as sleep apnea, more often than not, the cause is external.

    One reason many people have trouble sleeping is because it’s not quiet enough. Noise can make it difficult to go to sleep and stay asleep. You might have tried various ways to block out the noise or ignore it, but you just couldn’t get a good night’s rest.

    What you need to help get rid of the noise so that you can sleep is a white noise machine.

    One of the best ones on the market is the HoMedics White Noise Machine. This machine lets you select up to six different soothing sounds for your sleep.

    You can pick rain, the sound of a brook, thunder, white noise, summer night or the ocean. The way that it works is that the sounds block noise based on frequency. The machine masks the noise in the frequencies that would normally jerk you out of sleep.

    Certain little and big noises alike wake you up because the frequency level of what you hear either goes up high or it drops down low. It’s the difference that your ears are attuned to.

    The machine keeps the sounds you’ll listen to at a steady frequency so all you hear is the pleasant, monotonous sound which works to relax you as well as block noise. You can use the machine during the day time as well if you need to concentrate on something and you can’t.

    Sounds work in the background to help your brain focus on whatever task it is that you’re doing. Most people save it for sleep because it does trigger relaxation and helps the body to get ready to sleep.

    You can even set this for how long you’d like it to play. All you have to do is engage the auto-off timer. When you choose this feature, you can pick whether you want it to play for just fifteen minutes or for half an hour.

    It also has the hour long choice. Not only is it useful for when you want to sleep through the night, but the sound machine is also great to use when you just want to take a nap and need to block out sounds.

    You have the option of listening to the sounds at the volume that’s right for you thanks to the adjustable sound control. So if there’s noise coming from next door neighbors or from others in your home, you can turn up the machine to block that out.

    While the machine is perfect for home use, you can take it with you on the go. It’s sized small enough to slip right into a corner of the suitcase and the design is tough enough to withstand travel.

    You can use the cord and play it using electricity or you can use batteries. If you choose the battery option, you’ll need to make sure you get a supply of 4 AA batteries to keep it operating.

Copyright @ 2017 DrCurtisMcElroy