Sleeping pills are prescribed commonly these days. Ambien, Lunesta and a variety of other medications are supposed to help us get the sleep we need. Unfortunately, not everyone who needs these medicines takes them. Even worse, perhaps, is that many folks who take these prescribed insomnia remedies, don’t take them correctly. Learn how to here.
Sleeping pills are prescribed commonly these days. Ambien, Lunesta and a variety of other medications are supposed to help us get the sleep we need. Unfortunately, not everyone who needs these medicines takes them. Even worse, perhaps, is that many folks who take these prescribed insomnia remedies, don’t take them correctly. As a result, they’re not getting the help they so desperately need.
The new batch of pills including the aforementioned Ambien and Lunesta as well as Rozerem and Sonata are relatively safe and not addictive, compared to the older meds such as Halcion. These medications are also supposed to help you get and stay asleep while waking refreshed, not groggy.
That’s obviously good news for those who use the medications.
However, what is the best way to take the medication for your optimal benefit? Remember – sleep medications are not meant as a long-term solution. They are meant as a temporary aid to help you improve your sleep and prevent the serious side effects that a lack of sleep can cause.
Some advice to follow includes:
1) The first time you take the medication, make sure that you take a low dose and are at home.
2) Take the medication as prescribed. Too much is not a good thing.
3) Ask your doctor to prescribe the newer medications to avoid addiction issues.
4) Combine the medication with therapy so that you can work through the things that are keeping you from sleeping in the first place.
5) Do not take the medication every night. Twice a week is good; five times a week is the maximum.
6) Swallow the pill as you getting ready to go to sleep, preferably right before you lay down. This will help you get to sleep and stay there.
Sleeping pills can be a wonderful way to help your body rest and repair itself. You don’t want to over-use them or take the wrong ones.
High-quality, uninterrupted sleep is an integral factor in how you feel as you go about your day. Even so, many (if not most) Americans are not getting the rest they need on a nightly basis. Those who suffer from insufficient or poor-quality sleep frequently find themselves looking to drugstore shelves for a solution.
Stemulite is one of the latest dietary supplements available that can help the body relax and enter a deep state of sleep with ease. If you’re having trouble hitting the pillow each night, natural dietary supplements such as Stemulite can promote a good night’s rest.
The Process of Healthy Sleep
Ensuring a good night’s rest is good for both your body and mind; sleep is a restorative process, and helps with muscle and tissue repair overnight. Stress from the day is eliminated as the body repairs itself and creates healthy cells and muscle fibers to accommodate for any trauma or changes.
Getting quality sleep helps to:
Improve skintone and leave you with a fresh, youthful complexion
Keep you alert and energetic during the day
Boost your metabolism and curb your cravings
Increase the chances of weight loss
Give you the energy and adaptability you need to handle stress
Improve mental and athletic performance
Simply make you feel better
If you are finding yourself unable to achieve the deep, restful sleep you need in order to wake up feeling refreshed, there are several factors that could be causing this, from the firmness of your mattress to what you ate before going to bed. Sometimes, though, there are no obvious solutions. If you’ve tried everything, it may be time to try an all-natural sleep aid such as Stemulite, which is designed to make deep, rejuvenating sleep easier to achieve.
Helpful Hints for Better Sleep
Studies show that melatonin, a naturally-occurring hormone that helps the body repair itself and encourages REM sleep, can help restore the cells overnight. If your body is not producing enough melatonin on a regular basis, the result is often poor quality sleep and symptoms of insomnia – lethargy, foggy thinking, chronic fatigue, poor memory and reduced athletic performance. A few ways to improve the quality of the sleep cycle and increase melatonin production include:
Clearing clutter from your bedroom to encourage relaxation
Sleeping in a quiet room, without too much light
Cutting down on the consumption of caffeine
Using a body pillow to improve your sleep posture
Making sure you are not taking medication that may disrupt sleep
Taking dietary supplements such as Stemulite that increase melatonin production and promote natural relaxation
Though there are many sleeps aids available over-the-counter, it is prudent to be cautious and aware of any side effects that may occur. One should also avoid becoming dependent on poor-quality supplements, as this can end up negatively affecting sleep. With that said, though, there is no question that all-natural supplements such as Stemulite can offer invaluable assistance in solving sleep issues, so that you can wake up feeling rested and tackle the day’s activities with renewed energy and vigor.
The Buffalo Mindfulness Community now has a sister group, Buffalo Mindfulness North. The first meeting of the group will take place Thursday, October 28 at Saint Andrew’s Church. St. Andrew’s is located at 3017 Main Street, near Lisbon in University Heights.
The doors will open at 7:00 PM. Meditation will begin at 7:30. Two rounds of sitting and walking meditation will be followed by either an audio Dharma talk or another round of sitting. The group ends at 9:00. Buffalo Mindfulness North replaces the Wednesday evening Daemen College meeting. Daemen will continue to host the Sunday meeting of the Awakening Community at Rosary Hall.
Friday, November 19, will begin a retreat. The Friday evening talk will begin at 7:30 PM, and the Saturday events will begin at 9:30 AM and end at 5:30 PM. The guest is Shinzen, who will speak about “Unity and Diversity within the Buddhist Practice Traditions.”
There is no cost for the program, and a vegetarian lunch will be provided. Donations are welcomed.
Before I had kids I had some great habits and routines. I ate properly, woke up at 4:30 every morning, exercised hard and often, accomplished so much in my work life that my income soared, and still had plenty of time for fun and relaxation. Somewhere along the road I lost it all. But I know how to get it back.
The road along which I “lost it” is a little path you might have heard of called PARENTHOOD. All my schedules and routines were immediately crushed by the needs of the little people I adopted who were neither aware of my house rules, nor did they care. I slept, ate, cleaned house, and socialized when they allowed it. I lost my business. I lost my mind and I gained weight.
It has taken five years to get my children and family healthy, happy, and adjusted. I guess I just expected my healthy habits and fit body to return as well. It didn’t.
Now I knew that what was missing was my good habits, routines and scheduling and I tried to recapture all that but I kept getting sabatoged by exhaustion. I attributed it to stress, to lack of exercise, to staying up too late, etc. But then I remembered my old sleep strategy! And my life has changed.
The strategy is based on planning your sleep around your body’s natural sleep cycles. Remember when we learned in school about REM (rapid eye movement) and the different phases of sleep? The body sleeps in 90 minutes cycles which are broken down into different phases. For our purposes here we can explain those cycles into 3 phases as follows.
*65 minutes of normal, non REM sleep.
*20 minutes of REM sleep, the very deepest sleep, when dreams occur.
*5 more minutes of of non REM sleep.
That 90 minute cycle is followed by a brief period of almost consciousness as your body prepares for the next 90 minute cycle. You are very easily disturbed at this point and easily awakened. If you plan your wake up call for this moment in your sleep “limbo” you will have the most energetic, refreshing, productive day possible.
It is easy to do.You still want to shoot for 8 hours of sleep. 6 is really the bare minimum and 12 is too much. Keeping those parameters in mind, along with what time you must get up in the morning to be on time at work or school or wherever your day takes you, count backwards in 90 minute increments to find your optimum bed time.
For example. I like to get up at 4:30. Sounds crazy right? But it gives me 2 hours to workout, tidy up the house and simply enjoy some quiet before the kids get up for school. So from 4:30 I count backward in 90 minute increments… 4:30 to 3:00, (1.5 hours, definitely not enough sleep) 3:00 to 1:30 (3 hours, no way!) 1:30 to 12:00 (5.5 hours is still not enough), 12 to 10:30 (7 hours is pretty good. I can handle that if it was a late night of homework with the kids or I rented a good movie) 10:30 to 9:00. (8.5 hours of sleep! Perfect!). So my routine is to be asleep by 9 but I know that if I don’t make it until 10:30 I am in good shape too. By the same token, if I am out very late and don’t get home until the wee hours I would tweek my wake up time to accomodate that 90 minute cycle even if it means 30 minutes less of sleep. Because I know that extra 30 minutes is not going to be as beneficial to me respecting my body’s natural sleep patterns.
I discovered this 90 minute sleep cycle strategy when I was 24 from an amazing and new age-ish co-worker who went on to enrich my life for years with her unconventional wisdom. I used the strategy until I was 35 and went into new mom “just-trying-to-survive” mode. While using the sleep strategy I never had to use an alarm clock, regardless of what time I went to bed. After years without using the strategy I didn’t even hear my alarm clock and I woke up sick and groggy every day despite how early I went to bed.
I don’t know what made me remember the strategy, but I am so glad I did. I suppose it was from finally getting my adopted children settled and coming out of a few years of intensity and challenge. The 90 minute sleep rule changed my life once before and I am enjoying watching it transform my life once again.
Having a good night sleep is important so that you can wake up fresh the next day and be ready for your day. Trouble sleeping is not a great thing for most of us. You’ll have trouble sleeping if you have a medical condition and pain could be keeping you awake. There
some people that will have trouble sleeping from time to time due their particular body response.
You can do several things to help you out in getting a good night sleep. One of those is to exercise or walk around before you go to bed. It works well. When you’re tired you’re most likely to fall asleep better.
The next thing is to avoid drinking coffee, green tea or any drinks that have caffeine in it because it’ll keep you awake. You will want to drink water around bedtime. Coffee will keep you awake for a long time.
The next thing that you can do is to not eat a lot before going to bed. When you eat a lot you can get tire and agitated and feel bad and you will have trouble falling asleep. You’ll get a headache sometimes too.
Next thing that you can do is to keep your room dark and quiet. Keep all noise down in the house. Play soft jazz music to keep neighbor’s noise level down. If you sleep with someone and their snoring or movement is keeping you awake then you should sleep by yourself.
Unfortunately the Internet, the greatest information tool of our time also creates the biggest distraction possible. However, there is an exercise you are able to practice to increase your concentration and make it razor sharp. If your concentration is horrible consider mindfulness exercises.
Unfortunately the Internet, the greatest information tool of our time also creates the biggest distraction possible. With the number of devices all of us have together with the always on attitude it’s become so difficult to concentrate on anything for more than a few minutes. For anybody wanting to be more productive this is a serious problem.
Focus
To make this situation even more difficult, add in a thing called multi tasking. Multi tasking is yet another buzzword, however a lot of people have seen that starting lots of things at once doesn’t mean completing all of them. Now we have multiple things all wanting our attention at once, now our concentration is really shot..
However, there is an exercise you are able to practice to increase your concentration and make it razor sharp. If your concentration is horrible consider mindfulness exercises.
Take away don’t add
When you concentrate on one task at a time you can do a higher quality job and actually complete that task. The important thing here is concentration. Being able to concentrate on a single thing at a time is a skill, that takes practice. Concentrating on one thing at a time is one of key principals of meditation, additionally it is something you can practice with mindfulness exercises.
If you fight to sit still for 2 minutes, you need to develop you concentration. To accomplish this you need to practice some mindfulness exercises.
Be in the moment
The very nature of mindfulness is to entirely focus on one thing at a time, or to be totally “in the moment”. You may have discovered this once or twice when listening to a song, or doing something where you’ve lost track of time. Focusing on one thing may seem simple however it’s far from it.
Try this experiment
Next time you’re at the office, try to work on a document solidly for 10 minutes. Try to focus only on the document and don’t do any of the following things:
This will be impossibly hard. Why? Simply because there will literally be many distractions. It will take a lot of practice to master this. The power of learning this is incredibly useful in a work environment. If you’re able to focus on one thing at a time you will find your level of productivity explode.At home it’s understandable there will be an enormous amount of distraction. If however you can find only a couple of minutes every day to practice concentrating on one thing you’ll easily recognise the benefits.
Using mindfulness exercises to get the job done
With more experience you’ll find you’ll be able to concentrate on things longer and sharpen your focus into a precision laser able to cut through tasks with ease. This is simply an example of mindfulness exercises. Why not learn more about mindfulness exercises and how they could help you!
Chromosomes encapsulate DNA and are responsible for every physical aspect and a host of personality traits of every human body. Humans have 23 pairs of chromosomes. Men and women have all the same types of chromosomes, except one vital pair. In women the last pair will be XX. In men the last pair will be XY. Whether or not the last chromosome pair is XX or XY is determined by the male sperm.
Human Genome Project
The quest for the map of human chromosomes was started in 1990. Surprisingly, the project was fully completed in May 2006. The results have already poured mounds of new information about genetics into the biology world.
For instance, one thing determined was that the X chromosome has many more genes than the Y chromosome. Due to less genetic material from their fathers, males are 6% more genetically similar to their mothers. Male twins are also slightly more identical than female twins due to less genetic information, according to Natalie Angiers, in her book Woman: An Intimate Geography.
X and Y Chromosomes
According to the U.S. National Library of Medicine, it was determined that the Y chromosome contains about 70+ genes. The X chromosome carries about 2,500 genes, and is responsible for about 300 specific diseases, including colorblindness, prostate cancer, hemophilia, baldness, Duchenne muscular dystrophy and many mental retardations, as reported by Jai Dennison at Daily News Central, in his article, “X-Chromosome Studies Unlock Deep Mysteries About Gender Differences.” Women are less likely to suffer from these X-linked genetic diseases due to what is called X-inactivation.
X-inactivation and Mosaicism
When two X chromosomes come together to create a female embryo, X inactivation occurs. During X-inactivation, cells randomly chooses to “shut down” sections of its extra X chromosome to form a “mosaic” of genes.
Consequently, X-linked diseases are more common in men than women, since women have both Mom’s and Dad’s X genes to pull from. Scientists are still discerning just how “random” the X-inactivation process is. Philip Avner and Edith Heard’s article “X-Chromosome Inactivation: Counting, Choice and Initiation” discusses interesting research in this area. Similar to the reason that tortoise-shell cats can only be female, X-inactivation creates a mosaic of X-linked traits in women but not in men, who are subject their single X’s full expression.
Inheritance and the X Chromosome
Because men only have one X chromosome, men may inherit their mother’s genetic diseases related to the X chromosome but will never inherit their father’s X-linked genetic diseases, since men only receive their father’s Y chromosome. While men escape any X-linked diseases from their father, they are vulnerable to and likely to fully develop any of the X-linked diseases given to them on their mother’s X chromosome.
In contrast, women’s double X requires that both parents have a gene an X-linked disease and even then severity of inherited disease will likely vary due to the fact that during female development random sections of the X-chromosome are inactivated. A woman is less likely to develop X-linked diseases, and more likely to develop a light instance if a disease should develop.
In conclusion, nature appears to have a “back up plan” for women through X-inactivation, while unlucky men must suffer the full severity of X-linked diseases.
More and More people are being diagnosed with sleep apnea, a problem where you actually are not breathing for periods during the night. I am not a medical professional and will not attempt to explain the reasons why this is happening, but the treatment is usually a machine that is used to keep the air passages open to allow for deep, uninterrupted sleep. There are various types of facial masks used, depending on the need. But, for most everyone, especially those using masks that cover mouth and nose or even the whole face, it requires some adjustment and patience.
While not a medical professional, I am mentioning some things that were helpful to me as I experienced this adjustment. The good news is that it is worth the trouble! You may not realize how little rest you have had until you know what it is to deeply and soundly sleep. For many, like myself, with a serious sleep apnea, it can be life-changing!
Instructions Things You’ll Need:
Step 1
Listen carefully to what your doctors’ and technicians say to you. And don’t hesitate to call them back with questions and problems. At your sleep test, you may begin treatment or determination of prescriptions. IN this setting, a prescription is the setting for your machine. Depending on your severity, the higher settings require a machine that breathes in and out since it would be difficult to exhale against the very high pressure. Usually, they will work you up gradually to the higher pressure. Also the machine has a ramp where it increases from a lower setting as you fall off to sleep.
Step 2
Don’t forget to use distilled water in your machine. not Bottled water but distilled. VERY IMPORTANT> I found that I do better with the heat setting on; I thought I wouldn’t since I am hot all the time with menopausal hot flashes. But, the heat setting seems to be soothing and opens up the airways some. I was having trouble using mine until I turned the heat on.
**Be careful when transporting your machine to empty out the water reservoir first…….It leaks everywhere!(experience)
Step 3
At first it feels very uncomfortable to have the air blowing in your face. Small sessions at a time are good, while watching a favorite tv program or listening to a book on tape. I like to listen to foreign language tapes. It is best not to focus on the actual mechanics of breathing.
Tips & Warnings
Step 1
Put a pillow over your head to drown out the noise You’ve looked forward to getting back to bed since you arose in the early morning. Ahhh, all settled in, and what is that horrible noise you hear? Oh no! How are you going to survive another night with “the snorer”. He’s oblivious to your pain. He’s already out, mouth hanging open and horrible sounds emanating from his throat. You think about the dreadful things you want to do to him . But you can’t, because 1st, you don’t want to spend the rest of your life in a jail cell, and secondly you have to find a civil solution to this. Try pushing him and tell him to ‘roll-over’. It didn’t work? Put your pillow overtop your own head, even though you’d rather put it overtop his head!
Step 2
Sleeping peacefully on the couch Still not working? Nudge him again. No response? The couch is the next step. Either him or you, it’s got to be done. Send him packing to the couch, or the spare bedroom. Sleep deprivation is unhealthy for you also.
Step 3
Pillow fight for your health. You’re feeling even more disturbed, because through the walls of your house, you can still hear that, that, that,,man sound again! Do something constructive. If he’s going to keep you awake, then all is fair in love and war. Wake him up with a pillow fight!! The kind you had with your sisters or brothers when you were young! This may relieve some of the stress and tension and maybe even be fun.
Step 4
C-Pap Machine saves lives. Make a Doctor appointment for your spouse to have a sleep study test done. This only takes a phone call, and it will be better for his health and yours if he goes away for one night to be studied. He may have sleep apnea, and this could be causing him to stop breathing, and then he grabs a long breath and a loud wretched snore. In the long run, you will have a happier, healthier, safer life with your spouse, because you’ll both be getting the proper sleep you need. Do this instead of divorcing him. He can’t help he’s got a problem, and this is a ‘fix-it’ kind of thing in a marriage! This I know personally. This is how I kept from having him euthanized! I do mean some of this in jest, but really, sleep apnea is jeopardizing his health
I have struggled with the organic food prices for awhile. On the one hand I would love to only eat organic foods and foods and groceries from local farmers. I want to support my local economy and businesses. However, I have four children and the portions are ridiculously small for a family of five. There is barely enough in one package for two of my children, let alone all four of them. I realize they are smaller for a reason and there is less processing, which is great. They are natural, fewer additives and preservatives, and more natural vitamins and minerals in them. However, none of that does any good if the portion is so small it will never fill my children or myself up. Compound the small sizes with the grossly high prices. Again, I realize the prices are higher because they are not made in bulk, they do come from private farmers, and they are not processed foods. But, again the size is bad enough, but the price is like being slapped in the face. Reason one as to why I rarely eat organic or feed my children organic foods. As much as I would like to at times and I think that maybe somehow they would get something more by me doing so, I simply can not afford it.
Then there is the other problem I do have with organic foods, that besides the extremely high prices and very tiny portions, is that some of the foods are just not very good. Now I know that my taste buds are not use to organic foods and that maybe over time they would adapt to all natural foods, versus highly processed foods. However, explaining why the cereal does not taste the same to a 2 year old is a loosing battle. As for myself, it just does not taste good and as much as I know that I will get over that at some time, the small portions and high prices, make swallowing the food even harder. Reason number two as to why I don’t buy more organic foods.
I guess when it really comes down to it, I would love to buy organic, but I also realize that I can’t afford it, the portions are not reasonable and the quality just is not there. Paying a higher price does not always mean better quality either. Many foods can be listed as organic, because the rules for organic foods are not that strict and the standards are not that high. I just am not willing to pay those prices for organic foods. My family is too large and realistically it just is not good money management to spend three times the going price for food items, because their package says organic.
