sleep | The Health Sessions

How to Sleep Well with a Chronic Illness

This article is written by Danielle B Roberts.

According to the National Health Council, 157 million Americans will be living with at least one chronic illness. An illness is considered to be chronic if the duration is three months or longer. Some examples of common chronic illnesses are diabetes, heart disease, endometriosis, lupus, Parkinson’s disease, and multiple sclerosis.

Due to the pain and restlessness caused by chronic illnesses, many people who have a chronic illness also suffer from insomnia. About 60 million Americans suffer from insomnia. Insomnia too can be a chronic condition.

You are considered to have insomnia if you have or do any of the following:

Difficulty falling asleep
Coming in and out of sleep in the middle of the night
Waking up earlier than expected
Fatigue during the day
The feeling of being unrefreshed when you wake up
Difficulty focusing and remembering

These are just a few of the symptoms one can experience from insomnia. Insomnia can bring on its own battles as well. Insomnia can cause you to have anxiety, depression, mood swings, and more. If you have a chronic illness, here are some things to try to help your insomnia.

9 Coffee Alternatives to Try If You’re Cutting Back on Caffeine

Does drinking (too much) coffee make you jittery, anxious or makes it harder to fall asleep? You’re not alone.

There’s a lot of conflicting evidence about coffee. Some research states that a moderate caffeine consumption may actually be good for you, while other studies found adverse side-effects of excess caffeine, like insomnia, anxiety and heart palpations.

One of the explanations for these mixed results may lie in your genes. Thanks to genetic variations, some people produce a less active version of the enzyme responsible for metabolizing caffeine than others. If that’s the case, caffeine will stay in your body and brain for a longer period of time. As a result, the physiological effects of caffeine will be more pronounced. That’s why slow-metabolizers experience are more sensitive to consuming caffeine than fast-metabolizers.

And of course, things like your liver health, use of oral contraceptives or being pregnant also play a role in caffeine sensitivity.

Whatever your reasons for wanting to cut back on caffeine, you can still wake up to a warming, energizing drink. Try these 9 coffee alternatives to start your day off with a bang.

5 Best Sleeping Positions for Lower Back Pain

This article is written by Layla Parker from A Sleepy Wolf.

Lower back pain does not only disturb you during your waking hours. It can also embarrass you on your bedtime, preventing you from having a peaceful evening repose.

I bet that many of us are no longer stranger to this condition. After all, multiple causes can mention it. Stress alone has been found out to contribute to the proliferation of back pain. It doesn’t require arthritis or other serious illness before you can sustain this strange predicament.

However, a person should know that lousy sleeping posture can further aggravate the ache in your back. On the other hand, sleeping correctly can also prevent it. Here are the 5 best sleeping positions for lower back pain.

How You Can Benefit from Keeping a Sleep Diary

This article is written by Loraine V. and reviewed by Peter Palmero from topmatress.com.

One of the worst battles you could ever find yourself in is when you start wrestling with your ownself in an attempt to grab some sleep at night. It’s quite difficult to single out the main contributors to a lack of sleep for most people.

Nevertheless, a sleep diary can help you assess your most movements; hence, you should have your list before long and know what to do about it. This is the best route to follow when looking for sleep remedies, because you go back to the root of the problem without having to stuff your body with drugs.

A Fresh Take on Sleep Restlessness: How a Weighted Blanket Could Soothe Your Racing Mind

This is an article by James M. Gregory.

50 – 70 million.

That would be the answer if the question were, “How many people in the US have a sleep disorder?”

That number might seem innocent on its own. So people don’t sleep well, no big deal, right? You might shrug it off if you don’t dig deeper and look at the ominous statistics about fatalities and injuries related to sleep deprivation (as reported by sleepassociation.org):

1,550 fatal and 40,000 non-fatal injuries directly caused by drowsy driving alone
100,000 fatal outcomes related to medical errors caused by sleep deprivation

An issue with the stats

There are gaping flaws in the statistical model we’re using today. Any sleep therapist with a modern approach could probably write an essay on all the things the stats can’t tell you.

The topic is beyond the scope of this article, but let us takes a moment to point out 3 obvious problems:

What constitutes a sleep disorder?
How many people are diagnosed vs. how many are suffering in silence or don’t even know they have a problem?
How many people involved in the sleep-related accidents or medical errors will be open about it?

You see a pattern here – most of the stats we have are subjective. To be honest, the issue of subjectivity is tricky and there isn’t much we can do about it. Furthermore, statistical models have a way of improving on their own as science moves forward and we tweak the models.