Care For Your Sleep

Archive for July, 2010

The most updated statistics says that every one of three people suffer from occasional or chronic insomnia, and there’s hardly an adult person in the world, who is not familiar with any of sleep disturbances. Sleep difficulties and insomnia are much less common in men than in women, and if modern young people more tend to have problems with falling asleep when it’s the bedtime, the elderly are most likely to suffer from frequent waking ups at night and having problems with falling asleep again. The scientists are concerned and go on looking for effective natural sleep aid for all age groups.

Recently, the results of an interesting and very promising study were published in the Journal of Medicinal Food. The specialists at the University of Rochester, the University of Pennsylvania and VA Center of Canandaigua united their forces for studying possible effects on sleep duration of such common natural product as tart cherry juice. This delicious berries are famous for their high content of melatonin, a type of antioxidant responsible for sleep cycle duration. This substance can induce sleep and improve wakefulness in the morning.

A group of 15 volunteers was invited to participate the studies. Adult people who suffered from chronic insomnia were offered to drink a glass of fresh unsweetened tart cherry juice twice a day: in the morning and before the bedtime. At that, some participants were given a similar type of fresh juice mix with no tart cherry juice. The trials lasted for 14 days, and as a result, those who were regularly receiving tart cherry juice treat on a daily basis reported about certain improvements in their sleep quality. Also, their sleep cycle increased for 17 minutes in average.

These results made millions of insomnia victims hopeful about receiving a new effective natural remedy for this terrible problem in the nearest future. An American specialist Dr Russel Reiter, of the University of Texas, says that this study could help to find out the ways to stimulate body’s supply of melatonin, necessary to boost sleep. “Cherries may help regulate the sleep cycle and increase sleep efficiency, including decreasing the time it takes to fall asleep,” he commented on the importance of the findings of the study to American mass media.

It is a known fact that some of us like going to bed early and waking up with the first rays of sun. Those people are called “larks”. Other type of people are celled “owls”: those, who like staying awake far after midnight and then sleeping till the afternoon. Such behavior is based on special biological cycle we all repeatedly live through. At that same time, abut 65% of people are “indifferent”, so they do not behave neither as “larks” nor “owls”.

Certainly, scientists are constantly studying behaviors of “owls” and “larks”, and recently, American specialists published the results of their new research showing that those people who love going to bed late at night and sleep till noon more frequently complain of heart problems. This occurs even in the cases when “owls” actually have enough of sleep, or more than 7-8 hours a night.

250 participants took part in the experiments and studies, and scientific evidence was found proving that “owls” have higher chances for cardiovascular diseases. Indirectly, these results show that going to bed earlier, sleeping sufficient amount of time and waking up early in the morning is actually healthy. This is not the first study proving this idea. In particular, according to another study, those women who sleep less than 5 hours a day have 39% higher risks of diabetes than those women who sleep about 8 hours a day.