Care For Your Sleep

Many children hate the time to go to bed. Even if they are tired and their eyes are closing, such children do everything possible to resist their calls to go to sleep and want to stay awake. Many mums have to face this problem, and many mums already know that the best way to calm down their children and make them go to bed is having a pleasant and relaxing “bedtime ritual”. Before you turn off the light and make your child go to sleep, spend some time with him and be sure that nobody can interrupt you two. Show your sincere love and care to your kid, create a warm and friendly environment, and get involved in some interesting and creative activities. You can use some of the strategies, which can make the bedtime for your child wonderful and relaxing.

•    “Our magic carpet”. Select a calm and silent place in your house, which will be good for sitting or laying down together with your child and telling stories. Place a soft carpet or a blanket on the floor, and call it “our flying carpet”. Every evening sit on it together with your child. Let him close his eyes and imagine himself traveling to a wonderland. Start your story by saying: “Today we are going to travel on our magic carpet to…”. Let your child continue your story and choose the places to go to. It can be Disneyland, Africa, Mars or a zoo. Let him fantasize, and help him to continue his story when it is necessary. Go on traveling until your child calmed down and started feeling sleepy.

•    “My Bedtime Diary”.  You will need a notebook or just some sheets of paper. Every evening before going to bed, sit down together with your child and think about the most interesting events of the day. Ask you child, what he liked the most, and write down what he says. Some children enjoy talking about the brightest events of the day, and some children need to be asked additional questions. Learn, what interesting things your child was doing. Was he upset with something? Did he learn something new? What would he like to be written down to his “Bedtime Diary”.

•    “Let’s talk about animals”. Well, children like animals a lot, that is why you can have a conversation related to different animals. Try to ask your child a question: “What do you think, does this day look like any animal?” If your child responded positively on this idea, let him fantasize about animals. This ritual can also be very educative and you can tell your child about various animals and their behavior. For example, you can compare a long summer day with a turtle, and a busy day full of activity can be compared with a monkey, a lizard or a fox. Tell you child: “Today I worked like a tiger, and what animal were you today?”

•    “The Adventures of My Favorite Toy”. Every child has favorite toys, and he always feels safer in bed when one of his toys is next to him. Every evening, make up a story about one of his toys. Let him choose an animal-toy or a doll and ask him to create a story about it. Stimulate his creativity and imagination by asking additional questions. Ask him about the friends of his toy, what it likes or what dreams his toy sees at night, and so on.

•    “Playing with shadows”. Place a sheet of white paper on the wall and use a torch to create shadows in the dark room. Let your child move his fingers and hands between the torch and the wall, making various shadows on the wall. Together with him, try to take a guess, what do those shadows look like, and make up interesting stories about them.

In addition to traditional bedtime reading or massage, those are some alternative easy tactics to help your child calm down before going to sleep. Remember that every child, who has problems with going to bed and falling asleep, requires individual approach. Make your child go to bed at the same time every day, and use one of those evening rituals to relax him. Certainly, you both will enjoy the minutes spent together fantasizing and sharing your feelings. Let your child’s bedtime turn into wondertime, and let him benefit from calm and restful sleep every single night!

Tags: bedtime, bedtime rituals, children's sleep, going to sleep, sleep problems with children

What was your most pleasant dream ever? You were Agent Smith fighting with Neo, or you were acting like James Bond trying to save the girl you love from bad guys. No, no, no: you were in the bedroom with Paris Hilton or you were playing bass for Avril Lavigne. Now, what was your most disturbing dream ever? By the way, did you know that there is a special Dreambank, created by the specialists of the University of California more than a hundred years ago? You can give those guys a call and tell them what kind of interesting dream you saw tonight. This valuable information gives Dreambank specialists a great opportunity to analyze and study our dreams in order to have a better idea about the nature and function of the dreams.

Sometimes, the findings of such researchers are quite remarkable. For example, Dr. Patricia Garfield, an expert and former president of the Association for the Study of Dreams, found out that there are only 12 universal dream patterns that we all basically see at night. The most popular dreams are the ones about chasing or being chased. Dreams about being trapped or getting lost hold the second place. A lot of people also regularly see dreams about falling down and those ones, where a person feels ashamed for his/her clothes. Finally, dreams about being injured also hold a ranking place.

Another interesting discovery was presented by a group of Canadian and Finnish specialists who found out that our dreams are actually perfect training exercises for our minds. Dreams as a phenomenon emerged on early stages of the development of human race and were considered to be a perfect psychological exercise that could help people to learn how to react on various dangerous or threatening situations. “A dream-production mechanism that tends to select threatening waking events and simulate them over and over again would have been valuable for the development of threat-avoiding skills,” says a Finnish scientist and psychologist Dr. Antti Revonsuo.

In addition to all those exciting findings, presented recently on a conference in Boston, experts argue that the fantasies that our brain generates at night depend on our personality type to a great extent. In particular, calm and conservative people tend to see dreams about being chased or falling down. Moreover, specialists underline that the content of our dreams depends a lot on what we see in the news, what we read during the day or what we worry about. This hypothesis was proposed quite long ago by the experts from Tufts University, and in the beginning of the 21st century new evidence for this thoery has come to light. Many people reported that their dreams have changed after the events of 9/11. Therefore, new fears and new worries can affect our dreams and make our sleep less calm and restful.

Tags: 12 universal dream patterns, Dreambank, dreams

There is no need to mention how important it is to have a favorable environment for good and restful sleep. Many factors related to our sleep environment have great effects on the quality of our sleep. How does your bedroom look? What color of the walls, furniture and window curtains do you have there? What type of bed do you have? What kind of light do you have ? Do you have any plants in your bedroom? Is it a good place to hide yourself from outside noise and daily stresses? Ask yourself these questions and analyze the results you received. If you are not satisfied with the style of your bedroom, we can try to improve it together.

First of all, there must be no bright and glaring colors in your bedroom. Pale blue, lavender or whitish green colors have the greatest calming effect and can help you relax and fall asleep easily. It is very important to choose good window curtains for your bedroom. Buy curtains made of natural fabrics as they can protect your room better from street light and dust. Color of the curtains has to match the color of the walls and still be calm and quiet. Do not place a lot of furniture in your bedroom, this way there will be more space for air to circulate.

The light in your bedroom must be soft, relaxing and romantic, but at the same time it must be quite bright. It is better to use several small lights instead of a very bright one. Avoid bright lanterns or the lights that can give direct light beams into your eyes when you are lying down on your bed. If you share your bed with your spouse, make sure that you have a personal light next to your place in order not to bother your other half when you want to read some book before going to sleep.

Now, let’s talk about your bed. Undoubtedly, your tired back and the whole body will have some proper rest only on a comfortable and suitable bed: for example, the one with wooden frame and orthopedic mattress made of natural materials. Do not spare your money for bedding items (such as pillows, toppers, etc.) because the comfort of your back and muscles at night are absolutely priceless. Place your bed next to the wall but not opposite of the bedroom door, window or mirror. Avoid having something hanged on the wall or ceiling over your bed. For better sleep, the head of your bed must be looking to the south.

Keep the air in your bedroom fresh and moderately humid. However, do not overload your bedroom with plants: this will turn your sleeping environment into green-house. Some people like filling their rooms with different fragrances using aroma sticks for this. It is not recommended to do this in your bedroom unless you are sure that this particular fragrance can stimulate your sleep and relax you. The temperature in your bedroom must not be too high or too low. Undoubtedly, everyone has strictly individual approach to the most comfortable temperature, but specialists suggest keeping the warmth in your bedroom on the level of 24-24C.

Remember that your bedroom is your personal retreat. This is the place where you give yourself over to dreams and thoughts, therefore it has to be well protected from any outer noise and sounds. Silence is a key factor for having a peaceful sleep, so avoid placing such things as telephone, computer, TV, etc. in your bedroom. Use your creativity and individuality to make your bedroom better and better, do not be afraid of experimentations, and good restful sleep will be your welcomed guest every single night.

Tags: bed, bedroom, light in your bedroom, restful sleep, sleep environment

Narcolepsy is a chronic neurological disorder of sleep regulation, characterized by overwhelming and excessive periods of sleepiness during the daytime which last from 10 to 20 minutes. Such periods of sleepiness are mostly sudden and brief. They take place without any warning sign and can repeat many times during the day. In other words, a narcoleptic person is under the danger of irresistible sudden attacks of sleepiness during the daytime (even after having some good sleep at night), and can fall asleep in any time and any place. Narcolepsy affects normal life, because narcoleptic people can not control own sleep-awake condition. Cataplexy (the loss of muscle tone) and hallucinations accompanying sudden attacks of narcoleptic sleep, can make narcolepsy harder.

The symptoms of narcolepsy include physical overwhelming and excessive sleeping attacks during the daytime. On the earliest stages of the disorder they happen as a result of boredom, when an individual is motionless and in peace. But after a while, a person with narcoleptic symptoms can start experiencing sleep paralysis (inability to move or to talk when the person is about to fall asleep or right after waking up), automatic behavior (doing daily activities without full awareness), hypnagogic hallucinations (very realistic and sometimes scary visions and dreams) and cataplexy (sudden losses of muscle control of the body, which vary from slight weakness to total loss of control, and are frequently followed by loud reaction of laughter, scream or anger).

The causes of narcolepsy have not been specified clearly yet. The specialists from National Institutes of Health have been analyzing the behavior and sleep patterns of narcoleptic people, trying to find out possible reasons of this disorder, as well as the ways to diagnose and effectively treat it. Medical scientists suppose that this disorder can be connected with biochemical defects of central nervous system, resulting in disturbance of a person’s REM sleep. The specialists have discovered that narcoleptic patients have some irregularities in those parts of the brain, which regulate their REM sleep. Blood pressure is also a key-factor, especially for the cases of cataplexy, because losses of muscle tone are strictly linked to blood pressure changes. Besides, as narcolepsy often happens in all members of the same family, heredity can also be a key point among the causes of narcolepsy.

Diagnosis of this disorder includes physical examination and studying of the person’s sleeping process. There are some ways of treatment, including taking antidepressants and medications from the group of central nervous system stimulants, psychological therapy or doing physical exercises. Stimulants and anti-depressants must be prescribed in order to improve alertness and control muscle paralysis. Besides, specialists can recommend taking planned short daily sleeps, which can help overcoming sudden sleep attacks. Programs of combined treatments can be really effective, though complete recovery from this disorder is hardly possible. You must remember that treatment is strictly individual and depends on the intensity of the symptoms, so it can take weeks or years to achieve some positive results.

About 125,000 people in our country have a type of narcolepsy. It can occur in both women and men of any age, though its symptoms can be mostly found in teenagers or young adults of early twenties. This disorder is usually a life-long problem and for those, who suffer from this disorder it is important to learn more about narcolepsy. There are special support groups to help patients and their families coping with the effects and consequences of this disorder. A number of educational programs are also available in specialized clinics and medical organizations.

Tags: attacks of sleep, cataplexy, hallucinations, narcolepsy, sleep disorder

If you suspect that you might be suffering from insomnia, you should analyze your sleep routine and answer the following questions:

1. Do you have difficulties with falling asleep or maintaining good sleep all night long?
2. Do you usually wake up very early in the morning?
3. Do you feel tired, unrefreshed and restless when you wake up?
4. Do you experience all of these problems even in those situations, when you have an opportunity to go to bed in the most convenient time and sleep as much as you want?
5. If you suspect insomnia in your child, does he refuse going to bed and sleeping alone?
6. Do you have at least one of the following problems:
— lack of energy;
— lack of motivation to do something;
— problems with attention, memory or abilities to concentrate;
— lack of success at work or in school;
— frequent changes of the mood;
— daytime sleepiness;
— frequent mistakes when doing usual daily work or when driving;
— nervous tension, headache and abdominal pains;
— disappointment or worries about own sleep?

If you answered “YES” to all of these questions, there is a big probability that you are suffering from insomnia. In such case, it is very important to find out, whether you have some other reasons causing you problems with sleep. Sleep disturbances and disorders can be the result of various reasons including:
— Chronic medical conditions and neurological complications;
— Long-term use of some medications;
— Substance abuse;
— A psychological disorder;
— Another sleep disorder or disturbance, etc.

Tags: insomnia, lack of sleep, sleep problems, symptoms of insomnia