All night long, you have been tossing and turning on your bed, but still you can't fall asleep. No need to fret about your night time struggles. You are not alone in your battle with insomnia. Sleep problems affects millions of Americans and the numbers seem to rise with each new year. While some people suffer from mild sleeping problems, such as having occasional nightmares, others have extremely severe sleep disorders that can negatively affect their health, if left untreated. This astonishing number means that a huge number of people aren't getting the treatment they need, putting them in danger of permanently damaging their health.
Sleep disorders involve any difficulties related to sleeping, including difficulty falling or staying asleep, falling asleep at inappropriate times, excessive total sleep time, or abnormal behaviors associated with sleep. There are more than 100 different disorders of sleeping and waking that have been identified. They can be grouped in four main categories such as:
Problems with falling and staying asleep
Problems with staying awake
Problems with adhering to a regular sleep schedule
Sleep-disruptive behaviors
But there are certain types of diagnostic sleep studies that are given by physicians to determine the causes of sleep problems. Sleep studies are tests that watch what happens to the body during sleep. The most common sleep studies or diagnostic procedures include the Polysomnogram, Multiple Sleep Latency Test (MSLT) and Multiple Wake Test (MWT).
Doctors may request a patient take polysomnograms to determine what is going on during sleep during the course of the night. The tests are done in a sleep laboratory. Patients are advised to avoid naps, caffeine, and alcohol on the day of their polysomnogram. This test records several body functions during sleep. Once in the sleeping room, monitoring devices are applied to the body of the patient or volunteer as a means to collect information. Sensors monitor the brain waves (EEG activity), heart rate (EKG), eye movements, leg muscle activity, and chest and stomach movement. Air flow from nose and mouth are also recorded. A sensor that clips onto a finger monitors the amount of oxygen in the blood.
If the doctor has specific questions, other monitors might be applied. Information is gathered from all leads and fed into a computer and outputted as a series of wavefront tracings which enable the technician to visualize the various waveforms, assign a score for the test, and assist in the diagnostic process. Usually, a polysomnogram ends around six o'clock in the morning and the patients can return to their usual daytime routine.
An MSLT test is a series of recordings to monitor a person's sleep patterns. This test measures how long it takes for a person to fall asleep during naps taken over the course of a day. Electrodes are placed on the face and head to record eye movement, muscle tone, and brain waves. The tests usually held from 8 in the morning until 4 in the afternoon. A technologist will glue ?recording electrodes? on the patient's scalp and face and a special jelly is applied to each electrode. The patient is taken into a ?sleeping? room with lights turned off and the patient is asked to sleep for 15 to 30 minutes. Recordings are taken while the patient is asleep, even if the patient cannot sleep during the test, the information taken will still be useful.
The Multiple Wake Test is also called maintenance of wakefulness test, and is intended to measure the ability to stay awake during a designated wakeful time. This test is given during the daytime. MWT usually follows an all-night sleep study. It consists of a series of 40-minute trials, during which the patient tries ti stay awake. The test is given every two hours throughout the day, with each trial lasting about 40 minutes, During each trial, sensors and electrodes record data on body functions such as heartbeat, breathing, etc. Sleeping problems are very common among us but there are different resources one can get answers for all their sleeping woes, and the tossing and turning can be just a thing of the past.
Sleep Problems In Babies
There are many ways to support the mind in getting the sleep we need. Relaxation from stress, a good sleep environment and the correct choice of foods we eat are but three such remedies. The third of these, the food and drink we consume before we go to bed, can have a major effect on the quality of rest we get.
We have all heard of foods that help us sleep and how eating certain things for lunch can slow down our work rate during the afternoon. Then there is the notion that eating turkey can, in some way, put us to sleep.
We have been led to believe that certain foods make us tired, while in actual fact what is happening is a chemical reaction within the body that is causing amino acids to affect our brain activity in such a way as to induce a sleeping mode.
The best example to explain this is the drinking of warm milk just before going to bed. When we drink warm milk, (I am not sure why it has to be warm!) the tryptophan it contains triggers the body to release melatonin, which is a natural sleep hormone. Some foods, it turns out help us sleep and others do the reverse.
The sleep inducing serotonin and melatonin are triggered in the body by the amino acid tryptophan, and serotonin is a neurotransmitter that slows down brain activity, like slowing down the electricity to the brain.
The nerve traffic to the brain slows down, your brain isn't so' busy' and sleep comes much easier. Therefore, eating foods with more trytophan helps build more and more relaxing neurotransmitters and this helps make you sleepy.
Foods high on the glycemic index are not a good idea as they release sugar into the bloodstream which triggers insulin which does make us sleepy but the side effects are that it produces a weight gain and often does not produce the correct deep sleeping pattern. So, the best evening snacks are eaten before nine o'clock, are not high on the glycemic index and contain complex carbs, protein and some calcium. Calcium is a helper in that it helps the process along. Obviously, dairy foods like milk and cheese are very good candidates!
Bearing all this in mind, here are my top five evening snacks that help me with my sleeping problems:
1. Cottage Cheese: this is light, easy to use and comes in a variety of added fruit flavors. Dairy products contain the magic tryptophan but also have the calcium and low glycemic value.
2. Sugar Free Whole Grain Cereal with Milk: Again we have the dairy but this time with whole wheat cereal (whole wheat bread would have a similar effect) which is fairly low on the glycemic
index but will trigger some insulin production which again will induce sleep without the weight
gain problems.
3. Oatmeal Cookies and a Glass of Milk: by now you should be seeing the trend! The addition of oatmeal also helps a little with lowering cholesterol.
4. Half a Banana on Whole Wheat Toast: Bananas contain magnesium as you know but they also contain both melatonin and serotonin which will help us feel drowsy. The whole wheat toast will trigger some insulin production, as it is a carbohydrate, and this will also help sleeping without causing a weight gain. (…and also go a little way in lowering cholesterol.)
5. Chamomile Tea: okay this isn't a snack but add an oatmeal cookie and you have a winner. Chamomile has a mild sedating effect and is well known among the sleeping problems crowd. The oatmeal cookie triggers insulin but has some other good side effects.
These are my five favorite snacks, and although I am not a doctor or trained nutritionist, I think they fit the “sleep inducing foods” bill without causing other bad side effects, besides which I really like them! Yes I did leave out turkey because how often do I have turkey around to use as a late night snack!
Remember also that light meals are preferred over heavy and to avoid, the spicy, the fatty, the caffeine and the alcohol. Also that it takes over an hour for the tryptophan induced amino acids to reach the brain so don't leave it too late.
A little science and a sensible snack we really like, can really help with our sleep problems.
Both Cecill Artates & David Leache are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
Cecill Artates has sinced written about articles on various topics from Cure Anxiety, Health and Fitness. Choose Variety of High Quality Medicines at Enjoyed Reading this article? More here:. Cecill Artates's top article generates over 74000 views. to your Favourites.
David Leache has sinced written about articles on various topics from Gardening, Rose Gardening and Travel and Leisure. Dave is the author of where you can find further information and help with sleep disorders and snoring. Get a FREE sleep help book to downl. David Leache's top article generates over 6600 views. to your Favourites.
