What is Insomnia? - The real definition.

Insomnia involves more than just trouble sleeping. In fact, the true definition, according to a nationally recognized medical publication, has 2 parts.

1. You must have at least one of the following symptoms:
• difficulty falling sleep
• difficulty staying asleep
• waking up too early in the morning
• waking up feeling unrefreshed

AND

2. Your sleeplessness has a negative impact on your daytime functioning, such as difficulty concentrating or irritability.
If you're experiencing these symptoms, you may have insomnia, and it's important that you talk to your doctor. Together you can determine the best treatment option for you.

How to Treat Insomnia - Tips to ease yourself to sleep.

If counting sheep's not getting you a peaceful night's sleep, check out these 3 simple lifestyle changes that may help:

1. Create a routine
• Go to bed at the same time each night during the week and on weekends
• Try to wake up at the same time during the week and on weekends
• Set your bedtime and wake-up time at least 8 hours apart

2. Turn your bedroom into a sleep sanctuary
• Make it quiet, dark, cool and comfortable
• Never use your bed for anything but sleep and intimacy

3. Live healthy days. Enjoy happy nights.
• Eat a balanced diet
• Don't eat too close to bedtime
• Try not to smoke or drink alcohol at night
• Don't drink too much of anything before bed
• No caffeine within 6 hours of bedtime
• Try exercising in the morning or afternoon hours (at least 4 hours before bedtime)
• Keep a Sleep Diary to help uncover the cause of your sleep problem and possible solutions.

Mental Relaxations Techniques - 1. Thought-Stopping

In thought-stopping, you willfully force your mind to think thoughts that keep you awake. For example, you may think about your boss chewing you out tomorrow. You mull it over, every detail.

Now, try, suddenly, ordering yourself to “Stop!” If the thought creeps back, yell to yourself again, “Stop!” Keep interrupting your unpleasant thought with unpleasant commands to yourself.

There are two explanations why the thought-stopping relaxation technique works:
1. The word Stop! forces an immediate shifting of our attention, which will lead us away from preoccupying thoughts.
2. Thought-stopping proves you have control. That awareness can lead to self-assuring, self-accepting thoughts — thoughts that are more conducive to sleep.

How are you sleeping

Unfortunately, sleep is sometimes given a low priority in modern life, taking a back seat to our busy schedules and lifestyles. Yet, as scientists in the field of sleep medicine continue to discover, sleep is a dynamic activity in its own right that is as essential to good health as diet and exercise, and as necessary for survival as food and water. Sleep research continues to expand and attract more notice from scientists and clinicians alike. However, more research and public education are needed to make sleep a top health priority. As one of the most crucial, yet most overlooked, indicators of overall health, it is important that doctors begin an ongoing dialogue with their patients about sleep.

Mental Relaxation Techniques
Do ideas and thoughts seem to flood your mind at bedtime? Mental relaxation techniques will help you reduce them so you can relax and fall asleep.
The following relaxation techniques represent tips that may help:
1. Thought-Stopping

2. Reverse Psychology

3. Breathing

4. Counting

5. Creating Pictures

5. Floating

In the next couple of weeks we will guide your through simple sessions of become a better sleeper.

Cherries as sleep aid records

Did you know that by eating a handful of tart cherries, (a good food source of melatonin) before bedtime, may help increase melatonin levels in the blood, which will promote restful sleep. Imagine cherries together with relaxing sounds, win-win!!

Russel J. Reiter, Ph.D. of the University of Texas has been researching the effects of melatonin for 30 years and is co-author with Jo Robinson of the book, Melatonin published in 1996 by Bantam. Dr. Reiter in it they propose the statement above and below.

Melatonin production is stimulated by darkness to induce sleepiness and low melatonin levels at night will contribute to insomnia or jagged sleep. So, even increasing your melatonin levels slightly at night can improve the quality of your sleep.

Diagnose and understand your tinnitus

First DO NOT panic. Tinnitus is usually not a sign of a serious, ongoing medical condition.
CHECK things out. The sounds you hear may actually be normal sounds created by the human body at work.
SEE an audiologist or ear, nose and throat specialist (ENT) interested and experienced in tinnitus treatment.
REVIEW your current medications (prescription, over-the-counter, vitamins and other supplements) with your medical professional to find possible causes of your tinnitus.
BE WARY of a hopeless diagnosis or physician advice like, “There’s nothing you can do about your tinnitus. Go home and live with it.”
BE a detective. Keep track of what triggers your tinnitus.
KEEP UP TO DATE about tinnitus. More and more research by the best and the brightest is bringing us closer to successful treatments and cures for tinnitus. Water sounds tend to mask the annoying tone you have and release you to relax easier, Try water sounds presented by SleepAid Records like Babbling Brook, Mountain Stream or River bend
There are more tips available so check out the blog or visit ATA's web site

Lack of Sleep affects women more than men

It is amazing how important sleep is for us all however a recent research done by University College London and the University of Warwick has found that the levels of inflammatory markers, which indicate heart disease, change significantly with the amount of sleep that women have, but doesn’t vary all that much in men. The study appears in the journal Sleep. Researcher Dr. Michelle Miller said that these findings added to the increasing evidence that the length that one sleeps affects overall health. These results “also are consistent with the idea that sleeping seven or eight hours per night appears to be optimal for health,” Dr. Miller said, and added that more work would be needed to find exactly why a lack of sleep could potentially have a greater effect on women. However, she said that different hormone levels in women could be the key.

The study was conducted with more than 4,600 London-based civil servants who were aged 35 to 55, 73% of which were men.