Sleep on The Huffington Post

Dr. Michael J. Breus: The Lark Vs. The Owl: Ingrained Sleep Patterns

2009-12-04T13:27:26Z

Most of us know whether we’re a lark who likes to beat the
sunrise, or an owl who prefers to work by moonlight. Larks function best in the
morning and tire through the day, whereas owls feel sharper as the day goes on
and reach their optimum level at around 9 o’clock at night.

Owls tend to envy
larks, though, especially when they hear about their counterparts who can rise
before the sun and get half a day’s work done before much of the world eats
breakfast. So should an owl try to turn into a lark?

Not likely a good idea. A recent
article outlines why this isn’t such
a good idea, stressing the fact that owls who may try to wake earlier than
usual will just set themselves back and suffer the consequences of sleep
deprivation. Some of the article’s chief points:

Whether you’re a lark or an owl, you still
likely need seven to eight hours of
sleep.

If you don’t get enough sleep, what time you go
to bed or rise won’t matter—you’ll still experience the side-effects, from depression to a lack of concentration
to problems with coordination.

If you break your natural sleep cycle by forcing
yourself to get up early, you’ll be tired,
less attentive, and not nearly as productive throughout the day.

Something else to keep in mind: Not all “high-powered”
people are early risers. Though we do hear stories about tycoons who don’t need
more than four hours of sleep at night, these are the exception—not the rule.

Last year, scientists
discovered that our skin cells may hold the clues to whether or not we are
larks or owls. That’s right: you’re internal
clock may be pre-programmed to be an
early riser or late-nighter. So don’t mess with Mother Nature. Go to bed
when you are tired, and get up when you are well-rested. Period.

Sweet Dreams,

Michael J. Breus, PhD
The Sleep Doctor™
www.thesleepdoctor.com

This article on sleep and body clock is also available at Dr. Breus's official blog, The Insomnia Blog.

Dr. Michael J. Breus: Not Guilty By Reason Of Sleep

2009-12-03T16:10:48Z

Let’s be thankful that the sleep disorder suffered by a
British man who unwittingly killed his wife in his sleep is extremely rare.

When the Associated
Press reported on an unusual murder
case out of England, it soon got lots of attention and raised more than a
few intrigued eyebrows. Brian Thomas, who pleaded not guilty by reason of
insanity, was accused of killing his wife of nearly 40 years. He’d strangled her during a nightmare
about fighting off an intruder. Prosecutors withdrew the case after experts
explained that he wasn’t insane at all. Rather, he suffered from a rare, long-term sleep disorder that put
him in a state of “automatism,” in which his mind had no control over his body.
So he strangled her without knowing it.

Mr. Thomas will not have to be sent to a psychiatric
hospital, though I can’t imagine how he explained himself to his two daughters,
who lost their mother in the incident. This is not the first time I have heard
of a case like this. I think this has occurred in the US, in my own town of
Scottsdale no less. I have seen people do some pretty complicated behaviors in
their sleep, and the culprit here apparently is a sleep
disorder.

Could this happen to you? Not so fast. What should be
pointed out is that not only is this kind of sleep disorder very rare, but it
doesn’t usually stand on its own. In other words, people who suffer from brief periods of unconscious behaviors
during which they are unaware of their actions typically have an underlying condition. Automatic behavior (the type of
behavior apparently exhibited by Mr. Thomas) often occurs in certain types of
epilepsy, seizure disorders, Narcolepsy, or REM Behavior Disorder or as a side
effect of certain medications.

Mr. Thomas would do well to check into a sleep lab,
if he hasn’t already.

Sweet Dreams,

Michael Breus, Ph.D.
The Sleep Doctor™
www.thesleepdoctor.com

This article on sleep is also available at Dr. Breus's official blog, The Insomnia Blog.

Laura Day: Change Your Life In Your Sleep!

2009-12-02T12:52:32Z

Your brain decides what actions you will take six seconds before you are aware of your decision. Scary thought. That means, your subconscious, the "facts "you decided were true in your early childhood, may be in control of many of your actions, not the mature, reasoned you of today. The subconscious runs the show and this is why, especially in the emotion laden holidays coming up, it is essential that you "reset" and direct yourself to healthy positive goals. The good news is, you can do this in your sleep!

When I was in my teens and twenties and I felt overwhelmed, under pressure or needed to produce more than I was able, I would go to sleep at every opportunity, nap, all day on week ends, during my lunch break, whenever I could and then, at a certain random point, I would be back on track.

It is the job of the subconscious to keep hidden from you that which would overwhelm you or inhibit your ability to function if it came to your awareness. However, you keep a lot hidden from your conscious mind, which could take positive action, because you are not aware that you now, unlike, say, twenty years ago or in childhood, have the tools to act on information in a way that is profitable to you. In sleep, you can communicate between the many parts of yourself and create resolutions and plot results that you would never be able to achieve in a waking state, when your senses and awareness are occupied with other concerns.

Nobody really knows why we sleep even though we spend nearly a third of our life sleeping. We do however know some very interesting facts about sleep that you can use to make your life more successful.

In sleep are you able to make the neural connections that integrate experience into memory and knowledge as well as loosen the synapses that may keep destructive, disturbing patterns and memories in place. You can practice change however it may take sleep to integrate that change All of the all-nighters most of us pulled in college didn't help us because sleep is needed to sort and integrate the information. All in all, sleep is a very powerful and useful state.

Sleep, is actually not one state but a combination of states, some of which are very active. In REM or dream sleep, your body temperature rises and your brain is very active, at times more active than when you are awake. In fact, you expend more calories in sleep than you do simply lying in bed because of this activity and the caloric demands (20 percent of our daily needs) that the brain makes on the body. When your brain is active in REM sleep your body is paralyzed, with the exception of your chest (breathing works!) and your eyes. In the deeper levels of sleep, your body can move and your brain is deeply inactive. This is where regenerative sleep is thought to occur. Odd factoid, it is in this state, and not REM, as most people assume, that sleepwalking occurs.

Your sleep can be the most creative cycle in your day and prepare you to interact with the world effectively and happily in your waking hours! Deep sleep decreases, as we age and dream sleep increases as do periods of wakefulness during the night. As older adults we can use the changes in our sleep cycles to enrich our lives. Because you have access to so many different parts of yourself during sleep, this is the place where you can formulate your answers, arrange your inner tool chest for action and digest the events of your day, and, your past, in a way that you can move forward prepared for your future.

Here are some simple techniques allow your sleep to be both restful and productive. Before you go to bed, either in your head or on paper make two lists (I suggest on paper, with room between them from morning responses). One list is of irritations such a habitual worry about your health or an argument you are having with a friend. The other list is of projects and problems you really want to resolve. What do you want to do for the next ten years that would support you or your community well? What kind of partner do you want to attract into your life. What qualities in yourself do you need to highlight to become more popular or useful in your work or social group? What physical or emotional issues do you want to resolve in as you sleep? You don't have to throw in the kitchen sink and the subconscious has its way of reminding you of anything important you forgot as you sleep.

The fact that you awaken more frequently than you did when you were younger give you a greater chance of remembering the wisdom, in picture, thought or feeling, of your last dream and as you fall back asleep to choose to have it carry you to the next issue on your list.

When you awaken, make a conscious choice about how you want to feel and how you want to experience your day. Everything may still not go your way but you rig the odds strongly in your favor. Remember that a full six seconds before you are aware of making a decision, your brain has already committed you to the action! That is why it is so important to start out and stay on a clear course from "good morning". Conflicts are best worked out in your sleep where you cannot do much damage to yourself or your relationships.

Before you go to sleep ask yourself: If you could choose with whom to spend your sleeping hours in contact with, who would that be? What projects would you put together, what conflicts would you resolve.

In How to Rule the World from your Couch I give some simple and regular ways to use this innate skill to interact with life in a more successful way (from seduction to job search). For the moment, it suffices to say that before sleep, make sure your brush and floss your brain.

Observe all of those habitual feelings and conversations that you are having with people, in your head, that really have no positive goal. Then, redirect your attention to your night's goals. You will find that you sleep better, awaken happier and that your energy goes to what is best for you, both in your sleep and when your are awake!

Laura Day is an internationally known author and consultant who has been featured in Newsweek, Oprah, CNN, ABC News and many international publications. She trains business, finance and medicine (and you) in intuitive decision making. Her latest book is HOW TO RULE THE WORLD FROM YOUR COUCH.
www.howtoruletheworldfromyourcouch.com
You can email Laura at healingday@aol.com

Daily Exercise Improves Sleep

2009-12-01T12:19:39Z

It has long been said that regular physical activity and better sleep go hand in hand. Burn more energy during the day, the thinking goes, and you will be more tired at night.

Dr. Michael J. Breus: Attention Parents: Sleep Problems May Trigger Manic Depression in Kids

2009-11-30T13:03:27Z

For years now, we’ve known that chronic
sleep deprivation can trigger a litany of other health risks, from diabetes
and obesity to heart and memory problems. This is true for adults and children.

But now there’s a
new study has linked sleep problems among children as a trigger for manic
depression.

I know, seeing a headline that says chronic sleep problems can trigger manic depression in your
children is frightening for any parent, especially if you’ve tried everything
to protect them from the ills of the world and one of your hardest tasks is
getting your kids to bed on time.

Manic depression, sometimes referred to as bipolar disorder,
is one of those illnesses that develops over time and typically gets diagnosed
later in life as a teenager or adult, although signs of it can crop up early on
in youth. It’s classified as a psychiatric
condition characterized by strong mood swings and periods of mania. These
are often accompanied by vicious cycles of restless nights and days. On the
bright side, some manic depressives are highly creative and productive; many of
our legendary artists and entrepreneurs owe their talents to the unique
capabilities of their manic minds.

This latest study indicates that a gene which disrupts the
body’s natural internal clock is linked to manic depression. Our internal
clock is what dictates our sleep-wake cycle.

Which leads to these questions:

Does the gene get turned on by the sleep
problems?

Or do the sleep problems result from the gene
being already on?

Future studies will have to look for these answers. There’s
a lot we don’t know about manic depression,
about the brain’s inner workings, and about the genes that are affected by
sleep, or lack thereof. Manic depression likely has a genetic component to it,
but it may also have some environmental components as well, where sleep habits
come into play. The good news is the more knowledge we can gather, the better equipped
we can be for managing a condition like manic depression, as well as the
associated sleep problems.

If you’re a parent, don’t
panic - now is the time to instill good
sleep habits in your family. A healthy sleep life makes for a healthy life
in general, regardless of the risk for any single illness or condition.

Sweet Dreams,

Michael Breus, Ph.D.
The Sleep Doctor™
www.thesleepdoctor.com

This article on children and sleep is also available at Dr. Breus's official blog, The Insomnia Blog.

Dr. Michael J. Breus: Sleep Boxes: Coming To An Airport Near You?

2009-11-25T14:23:53Z

Nothing is more frustrating than traveling
on empty and there’s really nowhere to get a cat nap. Lying across three
rows of hard seats in the boarding area doesn’t do the trick. Sitting on the
floor and resting your head on your carry-on luggage won’t do it either. And if
you don’t belong to a 100K club where you can relax in a plusher setting, then
you’re trapped.

Until now. Well, in the near future. Maybe.

A Moscow-based company has just released its concept
“Sleep Box”—a capsule mini-hotel that you can rent for 15 minutes or
longer. Perfect for sneaking in a rejuvenating nap.
And get this: it’s fully equipped with:

Wi-Fi

LCD display

electrical outlets

a space to store luggage

a ventilation system…and a means to “zap” the
interior with a quartz light to kill germs.

Now that’s pretty cool. But will we ever see these sleep boxes for real in the real world?
And how will the real world treat these things?

Maybe they can work in airports and places where people have
a reasonable wait time (30-60 min). I’m actually surprised it has taken us this
long to come up with such an idea.

Metronaps,
the Australian and U.K.-based company that makes sleep pods primarily for
workplace settings, haven’t really taken off yet in the U.S. and would not be
great in a public place (the pods are sort of futuristic and open to see
people lying down).

Yelo,
a New York based company, offers a place to nap and a reflexology massage that
is awesome. The chair you sit in puts you into a zero-gravity position so you
can completely relax. This is great for an afternoon break or to help with that
lull we all hit between 1 and 3 p.m.

So if you are tired of hitting the vending machine (candy or
an energy drink), the coffee shop, or those hard chairs in the boarding area, this
new concept could be the next great way to take a well deserved nap.

Sweet Dreams,

Michael J. Breus, PhD
The Sleep Doctor™
www.thesleepdoctor.com

This article on sleep is also available at Dr. Breus's official blog, The Insomnia Blog.

Sleep Better: How To Beat Holiday Jet Lag

2009-11-25T09:08:29Z

The disruption to normal schedules caused by flying and especially jet lag can wreak havoc on sleep patterns.

Anne Hill: Why We Dream And How To Rewrite Nightmares

2009-11-23T18:12:24Z

It has been a big month for dreams in the news, with the New York Times and the New Yorker both weighing in on the subject. First up, the Times reports on a new theory advanced by Dr. Allan Hobson, who says that dreaming exists as a "warm-up" state for waking.

According to Dr. Hobson, dreaming is "a parallel state of consciousness that is continually running but normally suppressed during waking." But during sleep, dreaming comes to the forefront of the brain's activity, exercising it and "tuning the mind for conscious awareness."

Hobson has long been controversial for his insistence that dreams are the result of physiological process and have no inherent meaning. His new theory draws in part on studies of the brain activity of lucid dreamers--people who are aware that they are dreaming while still in the dream.

Brain wave patterns during lucid dreaming show a typical REM sleep pattern associated with dreaming, mixed in with patterns associated with waking awareness. The discovery of these "mixed states" give validity to the notion that we can hold two (or more?) different states of awareness simultaneously, and should give rise to some interesting research on altered states of consciousness.

Margaret Talbot also has a great recent article on nightmares in the New Yorker. The article focuses on imagery-rehearsal therapy, a technique where nightmare sufferers imagine how they would re-script a frightening dream, then "rehearse" it several times during the day and just before going to sleep at night.

Imagery-rehearsal therapy is surprisingly successful in many instances. Talbot speaks to a wide range of experts on dreams and nightmares, and the article gives a thorough, well-rounded picture of current thinking on why we have nightmares, and what to do about them.

These are exciting times to be a dream researcher, and an active dreamer! For nightmare sufferers, there have never been so many good options for coping with bad dreams. And for those of us who have occasional nightmares but aren't debilitated by them, we can extend our understanding of why these dreams come to us and what wisdom they might hold, like never before.

The Fall Of Greg Craig

2009-11-22T17:31:48Z

Nearly 100 days after Barack Obama entered office, his top White House lawyer, Greg Craig, braced the President's senior advisers for a potentially explosive development. The Administration was preparing to release photographs of suspected terrorists being abused in U.S. custody. On April 16, Craig asked chief of staff Rahm Emanuel to focus on the issue. Emanuel pleaded for more time to bury the release behind other news.

Dr. Michael J. Breus: Tee Off On This: Sleep Better, Golf Better

2009-11-20T14:48:24Z

I don’t know any avid golfer who isn’t looking for tips to improve
his or her game. Some of my golfing friends are real fanatics, incessantly
talking about ways to reduce the number
of strokes it takes to get through eighteen holes. And now I finally have
proof to make a case for my area of expertise: better sleep. Equipment,
weather conditions, athleticism, and technique aside, if you can get your game
on at night, you can get your game on over the greens. Seriously.

I’m not making this up. A study
out of Morristown Memorial Hospital in New Jersey found a group of golfers
that improved their golf game by up to
three strokes. Granted, these golfers suffered from sleep apnea and were
users of the C-PAP,
a continuous positive airway pressure mask that helps them sleep better. But my
guess is that if a study were done on the general golfing population, we’d see
similar findings: those who sleep better,
golf better.

Why? Easy. Consider the following benefits of a good night’s
sleep:

Better concentration and ability to focus.

Better hand-eye coordination.

Alertness.

Sharper memory (to
recall the level of difficulty or technical secrets to a certain hole, the
course terrain, etc.)

All of this bodes well for the golfer—or any sports player
for that matter.

So, why were researchers looking at the effects of a C-PAP
on golfers in particular? Sounds like an odd thing to report on. But not when
you consider that savvy supporters of the C-PAP (myself included) are always
looking for ways to motivate people who suffer from obstructive
sleep apnea to wear these highly-effective
devices. It also turns out that the better you are at golf, the more you
have to gain (or lose, depending on how you look at it from a stroke perspective)
from achieving restful sleep at night. The more adept golfers in the study lost
the most strokes.

Now go sleep. And go play.

Sweet Dreams,

Michael J. Breus, PhD
The Sleep Doctor™
www.thesleepdoctor.com

This article on sleep and golf is also available at Dr. Breus's official blog, The Insomnia Blog.

Sleep May Enhance Memories

2009-11-20T11:30:28Z

For time-starved Americans, few ideas are more appealing than that of learning while sleeping. Why simply doze for eight hours when you can be learning Spanish as well?

Jung's Journal Provides Insight In To Dreams

2009-11-20T11:18:52Z

Jung describes visions and voyages into the desert, dreams and his frustration at an inability to interpret them.

Do Dreams Teach Us About Ourselves?

2009-11-20T11:13:56Z

This is for the dream researchers and so-called psychotherapists who are telling us that there is no psychological meaning to dreams, and that psychodynamic psychotherapy has no validity.

Lack Of Sleep Increases Cops' Risk Of Disease

2009-11-19T10:23:01Z

A new study finds that their schedule may cause cops to develop such conditions such as stroke, cardiovascular disease, and type 2 diabetes.