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Search Results for: sleep

February 25, 2021 By Trupti Hingad 4 Comments

Which Is The Best Sleep Position?

Best Sleep PositionEvery wondered which is the best sleep position? The position you sleep in plays a vital role in improving the quality of your sleep. How do you sleep? Do you prefer sleeping on your back, side or stomach? Sleeping in the wrong position can have detrimental effects on your health. Let’s take a deeper look into these problems. Poor sleep posture could potentially cause back and neck pain, fatigue, sleep apnea, muscle cramping, impaired circulation, headaches, heartburn, tummy troubles, and even premature wrinkles.

What Is The Best Sleep Position? 

  1. Sleeping On Your Stomach: About 7% of people sleep on their stomach. In this position, the neck and spine are not in a neutral position and this can put pressure on nerves and cause numbness, tingling, and nerve pain. It is best to choose another sleep position if you are a stomach sleeper. If you can’t break the habit, prop your forehead up on a pillow, so your head and spine remain in a neutral position and you have room to breathe.
  2. Sleeping On Your Back: on a regular basis may lead to lower back pain. If you have any existing pain, it can make the pain worse. Sleeping on your back if you suffer from snoring or sleep apnea may aggravate these conditions. Snoozing on your back can cause the tongue to block the breathing tube, making it a dangerous position for those who suffer from sleep apnea. Sleeping on your back with your head slightly elevated is the best sleep position for people suffering from heartburn. Also, this position does not lead to neck pain, like your neck, back and spine is in a neutral position.
  3. Soldier Position: In this position, the person sleeps on his/her back with hands close to the body. Approximately 8% of people sleep this way and this is not a good position to sleep in for people who snore. This position may also prevent you from getting a restful night’s sleep.
  4. Starfish Position: People who sleep in a starfish position sleep on their backs with their arms up over their head. Approximately 5% of people sleep this way. Compared to people who sleep on their backs, people who sleep in the starfish position are more prone to snoring and sleep problems.
  5. Sleeping On The Side: Approximately 41% of people sleep this way, curled up on their sides with their knees bent. This is one of the best positions, also good for pregnant women because it facilitates circulation to both mom and the fetus. The position may be good for those who snore and also helps decrease acid reflux since your spine is elongated. It also wards off back and neck pain. This position may lead to wrinkles because half of your face pushes against a pillow, so use soft, silken pillows to avoid wrinkles on the face.
  6. Fetal Position: Side sleepers who sleep with their legs bent and curled toward their torsos are the ones who sleep in the so-called fetal position. If sleeping this way hurts your hips, placing a pillow between your knees may help relieve the pressure. This position can leave you feeling a bit sore in the morning, particularly if you have arthritis in your joints or back. Prevent these woes by straightening out your body as much as you can, instead of tucking your chin into your chest and pulling your knees up high.

Sleeping positions which might help if you have sleeping issues

  • Do you snore? If you do, it is best to sleep on your side to minimize the risk of snoring. Sleeping on your back may aggravate snoring. If you can’t break the habit and want to sleep on your back, stack a few pillows underneath your head to reduce the risk of snoring.
  • Does your back hurt? Sleeping on your stomach or back, may aggravate your pain. Switch to side sleeping to minimize your risk of back pain. For further relief, put a pillow between your knees to keep your hips in alignment.
  • Are you pregnant? Sleeping on your stomach or back will be uncomfortable or impossible. You will be most comfortable sleeping on your side. Favour your left side to maximize circulation for both you and your baby. Placing a pillow under your belly can help relieve back pain.

So choose your sleeping position wisely and have a good mattress accompanied by soft pillows to wake up fresh and healthy! We hope this article helps you. Share your favorite sleeping position in the comments below! For more on sleep, check out Healthy Reads or tune in to LIVE sessions by experts on GOQii Play.

Sleep well and #BeTheForce 

November 14, 2018 By Trupti Hingad Leave a Comment

10 Tips for a Blissful Night Sleep

How-to-Get-a-Better-Nights-Sleep

How do you feel when you wake up in the morning? Every health professional must have asked you this question? Amidst our busy schedule, Sleep issues have become alarmingly common.

Here are some of the reasons why you might not be getting proper sleep:-

  1. Distracted by thoughts
  2. Waking up at 3-4am (early hour insomnia)
  3. Constant interruption—night sweats
  4. Sleeping for more than 7hours but not waking up refreshed.

Poor quality of sleep is the most underestimated factor for weight gain, menopause, mood swings, low energy levels, fatigue etc. Sleep is the most important factor of a healthy lifestyle because the body repairs and regenerates during this time. It is also the time when your brain detoxifies and gets rid of waste products. Poor sleep patterns lead to hormonal imbalance and an increase in hunger hormones. Leptin and Ghrelin are the hormones responsible for the regulation of appetite, Leptin tells the brain that you are full and Ghrelin tells the body to eat.

Guess what happens when you don’t sleep well?

Leptin decreases and Ghrelin increases making your body think that you are starving. This either wakes you up to eat in the middle of the night or makes you overeat the next day.  When leptin levels are low, the thyroid gland slows down your metabolism making you feel tired and increasing fat storage. Poor sleep increases the stress hormone—cortisol in the body leading to fat storage and can also increase insulin resistance leading to diabetes.

Here are some tips to help you sleep better:-

  1. Keep it dark: The artificial light can reduce the production of hormone—melatonin which makes it hard to fall asleep. Try to keep your bedroom black. Switch off electronic lights (alarms, mobile, TV, Ipad)
  2. Nice and early to bed: Practice going to bed at the same time every day. This registers in your subconscious mind and allows you to sleep well. This helps to regulate your body clock and could help you fall asleep and stay asleep for the night.
  3. Keep gadgets away: Try to keep your room gadget free. Charge your phone or laptop in a different room if you can or keep them away from your head, shut them down or put them on Airplane mode (this will reduce the EMF’s, Electro Magnetic Frequencies, that can interfere with your sleep).
  4. Relax your mind: Stress is one of biggest factor of not getting good sleep. Give time to your mind to switch off from daily activities and get into sleep mode. Avoid thrillers or scary news at night. Try listening to soothing music, read books, meditation or deep breathing.
  5. Relax your body: Take a hot shower before bed or try Epsom salt bath. Epsom salts are rich in Magnesium Sulphate, a known muscle relaxant and detoxifier.
  6. Avoid alcohol: Alcohol leaves you dehydrated at the middle of the night, with low blood sugar and overtaxed liver. Alcohol also messes with your production of serotonin (the precursor to melatonin).
  7. Limit caffeine intake: Caffeine is a stimulant that can keep you awake. So avoid the consumption of caffeine 4-6hours before bedtime.
  8. Pay attention to what you eat and drink: Avoid refined carbs like pasta, white rice, bread, pastry, sugar and processed foods as it will spike blood sugar at night and may wake you up. Eating a healthy dinner allows the body to absorb proper nutrients and provides the brain with the chemical environment required to produce neurotransmitters, required to maintain adequate sleep.
  9. Hydrate well in the day:  Your sleep can be interrupted if you’re dehydrated as this stimulates cortisol, which wakes you up.
  10. Supplement: Tryptophan is a protein that helps make melatonin. Food sources include whey protein, meat, fish, dairy, nuts and seeds. L-theanine is a calming nutrient found in tea (black and green), Magnesium helps to relax the body and increase a calming neurotransmitter. You can also use Ashwagandha, chamomile, lavender tea, passion flower and lemon balm to induce sleep. Refer to this blog for more info about this supplement.

(https://goqii.com/blog/6-magical-herbs-that-can-help-you-sleep/)

Sleep is the golden chain that ties HEALTH and our body together. So Snooze and sleep well.

June 28, 2018 By Samar Hafeez 7 Comments

Reduce Anxiety, Sleep Sound

anxiety1

Anxiety and Fear are a part of life. You may feel anxious before you take a test or walk a dark street. This kind of anxiety is useful as it can make you more alert, careful and productive, however, it usually ends soon after you are out of the situation that caused it. But, for millions of people, the anxiety does not go away and gets worse over time. This can make one, more restless, clumsy and unproductive thereby causing dysfunction in daily activities, and ultimately begins to take over lives.

Anxiety has plagued millions around the world from time immemorial. Anxiety is defined as a feeling of excessive worry, nervousness or unease about something. In this people are always preoccupied with ‘what- if’ thinking, what if something bad, dangerous or threatening could happen, what if anything bad happens to someone I love etc.

Symptoms of Anxiety:

Physical symptoms include:

  • Muscle tension, Muscle Twitching
  • Chronic indigestion, constipation, Diarrhoea
  • Increased or heavy breathing
  • Hyperventilation/Palpitations
  • Nausea
  • Cold chills, Hot flash, Frequent urination, sudden weight loss, headaches

Emotional symptoms include:

  • Feeling of dread, feeling tense and jumpy
  • Irritability
  • Restlessness
  • Sleep problems
  • Panicky most of the time

Cognitive symptoms:

  • Poor concentration Negative thoughts and Apprehension
  • Confusion
  • Poor communication, attention and memory skills

Now let’s move on to discuss how Anxiety may cause sleep problems

Many of us toss and turn and watch the clock when we can’t sleep for a night or two. But for some, a restless night is routine.

The growing cases of sleep disorders due to anxiety are not to be ignored. Indian women outnumber men when it comes to disturbed sleep due to anxiety.

Anxiety and sleep have a bidirectional relationship, meaning high amounts of anxiety tends to disrupt sleep and disruptions in sleep tend to increase anxiety.

In case of Anxiety, it begins in anticipation of an event. When you reflect on a stressful event at night, the emotional centres of brain namely Amygdala and Insular cortex get activated. This stimulates a chain of events that raise both your adrenaline and blood sugar levels. This sudden source of energy then keeps you alert, tense and restless. Ultimately disrupting your sleep.

Sleep on other hand is an integral part of emotional regulation. A lack of it leaves your emotions unstable and in disarray. You are more prone to falling sick often, show irritability and lack of patience and discontent often.

What your Anxiety at night may look like

An individual usually experiences either racing or stagnant/fixed anxious thoughts. These thoughts build on each other or spiral around making it harder and harder to fall asleep.

Some people describe this feeling as being stuck in their head.

Due to the consistent rise in adrenaline and cortisol (stress hormone) levels more and more physical symptoms may result.

Reduce Anxiety

  1. Melt Anxiety with mindfulness meditation: Focusing on your breath and physical sensations can help you stay in the present moment. This can help you recognize what your thoughts may be, allowing them to pass without reaction or judgement.
  2. Rationalize and not Awfulize: Accept the what if thinking as a projection that connects horrifying thoughts and images to anxiety. Think that a what if disaster does not validate or guarantee a disaster, Awfulizing things real or imagined situations as horrible, Awful or terrible will only make symptoms worse
  3. The shift from passive to active perspective: Talk to yourself in a realistic self- assuring way
  4. Relax your body Relax your mind: Practice Diaphragmatic breathing these exercises are simple to learn and can have relatively quick effects. This technique involves breathing in a way that your belly expands as you breathe in and contracts as you breathe out. Psychologist Jon Carlson describes belly breathing as a technique that can send calming signals to the brain and promote a feeling of relaxation and improved attention and awareness.
  5. Imagination and Relaxation: Rolodex of anxiety thoughts can be controlled by using Guided imagery, Guided imagery serves to redirect people’s attention away from what is stressing them and towards an alternative focus, this includes only visualizing pleasant and relaxing image like on a beach or on a serene hill or whatever may soothe a person. This practice is extremely portable, as it relies on nothing but one’s imagination and concentration abilities.
  6. Exercise: Regular exercise provides an outlet for frustrations and releases mood-enhancing endorphins/hormones
  7. Play music: Soft calming music can lower blood pressure and muscle agitation, usually found symptoms in people who get anxious often
  8. Direct anxiety elsewhere: Lend a hand to relative or neighbour or volunteer in your community services. Helping others will take your mind off your own anxieties and will help you count your blessings.

Sleep More Soundly

  1. Make good sleep a priority: Block out 7 hours for a full uninterrupted sleep
  2. Maintain regularity: Try to sleep and wake up on same time daily even on weekends, this helps circadian rhythm your ‘biological clock’ to tick properly.
  3. Avoid stimulants: Say no-no to alcohol, coffee, chocolate or nicotine post sunset
  4. Keep it cool: sleep in a dark room which is slightly cold, this helps the temperature in the brain to fall and help fall asleep quicker, the cool room takes your brain and body in the right temperature direction to get good sleep.
  5. Dark- deprived society: We need darkness in the evening to allow the release of a hormone called Melatonin(sleep hormone) It helps the healthy time of our sleep. In this modern era, we are severely deprived of darkness. So try to dim lights down in your home an hour before bed. Stay away from LED screens as they emit blue light that actually puts break on melatonin and fools brain into thinking it’s still daytime, even though night time.
  6. Do not stay in bed awake: If you haven’t fallen asleep within 30 mins of getting into bed or have woken up and finding difficult to fall back asleep, the advise is to get up go to another room and in dim light just read a book, no screens, no email checking, NO FOOD. And only when you feel sleepy should you return to bed and that way your brain can actually re-learn the association between bed being a place of sleep, rather than a place to stay awake.
  7. Avoid big meals before bedtime and avoid working out 2 hours before bedtime.
  8. Try magnesium-rich foods/supplements like fish or fish oil, almonds, bananas, pumpkin seeds, warm milk, cherries, mushrooms and dark green leafy veggies in dinner. Magnesium relaxes muscles and easesanxiety1 anxiety which contributes to insomnia
  9. Chamomile magic: Try having a cup of chamomile tea 30 mints before bed chamomile is regarded as a mild tranquillizer and sleep inducer, It relaxes nerves and muscles and help fall sleep quicker.

The power of sleep has always been known to be significant but now there’s more and more evidence demonstrating just how important it is for those who experience anxiety. By using above mentioned techniques you can hope for relief from anxiety and eventually will sleep your anxiety away!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

June 17, 2018 By Vaishali Khanna 2 Comments

Sleep Apnea, its symptoms and how you can prevent it?

Sleep-Apnea-700x400

 

Has anyone ever told you that you have a tendency to snore? Or maybe you don’t…but you have a partner or family member who does? Do you find that you tend to wake up throughout the night? Or maybe you think you get good sleep, but you consistently find yourself with a dry mouth in the morning?

These are all signs that could suggest that you (or…your beloved snoring family member) may have something called “Sleep Apnea.” Well, there are people who cannot sleep without a machine and that is because they suffer from a medical condition called ‘Sleep Apnea’.

Let’s actually break this down. What is Sleep Apnea?

The most common type of Sleep Apnea is ‘Obstructive Sleep Apnea’ (OSA). OSA is a potentially life-altering and life-threatening breathing disorder that occurs during sleep.

The upper airway repeatedly collapses, causing cessation of breathing (apnea) or inadequate breathing (hypopnea) and sleep fragmentation. The breathing stops during sleep for 10seconds to a minute or longer. Oxygen levels in the blood decrease.

One challenge with something like this is that you may not necessarily wake up entirely. So it’s not always easy to self-diagnose. BUT – Sleep fragmentation results in chronic daytime sleepiness (which you would expect if you’re constantly getting interrupted throughout the night).This disrupts healthy sleep and causes a number of short-term and long-lasting effects that threaten the health and well-being of those who suffer from the condition.

How many people have OSA? The prevalence of OSA in the general population is still unclear. Several epidemiological studies have attempted to examine this issue. Epidemiological data from Young, Palta, Dempsey, et. Al (1993) in a study paper titled:- Obstructive sleep apnea syndrome: natural history, diagnosis, and emerging treatment options, estimated that in a group of 602 middle-aged individuals 2% of women and 4% of men meet the minimal diagnostic criteria for sleep apnea with excessive daytime sleepiness.

People most likely to have or develop OSA may have any of the following: Obesity, especially in the upper body

Small upper airway due to excess throat tissue or abdominal jaw structure

Nasal Obstruction

High Blood Pressure

Family History of OSA

Overweight Obese individuals

Obesity, particularly abdominal and upper body obesity is the most significant risk factor for obstructive sleep apnea. Excess body fat on the neck and chest constricts the air passageways and sometimes the lungs – thus setting the stage for interrupted breathing during the night. And according to the research…The more obese a person, the greater the risk of apnea.

The good news is that there are some general things that can make a big difference.

This includes:

Losing some weight, if you are overweight or obese (even as little as 5% of your body weight can make a change)

Avoid alcohol, sedatives, and hypnotics (as they can sedate the very muscles we need to breathe)

Sleeping on your side or in a semi propped position

If you have sleep apnea, do not take sleep medicines or sedatives. These chemicals will increase the relaxation in the tissues of the upper airway and make the obstruction worse. The specific treatment for obstructive sleep apnea is usually a mask worn at night to keep the airway open or using a sleep machine that can help you breathe and sleep properly.

If OSA is left untreated, it can increase the risk of developing:

Hypertension

Cardiac arrhythmias

Myocardial ischemia

Stroke Pre-diabetes

Decreased quality of life (because who wants to feel sleep deprived?)

Weight loss is frequently recommended to improve OSA among obese patients. Not only does sustained weight loss improve OSA,it also improves many other independently linked co- morbidities such as hypertension, high cholesterol, and diabetes. The greater the change in body weight or waist circumference, the greater is the improvement in OSA

 

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