Wenatex Blog | Healthy Sleep for a Better Life

Do you wake in the middle of the night? In an article I read recently, new research has highlighted that what you might be experiencing is a throwback to your ancestors prior to the introduction of artificial light.

In olden times, people slept in two four hour blocks, then rested and relaxed for a period in between. This may have “played an important part in the human capacity to regulate stress naturally”, says Sleep psychologist Gregg Jacobs. He also suggested that in today’s modern world, we don’t get much time to rest and relax and he believes that “It’s not a coincidence that the number of people who report anxiety, stress, depression, alcoholism and drug abuse has gone up.”

So next time you are wake up in the middle of the night, don’t stress, take the time to just rest and relax. Lie back and think of your ancestors… you will get back to sleep in no time.

If you would like to read the full article that was the inspiration for this blog entry, it appeared on BBC News Online, go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16964783

Please let me know your thoughts and experiences.

If you would like to learn more about how to get a healthy night’s sleep, Wenatex conducts free seminars all over Australia on the subjects. You can register your interest in attending a free seminar near you at http://www.wenatex.com.au/seminars_registration.asp

An article I read recently appeared in Brisbane’s Courier Mail. It discussed new research conducted by the Jackson Hole Centre for Preventive Medicine in the USA which found that adults taking between 18 and 132 sleeping tablet doses per year were 4.6 times more likely to die early. What a scary statistic! They even ruled out the presumption that the factor that people taking the pills may have other health problems by matching with a control group of patients of similar ages, gender, lifestyle and health. The test group still had a higher mortality rate. The results of this research provide a clear picture for those who experience poor sleep. Our advice - minimise your use of sleeping tablets and address the underlying problem affecting your sleep.

You can read the article at http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/breaking-news/sleeping-tablets-linked-to-early-death-us-study-finds/story-e6freonf-1226284428246

If you have problems sleeping and you want to learn more about getting a healthy night’s sleep, you should consider attending a Wenatex “Healthy Sleep for a Better Life” seminar. They are free to attend and are conducted in venues all around Australia. To register your interest, fill in the form at http://www.wenatex.com.au/seminars_registration.asp

A recent article in The Herald Sun revealed that sleep disorders and a basic lack of sleep cost the Australian economy around $5.1bn a year. The study, commissioned by the Sleep Health Foundation and carried out by Deloitte Access Economics found that a staggering $4.3bn comes from lost productivity caused by absenteeism and poor work performance.

The reasons keep mounting - it is vital both for our health (and our back pockets) that we all get a good night’s sleep!

Read the full article at http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/breaking-news/sleep-disorders-cost-51bn-a-year-study/story-e6frf7jx-1226260097636 and please let me know your thoughts.

Wenatex conducts free seminars on how to get a good night’s sleep all over Australia. If you wish to find out more about attending one of these seminars in your area, register your interest at http://www.wenatex.com.au/seminars_registration.asp

Do you feel on some days that everyone and everything is irritating? Next time it happens to you, you should step back and consider how you have been sleeping. An article that I read recently from the Body Odd on msnbc.com in the USA talked about some research conducted in 2011 by David Mastin, Associate Professor at the University of Arkansas. It is believed that his research is the first to explore how people actually think when they are sleepy. It showed that sleepy people consider events and that when they go badly, they blame others and sometimes even take revenge. He describes this thinking as “counterfactual”.

Can you reflect on a time when you were feeling agitated with the whole world? Can you attribute it to a lack of sleep? I would love to hear your thoughts.

Read the article that inspired this blog entry at http://bodyodd.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/07/19/7106894-sleepy-people-blame-others-for-everything

Wenatex conducts free seminars on how to get a better night’s sleep all over Australia. If you are interested in finding out more, you can register your interest at http://www.wenatex.com.au/seminars_registration.asp

An article I read this morning online from Reuters really caught my attention. The article talked about the decline in kids’ sleep and focused on three key points:

1. All the way back to the 1800’s, scientists’ recommendations on how long kids should sleep for has always been higher than the actual amount of sleep reported.
2. Doctors’ and scientists’ recommendations for the amount of time kids should sleep have also declined.
3. The actual amount of sleep that kids are getting is also declining. It has fallen by 73 minutes over the last century.

Our modern 24 hour society has meant changing societal expectations. Societal pressures on experts have meant their recommendations for sleep time has decreased. Combine this with the societal pressures on parents which has meant that kids are getting less sleep. Dr David Gozal, expert in child sleep problems, from the University of Chicago sums it up nicely and blames “our shorter nights on the accelerated pace of modern society with its 24-7 demands on parents and kids alike.”

Does anyone else think that this is a concern? What does this mean for the future of our children? What about their future health? If you are a parent, this article will no doubt make you consider how your kids are sleeping.

At Wenatex, our advice to parents is put your kids to bed early and maintain a regular sleep routine. We agree with the National Institutes of Health in the USA, quoted in the article, for the current recommendations on sleep time. They state that “newborns should get 16 to 18 hours a day. Children fall in between, with preschoolers needing 11 to 12 hours of slumber and older kids and adolescents 10 hours.

Read the full article at http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/13/us-sleep-science-idUSTRE81C0IS20120213 and let us know what you think.

If you are interested in finding out more about how to get a better night’s sleep, come along to a free Wenatex seminar on the subject. We offer seminars all over Australia. You can register your interest at http://www.wenatex.com.au/seminars_registration.asp

An article in the Wall Street Journal caught my eye this morning. It discussed how scientists from the University of Pennsylvania are researching biomarkers, which are characteristics or substances in the body, to measure sleepiness.

Initially, when reading the article, I was excited about the possibilities of this research, for example, looking at sleepiness as a measure for the potential risk of diseases such as diabetes. Measuring people’s levels of sleepiness has the potential to improve overall health.

However, I can see a more negative potential for this research. It is one thing to measure how “sleepy” a person is but it is another to measure the ability of someone to cope with it. Dr Dinges raises the debate when he states “The ability to pinpoint who handles sleep loss poorly brings up ethical issues. For example, for positions that involve a lot of travel or long hours, what companies want to screen candidates for their natural ability to weather sleep loss?” Take an example, say you are applying for a job. Sleeping six hours per night is normal for you. As part of the interview process, you are required to go through a test which measures how “sleepy” you are, and based on the results of the test, you fail to get the job. In the example, the test failed to measure how well you cope with your level of sleepiness.

On the flipside, some companies appear to be using this technology in a positive way. The company in Melbourne that was raised in the article has developed special eyeglasses that can give truckdrivers a “sleepiness” score in real time.

I think in the end that Dr Shaw, also from the University of Pennsylvania, has the final say. He believes that there is no one single biomarker that can measure sleepiness. He states in the article that “we are going to need a panel of markers, each of which is going to be imprecise on its own.”

We can only wait and see further outcomes from this research.

You can read the article at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204369404577206952841644944.html?mod=googlenews_wsj. Please let me know what you think.

If you are one of those people who doesn’t need to measure, you know you are not getting enough sleep, Wenatex holds free seminars all over Australia educating people on how to get a better night’s sleep. If you are interested, you can register your interest at http://www.wenatex.com.au/seminars_registration.asp.

While researching sleep subjects this morning, I came across this article on the 11 alive website and was gobsmacked! People sending text messages while asleep… what is the world coming to?

We pay the price for staying connected with the world. The mobile phone has meant that we can receive emails and notifications at any time of night or day and now it is affecting our sleep.  Sleep specialist Dr Cunningham has the last say in this article when he states, “(With smart phones), it becomes more difficult to separate our waking from our sleeping lives.”

Wenatex has always taught that for a number of reasons, all electronic devices (including mobile phones) should be kept out of the bedroom. This article provides yet another reason.

If you would like to read the article, go to http://www.11alive.com/news/article/225193/40/Expert-claims-sleep-texting-as-new-phenomenon-

Please let us know what you think.

If you would like to find out more about how to get a healthy night’s sleep, Wenatex conducts free seminars all over Australia on the subject. To register your interest, go to the Wenatex website at http://www.wenatex.com.au/seminars_registration.asp

Every now and then, Catalyst on ABC TV features an excellent story on a sleep related subject. One of the most important stories featured on Catalyst looked at what happens to us when the “body clock”, also referred to as “circadian rhythms” is “out of sync”. Circadian rhythms make up your internal timekeeper linking your body to time, for example, daily, weekly, monthly etc.

If you are interested in seeing the video, go to the ABC Catalyst Story Archive at http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/2351893.htm

Let us know what you think.

If you would like to find out more about the body clock or more about healthy sleep in general, Wenatex conducts free seminars all over Australia. If you are interested in finding out about a seminar close to you, you can register your interest at http://www.wenatex.com.au/seminars_registration.asp.

We were recently contacted by the author of an excellent website based in the States. We recommend you visit the website at http://www.everydayhealth.com/sleep/expert-answers-on-sleep.aspxs. It features a panel of sleep experts who contribute to a multitude of discussions on sleep subjects. The content is relevant and supports the views of this blog.

Please let us know what are your views on the website.

If you have any questions with regard to sleep that you would like answered, please feel free to post them on our blog.  We would love to hear from you.

Wenatex conducts free seminars on the subject of healthy sleep all over Australia. If you are interested in finding out more about a seminar in your area, please register your interest on our website at http://www.wenatex.com.au/seminars_registration.asp

Children’s bedrooms are representative of who they are and how they live.

This morning I discovered a fascinating article which is a snippet from a book documentary from Kenyan-born, English-raised, Venice-based photographer James Mollison called Where Children Sleep.

The article that I found came from The Atlantic. As the writer of this article suggested, it is “a remarkable series capturing the diversity of and, often, disparity between children’s lives around the world through portraits of their bedrooms”.

Read the article here.

I just found this article absolutely fascinating and I hope you do too! Please let me know your thoughts.

If you would like to learn about how to get a healthy night’s sleep, come along to a Wenatex free healthy sleep seminar. They are conducted all over Australia. To register your interest, please fill in your details at Wenatex Seminar Registration Page.