How Sleep Clinics Help You

People seldom talk about their sleeping habits except when it is has become too much for them to deal with anymore. That’s when they go see a doctor to help them sort things out and feel normal again. Unfortunately, not everything can be solved with just a prescription. Other times, far more effort is required; starting from the assessment before appropriate interventions can be advised. Sleep disorders are among those things you often keep to yourself and only discuss with your attending physician. Aside from being embarrassing, others don’t usually talk about it too so you feel weird exposing your deepest, darkest secrets out in the open.

You don’t have to wander around in search of the best people to help you manage your sleep conditions anymore. Sleep may have been elusive for a while but you’ll be able to get a good night’s sleep once more if you get yourself checked in at a reputable sleep clinic to get to the root of your problem. No need to self-medicate or try a long list of remedies that are said to promote restful sleep like drinking warm milk, listening to relaxing music, or even counting sheep because what you need all along is medical help. So, why visit a sleep clinic? These are specialty hospitals or clinics that focus mainly on sleep-related disorders and issues where patients often have to stay for the night to be assessed properly since symptoms don’t usually manifest during waking hours.

When someone is suspected of suffering from sleep apnea, they're often sent for a sleep study (also known as polysomnography). This involves their spending the night sleeping at a clinic, with numerous electrodes hard-wired to their head. There are diagnostic devices that they can use at home, although these can also be rather cumbersome. By contrast, the new SomnaPatch is quite simple and – according to the recently-released results of a study – almost as accurate as polysomnography.

Made by Mountain View, California-based startup Somnarus, the SomnaPatch weighs less than an ounce, and consists of a forehead-worn disposable adhesive patch connected to a nosepiece.

Worn while the patient sleeps in their own bed, it uses integrated sensors to measure and record factors such as nasal pressure, blood oxygen saturation, heart rate, respiratory effort, sleep duration and changes in body position.

(Via: http://newatlas.com/somnapatch-sleep-apnea/49920/)

These sleep clinics often conduct the same tests but at times may use innovative technologies that are not yet offered in other mainstream clinics. A night spent in a sleep clinic will show the doctors what really happens to your body during your sleep since you are connected with leads that assess your heart rate, eye movements, brain activity, snoring, and other body movements to give them an idea what’s going on in your body during your slumber.

Doctor Irshaad Ebrahim of the Dubai-based London Sleep Centre describes the number of current sleep disorders as “an epidemic”.

“It’s so much more important than what’s being reported in the press: lifestyle, pace of work, demands of technology, screen use – they are harming our sleep/wake cycle.”

The number of sleep clinics in the UAE are on the rise, as are do-it-yourself responses such as sleep treatments at luxury hotels and online apps for managing one’s sleep cycle. “It is a response to demand,” says Ebrahim, “just the number of people seeking help”.

According to Elizabeth Graf, a clinical psychologist at a private clinic in New York, “research continues to show the emotional and physical benefits of sleep”.

Studies have linked lack of sleep to poor performance at work, depression and overall health, including links to cancer. It is not uncommon for studies to speak about the “public health crisis” of lack of sleep, in which billions of dirhams are spent tackling the secondary effects of poor slumber. Others point to its effect on the economy, and even its role in disasters such as the nuclear meltdowns at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl.

(Via: https://www.thenational.ae/lifestyle/wellbeing/different-ways-to-tackle-sleep-deprivation-and-remain-healthy-1.15435)

Sleep clinics are helpful in diagnosing sleep disorders because they are equipped with the current technologies used in visualizing and understanding brain activity and everything else that matters in your sleep to find out what could have possibly gone wrong and what can be done about it. However, there are instances when sleep clinics aren’t immediately able to determine your sleep problem. Then, a sleep study may be your next option.

More often than not, sleep apnea is the cause of your misery. If CPAP isn’t something up your alley, you can check with your doctor whether an anti-snoring mouthpiece may work for you. It may not be as effective as CPAP but it’s the next best thing than nothing at all. You can opt for a mouthpiece like this one: https://snoringmouthpiecereview.org/zquiet or a similar device like: https://snoringmouthpiecereview.org/good-morning-snore-solution. Don’t put off going to a sleep clinic... no matter how inconvenient it may initially seem, it is much better than continuously losing sleep from sleep apnea like you do now.

The blog article How Sleep Clinics Help You was originally published on The Snoring Mouthpiece Review Blog

source https://snoringmouthpiecereview.org/good-morning-snore-solution/how-sleep-clinics-help-you

What Is Obstructive Sleep Apnea?

Sleep is actually a necessity but is becoming more of a luxury these days as numerous things compete for your time and attention. Juggling your multiple responsibilities in and out of the house can be overwhelming at times that you often stretch your day far out into the night to ensure everything’s all taken cared of before your head hits the sack. It’s a sad reality really that you unconsciously give up and sacrifice many of the things that are important in life for the fleeting interests and obligations you busy yourself with in your pursuit of success and happiness.

However, you can also end up tossing and turning at night because of annoying but potentially life-threatening conditions like sleep apnea. There are different types of sleep apnea but the most common type is the obstructive one, a dangerous type of sleep disorder where your breathing constantly stops and start during your slumber. It happens because the muscles in your throat relax now and then that in turn blocks your airway while you are asleep.

Last week, actress Carrie Fisher's autopsy report contained a surprising detail: The Los Angeles medical examiner listed sleep apnea as a factor in the "Star Wars" actress' death.

Fisher also had cocaine, methadone, ethanol and opiates in her system.

Sleep apnea is when a person stops breathing while sleeping, for 10 seconds to a minute or longer. This can happen repeatedly during the night, causing blood-oxygen levels to dip and putting a strain on the heart.

Obstructive sleep apnea, the most common type, is caused by the upper throat muscles relaxing, which makes the airway narrow and close. Another type is central sleep apnea, where the brain doesn't send the right signals to the muscles that control breathing. Complex sleep apnea, the third type, is when a person has both obstructive and central sleep apnea.

(Via: http://edition.cnn.com/2017/06/20/health/sleep-apnea-explainer/index.html)

It shouldn’t really come out as a surprise that people can die from sleep apnea to think that 18 million Americans are now diagnosed with obstructive sleep apnea in the US alone albeit of different degrees of severity. Many are getting help. So, don’t take snoring issues lightly because it is your body’s way of telling you something is wrong and you need to act on it right away while you still can.

When you have obstructive sleep apnea, “not only are you likely to wake up with a headache and fall asleep during the day, but you’re also at risk of dying suddenly,” says cardiologist Bruce Wilkoff, MD.

“For most patients, sudden death is not caused by a heart attack, but by abnormal heart rhythms.”

Sleep apnea is diagnosed when you stop breathing for 10 seconds or longer — at least five times an hour — during sleep.

Researchers suspect sleep apnea causes abnormal heart rhythms, which lead to sudden cardiac death, for a number of reasons, says sleep medicine expert Reena Mehra, MD, MS.

“Sleep apnea may lower oxygen levels, activate the fight-or-flight response and change pressure in the chest when the upper airway closes, stressing the heart mechanically,” she explains.

It may increase inflammation and cause unhealthy changes in blood vessels as well.

(Via: https://health.clevelandclinic.org/2017/06/why-sleep-apnea-raises-your-risk-of-sudden-cardiac-death/)

While snoring is the most prominent symptom of sleep apnea, not all snorers are actually diagnosed with the disease. Sleep apnea’s progression can be gradual or not depending on the type of lifestyle you live, so try to get yourself checked as soon as you can if you don’t want to end up with more debilitating conditions that are worsened by sleep apnea and the accompanying lack of sleep you often suffer from. And be considerate of your partner or spouse as well. Even though it’s you taking all the risks, they also end up losing sleep having to put up with your loud snoring.

Traditional treatment often includes the use of a CPAP machine that most patients realize is far uncomfortable to use. Even if it’s the best treatment there is for this condition, it defeats its purpose if patients aren’t willing to use it. Find out for yourself if you think CPAP may or may not be a good fit for you: https://snoringmouthpiecereview.org/why-a-cpap-machine-is-probably-not-for-you. But don’t lose hope yet if you aren’t comfortable in using a CPAP machine yourself because there are handy anti-snoring mouthpieces and mouthguards you can use like this one: https://snoringmouthpiecereview.org/good-morning-snore-solutionx that works better CPAP minus all the hassle. The important thing is to get yourself checked as soon as possible if you value your health and ultimately your life.

The blog post What Is Obstructive Sleep Apnea? was originally seen on The Snoring Mouthpiece Review Blog

source https://snoringmouthpiecereview.org/good-morning-snore-solution/what-is-obstructive-sleep-apnea

Your iPhone Deprives You Of Sleep

If there is one thing you are thankful with technology, it is your beloved iPhone. Ever since it debuted in the market, it has brought a new meaning to your life. Then, the imitators followed. The market has since then been flooded by Android smartphones but nothing still beats the innovator. iPhone almost always set the pace and everyone else mostly followed. Smart technology reinvented the way we live our lives. Can you still remember the last time you never panicked that you left your iPhone at home when you get to school or work? Probably a lifetime ago, right?

While you can’t help but adore that tiny piece of metal that probably holds all your life secrets, it is wreaking havoc to your health by leaving you sleep deprived almost every night. All the apps and social media in it is enough to keep you awake 24/7 and leave you still wanting for more. That’s how powerful an iPhone is. It has made us slaves of these gadgets rather than us owning them. But can you really help it if your phone seems to be calling you every single time a notification comes in? Probably not. It’s got us hooked like drugs to our system.

The iPhone has changed us in a fundamental way. Smartphones have been described as the culprit responsible for wrecking attention spans, disturbing sleep patterns and affecting eyesights. As part of our week-long coverage of the 10th anniversary of the iPhone, we consult with three experts to help us disentangle fact from fiction when it comes to how the iPhone has affected our brain, our sleep and our eyesight.

WIRED talks to University of Oxford sleep researcher Russell Foster, who has co-authored the book Sleep, a very short introduction.
WIRED: There have been many headlines about how smartphones are affecting our sleep. What's your opinion?
Russell Foster: The problem with smartphones is that they represent an additional delay to sleep onset. Now the group most vulnerable to this are teenagers, of course. They are biologically predisposed to go to bed late and to get up late. But that's been hugely exaggerated over the past ten years because of the use of the internet, texting and emailing. It is sort of a compulsion, almost an addiction. And that seems to be delaying further sleep onset. It’s a sort of biological predisposition that has been enormously exaggerated. On a school night many kids are getting less than six hours every night and it's been estimated that for full cognitive performance in teenagers at that age you need about nine hours of sleep. What happens with delayed sleep onset is that their performance in schools in the morning is particularly bad. They're chronically tired.

(Via: https://www.wired.co.uk/article/sleep)

The blue light in itself emitted by iPhones and other similar smart gadgets can leave you wide awake at night even though it is already past your bedtime. It messes up your natural body clock or circadian rhythm. Younger kids suffer more than adults knowing their increased sleeping requirements to meet their growing needs. The brain actually perceives blue light as daylight making it more difficult for the brain to drift off to sleep leaving you tossing and turning for a few more hours before you succumb to sleep.

I knew that smartphone use was associated with sleeping problems. What I didn’t know was that heavy smartphone users were more likely to have high levels of anxiety and depression.

Getting off the bus, I started wondering why we were so addicted to our devices. As I walked towards my office, I continued my search. It seemed that in the past few years, psychologists have come up with some explanations. The most well-known is the fear of missing out, or Fomo. We keep looking at our phones to be sure we don’t miss out on something which is happening – whether that is an important message or just a piece of incoming news.

As I waited for the lift, I came across two other explanations for our dependency. One was that people just love to touch their phones. Indeed, psychologists have found that people who have very high need for human contact were likely to be even more addicted to their phones. Those with high levels of social anxiety were also more likely to develop a dependency. The socially anxious are people who worry about social interactions and tend to avoid them if possible – and smartphones give them the ideal way of avoiding an encounter they could find disturbing.

(Via: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jun/29/apple-iphone-ten-years-old-crippling-addiction)

We’ve talked about the body clock, right? Just how does smartphone use mess it up? It all has to do with the suppression of melatonin production. This hormone regulates the circadian rhythm and sleep timing. As night time falls, the body produces more melatonin in anticipation of sleep. However, overexposure to blue light prevents the body from producing more melatonin that can help you fall asleep faster and stay asleep throughout the night. And imagine exposing yourself to lots and lots of blue light on a daily basis. It tweaks your body’s sleeping habits and can even reduce hours on the REM phase of sleep, which is actually the most restorative phase of slumber.

As technology progressed, we prefer living in our virtual worlds rather than in real life. We took comfort in the numbers of friends, followers, likes, and shares we get on social media and mistake it for acceptance and friendship. And we can fake our posts too depending on what we want to show to the public. It’s the benefit smart gadgets like an iPhone has given us all this time.

Unfortunately, our health suffers as we continue to stroke our ego and give in to our little whims. Worse, it puts us at higher risk of certain diseases if we don’t already have it. Sleep apnea is a common complaint shared by many. And since most people would rather deal with it on their own no matter how deadly it is, sleep disorders like this one often go untreated. But knowing the risks of sleep apnea, it’s better to see the doctor and try those handy anti-snoring mouthpieces than nothing at all. Either of this two https://snoringmouthpiecereview.org/good-morning-snore-solution or https://snoringmouthpiecereview.org/sleeptight is an excellent choice to help you manage sleep apnea before it kills you.

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