Sleep Deficit May Become Permanent

You’ve got a long list of e-mails to return, bills to pay and, oh, yeah, you don’t want to miss the latest episode of The Office. By the time you crawl into bed, it’s nearly midnight. The alarm goes off at 6 the next morning, and bingo! You’ve just joined the legions of Americans who are bleary-eyed and flat-out tired most days of the week.

For years sleep researchers have been preaching the dangers of lost sleep: People who are fatigued can’t pay attention to routine tasks, have distress learning and are prone to a laundry list of health problems, from depression to high blood pressure.

New research suggests an added risk to losing sleep day after day: Humans and animals that have chronic sleep deprivation might reach a point at which the very ability to catch up on lost sleep is hurt, says Fred Turek, a sleep researcher at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill.

His research on sleep patterns in rats appeared this summer in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. That, together with findings from a human study, suggests that people who lose sleep night after night might not recover the alertness they need to perform well during the day. So far the studies don’t tell researchers whether the hurt is permanent.

But they do suggest that people who go to work fatigued day after day might perform consistently at a subpar level. “They may say, ‘Hey, I’m doing fine’ . . . even as their performance on memory and attention tests goes down,” Turek says.

People who lose sleep due to a single all-nighter typically make up for it by boosting the amount of deep sleep they get the next night, says study co-author Aaron Laposky. Deep sleep is thought to restore alertness and helps keep memory and other brain functions in top form.

People also make up for the occasional bout of insomnia by sleeping in on weekends, Laposky says. But is that capacity lost when sleep deprivation becomes a fact of life? At Northwestern, researchers kept lab rats awake for 20 hours, then let them sleep four hours.

After the first night, the rats recovered; when they were allowed to sleep, the rats fell into a deep sleep more frequently than they did when well rested. But after three nights of sleep deprivation, the rats failed to show an increase in deep sleep. And at the end of the five-day study, the rats were given a chance to sleep in, but recovered nearly none of the lost sleep.

“The ability to compensate for lost sleep is itself lost, which is damaging mentally and physically,” Turek says. Sleep expert David Dinges says people seem to respond to a chronic lack of sleep the same way. Dinges, a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in Philadelphia, and his colleagues studied 48 healthy people.

Some got eight hours of sleep a night, while others stayed up, losing from two to four hours of sleep a night. By the end of two weeks, the people who had lost sleep at night said they no longer felt tired during the day. But test scores told a different tale, according to the 2003 study published in the journal Sleep.

The sleep-deprived group had distress paying attention, had slower reaction times and developed memory impairments, Dinges says. The ability to fend off sleep might have evolved to help creatures and humans survive a natural disaster. People forced to evacuate during a fire or hurricane often lose sleep for a small period, but they’re more likely to make it through a crisis alive, Turek says.

The distress is humans have built a society that runs round the clock, Turek says. Cellphones, laptops and other electronic devices make it simple to stay connected at all hours. All-night TV and an extended workday also can rob sleep, says James Walsh, executive director of sleep medicine at St. Luke’s Hospital in St. Louis.

Surveys now show that most people in the United States get fewer than seven hours of sleep a night. No one really knows the full effect of the steady erosion of sleep time. Only a study that keeps track of lots of sleepy humans for a long time would answer that question, Turek says. But even if the hurt can be reversed, there’s plenty of scientific evidence that sleep loss is terrible for your health.

For example, fatigue might play a role in obesity. And there’s no question that sleep loss plays a role in highway fatalities. The National Sleep Foundation says drowsy driving is the likely cause of more than 100,000 U.S. car crashes each year.

Want a Permanent Solution for Your Sleep Problems? Natural Cures For Insomnia Are the Answer

If you are someone who regularly takes sleeping pills to get a excellent night’s sleep, here’s a question for you – have you ever considered trying natural cures for insomnia? If you haven’t, you should certainly consider trying them. There are some very excellent homeopathic remedies available to treat insomnia and you’ll be surprised to know that they are far more effective and safer than the sleeping pills you take.

First of all, you should know that insomnia is not as terrible as you reckon. It is not a disease, but a symptom of a sleeping disorder. Usually, people do not get a excellent night’s sleep when their mind is preoccupied with something. It’s a psychological, rather than a physical problem. Stress, depression, and anxiety are the most common causes of insomnia. Physical exhaustion can be another reason, but this is usually only temporary. When your physical system heals itself and you are fully rested, your natural sleep rhythm will re-establish itself. To sum up, the main cause of insomnia is a psychological one. There are perfectly excellent natural insomnia cures available to treat this problem.

Natural homeopathic blends are completely non habit forming, unlike sleeping pills. You can take them regularly until you develop a very healthy, normal sleep – wake pattern. These cures usually contain herbal extracts which can relax your body and mind and help you get a excellent night’s sleep. Homeopathic remedies can be safely taken over the longer term as they have no side effects. If you take sleeping pills on a regular basis for any length of time, you’ll experience withdrawal symptom when you try and stop. With these natural cures for insomnia, you do not have to worry about all these problems.

One of the largest differences between sleeping pills and these natural remedies is the way they work. While the former acts as a sedative and offers only temporary relief, the latter has a calming effect and offers a permanent relief. In small – natural insomnia cures are typically better and, more importantly, safer than sleeping pills.

Now, you might have a question – why homeopathy in particular? It’s a excellent question. There is a significant reason for choosing homeopathic remedies. To start with they are safe, being nearly completely free from side effects. You cannot say the same about other types of natural remedies. Even herbal medications are not that safe when compared to homeopathy.

Herbal remedies tend to react with other medications and can cause some serious side effects. But homeopathic medications may safely be taken with any other type of medication. They do not interact or react in any way. This is why homeopathy is widely considered to be the right option when treating insomnia.

Sleep is one of the most vital factors that determine your health. More importantly, but, your sleep should be natural and not artificially induced by sleeping pills. Natural remedies are far more effective, safer, and they give you the best results. So consider relaxing your body and mind by changing to natural cures for insomnia. You’ll sleep better and, above all, stay healthier.