This finding comes from work in the U.S. on a group of volunteers who were willing to adjust their sleep patterns so they could be monitored.

For seven days, one half of the group was given extra sleep, while the others were told to make no changes to their sleeping patterns.

The next week they were all sleep deprived. “After this week of either extended or habitual sleep per night, all the volunteers came to the lab and they were allowed only three hours of sleep, per night, for a week,” explained award-winning researcher Tracy Rupp from the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research.

Next, both groups were given tasks of varying complexity – tests showed that subjects who had banked sleep the week before were better off during the sleep restriction.

Those who banked sleep didn’t lose reaction time and alertness like the group who’d slept normally. Even a week after the experiment, the sleepers who banked sleep were recovering better from being deprived of sleep than those who had slept as usual.

“What we’re basically saying is if you fill up your reserves and pay back your sleep debt ahead of time, you’re better equipped to deal with the sleep loss challenge.”

The research team isn’t able to say just how much sleep you need to bank for maximum effect. Like the amount of sleep each of us needs, the amount to bank is likely very individualized.

Of course so many of us know well the feeling of going to bed early before a big day and not being able to fall off to sleep. This is where good sleep habits can truly make a difference, especially relaxation techniques, in helping you slow your thoughts and let go so you can slip into sleep easily.

And though the latest work didn’t look at napping, the researchers point out that short rests during the day have been shown to improve performance, at least in the short term.

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Bank Sleep To Fight Fatigue Continued…

Earlier work has found that those who suffer with chronic sleep deprivation might be able to function just fine just after waking, but experience slower reaction times as the day goes on… even if they tried to catch up the night before. Chronic sleep deprivation appears to take some time and effort to fix.

Not only does this sleep banking idea have implications for business people, but also for the military where it could be a lifesaver. The idea, if supported after some more testing, could become a part of pre-tour routines for armed forces.

The next step is to find out why the extra sleep can be banked and to identify just what’s happening in the brain – something that we can be observed with advanced brain-imaging machines.

According to the National Institutes of Health, 50 to 70 million Americans deal with chronic sleep disorders and sleep problems that can truly affect health, not to mention alertness and safety.

Sleep disorders that don’t get treated have been linked to high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, depression, diabetes and other chronic conditions. The trouble for many of us is that we overlook or ignore our sleep problems and don’t mention them to our doctor.

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Earlier work has shown that processes that improve memory go on while we sleep, but this is the first study to look at what happens during times of so-called wakeful rest.

“Taking a coffee break after class can actually help you retain that information you just learned,” explains researcher Lila Davachi, PhD, assistant professor of psychology at the Center for Neural Science at New York University. “Your brain wants you to tune out other tasks so you can tune in to what you just learned.”

For the project, 16 adults, aged 22 to 34, were shown pairs of images (a human face and an object, or a human face and a scene) and told to associate the object with the person in the picture, but not told they’d be tested on this later on.

This learning period was followed by a time of wakeful rest (about 8 minutes) where the subjects were told only to relax and think about whatever they liked. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) was used to measure the brain activity before, during and after the testing.

The researchers found that the activity between the hippocampus and neocortex – two areas of the brain known to be involved in memory and processing – increased as the subjects were shown the images and during the resting phase as well.

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Short Breaks Boost Memory Continued…

The subjects who had the greatest increases in activity between the two brain areas while resting and looking at the images did better on associative memory tests than those who had weaker reactions.

It seems the greater the activity in the two regions of the brain, the stronger the memory.

“Your brain is working for you when you’re resting, so rest is important for memory and cognitive function,” Davachi says. “This is something we don’t appreciate much, especially when today’s information technologies keep us working around the clock.”

So, could taking a short break and letting the brain relax when studying for an exam or getting ready for a business presentation be a better way to learn and memorize?

Study leader Dr. Davachi says, “People tend to think that if we want to remember something, you should do something active, like rehearse the material. And you can do that – we know it helps, but my suspicion is just letting your mind wander is going to be okay.”

For now researchers can’t say that one type of wakeful rest is better than another for enhancing memory. Your best bet might be to sit quietly and do nothing, just letting the information sink in.

The researchers involved in this work hope their findings will be of value to anyone trying to improve their memory, and help science further understand memory and how it works.

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An abundance of research now proves that getting enough sleep gives you the edge to help you perform at your best, be more creative, have stronger long-term memory and preservation of important memories.

Where once sleeping was dismissed as down time, research now knows that sleep has distinct stages that cycle through the night, and that your brain does stay active during sleep, with different things happening during each stage of sleep.

“It turns out we are not like TiVo,” explains Dr. Robert Stickgold of Harvard Medical School who also serves as director of Boston’s Center for Sleep and Cognition at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, comparing our mind to the video recording device. “TiVo is good at recording one station while it shows you another. We can’t do that. We can’t simultaneously take in information and process it.”

He believes that sleep helps in the information processing part of the equation, maybe giving the brain a chance to go “offline” for a while and then shift into a different mode that’s evolved over time to help us perform memory processing.

Research points to REM sleep (the stage of rapid eye movement) as being the time when issues are resolved and new information tucked away or discarded.

Stickgold points out that when faced with a big decision, few of us say, “I’ll go out for a hamburger.” What do we do? We sleep on it…

Just why sleep is so crucial for memories is still a mystery, although the mystery is starting to be unraveled.

Another researcher in the area of sleep and memory, assistant professor of psychology Jessica Payne of the University of Notre Dame, has found that a good night’s sleep can result in better inferential ability.

Evidence from her work suggests that when you sleep you learn the hierarchy of information and the more sophisticated relationships. “Sleep is not only important for your ability to remember,” Payne says, “but it also helps you be more creative, find more interesting and distant connections and be more innovative.”

And while there’s no public service initiative to promote the benefits of a good night’s sleep, the experts are calling for that to change.

Sleep depravation has been linked to all kinds of troublesome conditions, not just obesity (because it disrupts insulin regulation), but high blood pressure and heart disease as well.

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A Good Night’s Makes Us Better Continued…

Beyond this, lack of sleep also has well documented ties to weakened immunity and memory. Accidents are a well-known risk of driving or operating machinery when people are routinely not getting the amount of sleep they need – in fact, drowsy driving has been shown to be the same as driving drunk.

So what’s the right amount of sleep to get? The amount varies from person to person and needs change throughout our lives. Most adults require 7 to 8 hours each night -newborns sleep 16-18 hours a day; preschooler’s 10-12 hours a day; school age and teens need about 9 hours a night.

Stickgold has a suggestion to see if you’re getting the amount of sleep you need. “Watch what happens on the weekend if you don’t set an alarm,” he advises. “If you sleep more than you sleep during the week, you aren’t getting enough sleep. Try for one week to sleep for eight hours a night and see if things get better or worse.”

Once you do, Stickgold believes you’ll see for yourself how things you do every day get easier. And you might find some life saving health benefits as well, all without pills and just as close as your bedroom.

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But new research finds that regular sleep loss can’t be fixed so easily. And in our 24/7 world, where one in six Americans regularly get six or less hours of sleep each night, where shift work and overtime are increasingly popular, the results cannot be overlooked.

The National Institutes of Health suggests that adults get 7 to 9 hours of sleep each night in order to maintain good health.

If you’re not getting this regularly, you run an increased risk of health problems, impaired memory and even a weakened immune system.

Too little sleep also impacts your reaction times and is often to blame for all manner of accidents.

Researchers looked at the effects of both short and long term sleep loss using nine young, healthy volunteers, aged 21 to 34 years old, whose sleep habits the team disrupted over a three-week period.

The subjects stayed awake for 33-hour stretches with 10 hours of sleep in between – a quirky enough schedule that didn’t let the subjects internal clocks adapt.

The sleep depravation used here is about the same as someone who gets 5½ hours a night and can be compared to the typical on call schedule of a resident physician.

Both cognitive and motor skills tests every few hours during the wakeful period were used to measure the subjects’ ability to stay alert as compared to a control group of volunteers who were getting a normal amount (8 hours) of sleep per night.

The sleep-deprived subjects didn’t do so badly during the first few hours after waking, especially during that first week. But their reaction times got worse and worse with each hour they were awake.

There was a big drop in performance between the first and second week of sleep depravation.

This effect persisted even if the subjects had tried to catch up on sleep the night before. And while a well rested person can catch up from the occasional late night pretty easily, the more sleep deprived you are, the more you lose that sense of rejuvenation that comes from a good night’s sleep.

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Sleeping In Is NOT The Answer Continued…

The team found that when the chronically sleep deprived subjects stayed up past bedtime again, their performance plummeted just as their circadian rhythms (the term for our internal body clock) reached a natural low point.

The drop was so impressive that Dr. Daniel A. Cohen (a neurologist at Harvard Medical School’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center) and the team were convinced these subjects were increasingly at risk to accidents or mistakes.

These findings are certainly important to anyone who works an alternate shift, or is constantly cheating themselves of sleep. Don’t think there aren’t consequences to the body of doing this.

“We know that staying awake 24 hours in a row impairs performance to a level comparable to a blood-alcohol content beyond the legal limit to drive,” said lead researcher Cohen, also associated with Brigham and Women’s hospital in Boston. But when the already chronically sleep-deprived don’t sleep at all, “the deterioration is increased tenfold.”

What this tells us is you can’t “bank” sleep on the weekend. You need to practice good sleep habits, along with other smart lifestyle choices, to ensure your body gets the rest it needs to function at its best.

Future work in this area will try to uncover how quickly you might recover from chronic sleep loss once you change your sleeping habits.

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Now new research out of Northwestern University has found that sound may work in much the same way on the sleeping brain, adding to a growing body of evidence that memories are processed during sleep.

The latest study appears in the November 20, 2009 issue of Science and examines whether sound cues linked to newly learned information help the brain hang onto that data.

“We have known that the memory system is quite active during sleep and that the memory can be strengthened at this time,” says John Rudoy, lead author of the study and a neuroscience Ph.D. student at Northwestern.

The participants in this study, 12 young adults who were asked to learn a new task and then take a nap, were better able to hold onto the newly learned memory when they were exposed to sound cues during their nap, though none of them remembered hearing any sounds.

The task involved being shown 50 images, each appearing one at a time in different places on a computer screen. The images had a matching sound – a meow with the image of a cat, shattering glass when seeing a wine glass.

The task the subjects did was to put the images in their original spot when they were presented, along with the matching sound, a while later. This part of the study ended when the subjects could do this memory task two times with all the images.

Within the hour after finishing the memory task, the subjects were asked to take a nap in a dark, quiet space. Electrodes were put on their heads to monitor brain activity.

Only after verifying the subjects were in a deep phase of sleep did the researchers play half of the 50 sound cues heard during the learning part of the experiment. They also added 25 new sounds to the mix.

When they woke up, the subjects were given the memory task to do again. After nap scores were worse than the scores before napping. The researchers believe this shows some loss of memory over time.

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Memory Boosted During Sleep Continued…

But the recall of the correct location of specific images, after being exposed to sound cues for those images during sleep, was far better, even though there was no memory of hearing any sounds.

“The research strongly suggests that we don’t shut down our minds during deep sleep,” continues researcher Rudoy, “Rather this is an important time for consolidating memories.”

So does this mean there’s a way to help us super-charge our learning capacity? It’s too soon to know for sure.

For now, researchers believe that existing memories can be made stronger during sleep, but that new learning doesn’t take place.

According to Howard Eichenbaum, PhD, who directs the Center for Memory and Brain at Boston University, the brain replays memories while we sleep, and sounds may well trigger more specific memories.

He’d like to see future work compare the amount of memory retention associated with sounds during sleep as opposed to more traditional ways of learning… like studying.

This way students and actors everywhere would know which is more effective, listening while you’re sleeping or studying a bit more when you’re awake.

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Lack of sleep is well known as the culprit behind anxiety and depression, as well as upping the chances of getting hurt and casting an overall shadow over work and family life.

Just recently there was a report from the U.S. government that finds only one third (30.7%) of adults are getting enough sleep each night, while another 11.1% reported not getting enough sleep for each of the past 30 days.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that as many as 50 to 70 million American adults deal with sleep and wakefulness disorders.

If you’re not getting enough sleep, you’re more prone to depression, anxiety, obesity, hypertension, diabetes, high cholesterol and risky behaviors like smoking, drinking too much and being too inactive.

The report, based on data collected in the 50 states, D.C. and the three U.S. territories, points out that sleep loss is a complex issue that can come from a combination of causes including occupation, lifestyle and specific sleep disorders.

Of the U.S. adults (403,981 of them) who responded to the survey, 11.1% said they didn’t get enough sleep every day of the month just past.

It’s more women than men reporting a shortage of sleep, and there were ethnic differences too. Blacks got less sleep compared to all other ethnic groups.

Those under 45 were also more likely to report days of insufficient sleep than those older than this.

When it came to which of the 50 states was most sleep deprived, West Virginia tops the list, coming in at 19.3%; North Dakota was at the bottom of the list with 7.4%.

According to the National Sleep Foundation, adults require from 7 to 9 hours of sleep each night. Experts like Dr. Bruce Nolan, director of the sleep center at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine who was not involved in the study points out, “There is a relatively small percentage of people getting what sleep experts feel is an adequate amount of rest and sleep. That is a very important physical and mental health concern.”

Where once people, the medical profession included, might have thought sleep a waste of time, the research is causing many to revise their thinking.

“We have lots of evidence that getting good quality sleep is associated with better quality of life,” Nolan points out. So if you can manage to get 7 hours of sleep a night you’ll notice that you’re more alert, you do better on the job and enjoy an overall improved quality of life. You’ll feel more energetic.

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Millions Of Americans Aren’t Getting Enough Sleep Continued…

If you’re having trouble sleeping there are things you can do to get the rest you need. Start with your own doctor about your sleeping problems, and consider a sleep specialist if you’re not getting better. Sometimes sleep medications can be the answer, though you’ll also want to be sure to:

- Keep a regular sleep schedule so that you go to bed and wake up at the same time every day, even on the weekends, holidays and on vacation.

- Do not nap during the day.

- Make your sleeping space a dark place that’s a comfortable temperature and quiet. Check your mattress and pillow to be sure they’re comfortable and offering good support.

- Avoid stimulating activities, games or the nightly news, as well as caffeine, nicotine, chocolate, sugar or alcohol at least 2 hours before bedtime.

- Use techniques like progressive relaxation, guided imagery or deep breathing to quiet your mind.

- Don’t go to bed hungry, but avoid eating large meals at least 3 hours before bedtime. Limit fluids from early evening to avoid trips to the bathroom.

Making a few simple, natural changes in your sleep routine is one of the best ways to ensure your body gets the rest it needs. Eating right and regular exercise are important, but increasingly experts are seeing that getting enough rest is also critical to lasting health.

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Even though a good part of the work was done using mice, it offers some interesting insights into the role of sleep and this memory-robbing disease in people.

Researchers at St. Louis’ Barnes-Jewish Hospital examined levels of a protein known to accumulate in the brains of those with Alzheimer’s – amyloid beta. This protein is thought to cause plaques to accumulate in the brain, leading to cell death and the progression of Alzheimer’s disease.

Using mice genetically engineered to have a version of this most common form of dementia, the scientists saw that beta-amyloid levels went up in the brain when the mice were awake and fell when they were sleeping.

Keeping the mice from sleeping made things worse. When the mice were made to stay awake for 20 hours a day, they developed 25% more plaques in their brains. “Sleep deprivation markedly accelerated amyloid-beta plaque formation,” explains Dr. David Holtzman, a researcher on the study.

This has the team wondering if sleeping longer could keep all those plaques from forming, maybe even block them altogether.

The team also tried helping the mice sleep with a medication that’s being tested now for insomnia. Called Almorexant, it’s able to cut the amount of plaque-forming protein. The team injected orexin (a compound that regulates sleep and has been linked to narcolepsy) into the brains of the mice.

The mice stayed awake longer, and the amyloid beta levels rose. Blocking orexin caused the levels to drop, and this suggests that that drugs that target orexin might be helpful as Alzheimer’s treatments.

The team also measured the levels of beta-amyloid in the cerebrospinal fluid of 10 male subjects, all healthy. One measurement was done at night, the other during the day. The levels were lower at night, another suggestion that sleep might keep levels of this plaque protein low in people too. It may be that when we’re awake, our brains are more active, and may produce more of the beta-amyloid protein.

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Does Lack Of Sleep Have A Role In Alzheimer’s? Continued…

This research also points out the need to treat sleep disorders. This benefits to doing so go beyond just helping a patient cope in the short term, since these diseases quite possibly have an impact on brain health years later.

Prescription sleeping aid can be helpful for a short time, but a much better, more lasting coping strategy is to exercise during the day so that you use up energy and are more likely to be tired at night.

One of many frustrating things about Alzheimer’s is that despite years of research, there are few effective weapons against this memory-robbing disease. And while those with the condition are known to suffer some sleep abnormalities, no one can say for sure if these are cause or symptom.

In 2010 estimates have over 35 million people around the world dealing with Alzheimer’s or another form of dementia.

Treatment for Alzheimer’s symptoms is available, and researchers continue to search for better ways to manage the symptoms, delay the onset or prevent this disease altogether, but for now it is best to do everything you can to avoid even minor sleep deprivation symptoms wherever possible, by getting a restful nights sleep every day.

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The work, appearing in the respected Archives of Internal Medicine, confirms that losing weight can significantly improve, perhaps even eliminate sleep apnea symptoms in obese patients.

Many people who have sleep apnea don’t even know it, though those who sleep with them probably do.

Partners often complain about loud snoring, as well as sounds like snorts or choking that go on through the night. The patient is asleep and doesn’t know, though they do deal with a constant daytime sleepiness that can affect work or school.

Since sleep apnea is most common in overweight or obese people, doctors often recommend that these patients lose at least 10% of their body weight. Of course weight loss is no easier for these patients than it is for the rest of us, though the new research offers solid support for this advice, and might give patients just the motivation they need to stick with their weight loss goals.

In this study, the subjects were 264 obese adults who had type 2 diabetes and were also dealing with symptoms of sleep apnea.

The participants were randomly assigned into either a weight loss program or a diabetes management program. The weight loss program involved portion-controlled diets and exercise for at least 175 minutes (or more) per week.

After one year, the weight loss group lost an average of 24 pounds; the diabetes management group dropped just about 1 pound.

Beyond the weight loss, the difference between the two groups also appeared in terms of their sleep apnea symptoms. In fact, the researchers found that those with severe sleep apnea who lost weight were three times more likely to have a complete remission of their symptoms as compared to those who didn’t lose weight.

What’s more, the weight loss group had about half the instances of severe sleep apnea as did the diabetes management group.

In fact, those in the management group experienced a worsening of their sleep apnea symptoms.

“These results show that doctors as well as patients can expect a significant improvement in their sleep apnea with weight loss,” says researcher Gary Foster, director of the Center for Obesity Research and Education at Temple University. “And a reduction in sleep apnea has a number of benefits for overall health and well-being.”

Sleep apnea is a chronic disorder that brings symptoms such as super-loud snoring and sleep disruption that comes from the airway being temporarily blocked (interrupting your breathing) as you sleep.

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Losing Weight Likely To Relieve (Or Cure) Sleep Problems Continued…

Patients may actually stop breathing over and over as they sleep, perhaps even hundreds of times a night, for anywhere from a few seconds to up to a minute (or longer). It’s no wonder those who have this condition don’t have the energy to do things during the day – would you?

Sleep apnea can affect anyone, even kids, however the factors that add to your risk include:

- Being male

- Being overweight

- Being over 40 years old

- Having a neck size over 17 inches for men, 16 inches for women

- Having larger tonsils

- A family history of sleep apnea

Left untreated, sleep apnea can bring on some troublesome, life-changing health problems including high blood pressure, stroke, heart failure, irregular heartbeat or heart attack.

According to the National Institute of Health, this sleep disturbance affects more than 12 million Americans. Even today, many cases of sleep apnea remain undiagnosed (and therefore untreated) because of lack of awareness in both patients and healthcare providers.

The good news is that there are effective treatments available and cured for sleep apnea and other sleep related problems, and research like the current study shows that sometimes simple, conventional approaches work best.

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Warm milk or herbal tea, hot baths or showers, even counting those fluffy little sheep, you’ve tried them all and still you’re staring at the ceiling, wondering how much time you have before the alarm goes off.

An interactive, online course, based on the principles of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), is now available online and may help you get the sleep you need. All from the privacy and comfort of your own home.

Online automated courses are able to deliver CBT based therapy for insomnia to your computer, In fact, some U.S. studies have found that on-screen therapy for insomnia might be just as effective as cognitive behavioral therapy delivered face-to-face.

Online programs for insomnia can take a few weeks and typically include downloadable lessons. It’s like going through the cognitive behavioral approach, only with your computer instead of a live therapist.

There are lessons about insomnia itself, the value of sleep schedules and help practicing relaxation techniques you can use during the day or at night. Students, just as in CBT therapy, set goals for the week ahead and chart their progress.

One course creator, Dr. Gregg Jacobs, an insomnia specialist at the University of Massachusetts Medical School points out, “It’s a very safe, very anonymous way of treating their insomnia.”

About 75% of Dr. Jacobs’ insomnia patients report substantial improvement. Total sleep time goes up by almost an hour a night. Two thirds of those using sleeping pills at the start of the program, reduce the medication they need significantly or stop using it altogether by the end.

The interactive program covers the keys to healthy sleep including:

- Your bed is only for sleeping (no reading, TV watching, working) and be sure to have a mattress and pillow of good quality.

- Your sleeping space must be quiet and comfortable, be a regular, comfortable temperature and have shades drawn.

- You need to get up and go to bed at the same time each day… even on weekends, holidays and vacations.

- No caffeine, nicotine, chocolate, sugar and alcohol in the few hours before bedtime.

- No large meals at least 3 hours before going to bed, limit fluids from late afternoon on to avoid nighttime bathroom trips.

- No TV news, stimulating, stressful activity within an hour of bedtime.

- Use deep breathing, progressive relaxation or guided imagery to quiet your mind.

- Avoid (as hard as it may be) napping during the day to make up for lost sleep.

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A Cure For Insomnia Online? Continued…

Insomnia affects people of all ages, even children, with women more often dealing with lack of sleep than men.

Surprisingly, less than half of those with insomnia mention it to their doctor, thinking that they can handle this on their own, or that the problem is simply too trivial to bring up.

Some expect that a complaint about sleep will only bring a prescription for sleeping pills, rather than home remedies for insomnia that can be incorporated into their lives.  So, many reject this short-term solution. Assuming you know your doctor’s response is a mistake – bring up your problem and ask about a referral to a cognitive behavioral therapist.

You’ll also want to commit to making the changes to help you sleep and your daytime alertness improve. Doing what you can to develop healthy sleep habits is super good for your body, allowing you to rest and recharge so that you’re both physically and mentally ready to face the day.

To your good health,

Kirsten Whittaker
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Cognitive behavioral therapy emphasizes the key role our thoughts play in how we feel and what we do – our thoughts (not things outside ourselves such as people, situations and events) cause our feelings and behaviors.

With CBT you learn how to change the way you think – so you feel better even if the outside situation doesn’t change. This makes the therapy well suited to helping patients dealing with a chronic (unchanging) condition like osteoarthritis.

The study involved 23 older volunteers, mostly females ages 66-69, diagnosed with osteoarthritis and dealing with insomnia symptoms that had persisted for at least six months being assigned cognitive behavioral therapy aimed at helping them sleep better.

Twenty-eight control subjects, of the same age range and also with osteoarthritis, were assigned to a stress management and wellness program. In home polysomnographic assessment was done to exclude potential subjects with sleep apnea. Neither of the treatment options directly addressed pain management.

The CBT treatment involved weekly two-hour sessions with four to eight participants that met for eight weeks in a row. At the start, and again at the end, the participants reported on their sleep and pain levels. The CBT group did one additional report on their sleeping patterns and pain levels after one year.

The subjects who got the CBT reported immediate improvements in their sleep and pain after treatment, and a year later. The control subjects, who participated in the other program saw no improvements in the quality of sleep or amount of pain.

The team believes that insomnia isn’t just a symptom of osteoarthritis, but should be considered a coexisting condition.

Improvements in sleep can begin improvements in other conditions, particularly important for older adults who often deal with sleepless nights as well as another health problem for which lack of sleep doesn’t help.

“The particular strength of [cognitive behavioral therapy aimed at insomnia] is that once an individual learns how to improve their sleep, study after study has shown that the improvement persists for a year or more,” points out Michael V. Vitiello, PhD, professor at the University of Washington in Seattle.

An estimated 60% of those with osteoarthritis report pain during the night, and experts know that chronic pain is certainly involved in disturbed sleep.

The findings of this work suggest that successful treatment of sleep disturbances can dramatically improve the quality of life and that CBT therapies might be quite useful.

Sleep is when your body detoxifies and the immune system recharges. Lack of sleep causes big problems for the body, and the mind.

Insomnia has been linked to diabetes, heart disease and cancer, as well as being known to bring on depression and thinking troubles. It may even shorten your life – this according to a 2002 study that found people who slept less than 4 hours a night had higher mortality rates compared to those who slept 6-7 hours.

Better sleep can bring a variety of benefits, to both body and mind, improving coexisting illnesses. “Sleep quality is a major concern of people with osteoarthritis, with 60 percent of people with the disease reporting pain during the night… Whether sleep disturbance preceded or follows pain onset is unclear, but reciprocal effects are likely,” write the team of researchers.

If you’re coping with insomnia now, don’t let it get ahead of you. Do something today and maybe talk your doctor and ask about cognitive behavioral techniques as a more natural, prescription free alternative to getting the rest you need.

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