Many studies have shown that sleep disturbances, in folks with MS, are 3 times more common than in the general population. In fact, MSers are about two times more likely to have a reduced quality of sleep.

In order to understand the magnitude of the sleep problems that many of us (MSers) have to deal with, it would be helpful  to quickly review a few things about the regular sleep cycle of any person.

Keep in mind that the complete sleep cycle takes an average of 90 (1 hour and a half) to 110 minutes (almost 2 hours).

THE REGULAR SLEEP CYCLE

Stage 1 is light sleep. Here you drift in and out of sleep and can be awakened easily. In this stage there is very slow movement in the eyes and muscle activity slows. This is the stage where you might have experience sudden muscle contractions preceded by a sensation of falling.

Stage 2 eye movement stops and brain waves become slower with only an occasional burst of rapid brain waves.

Stage 3 the brain produces exceptionally slow brain waves better known as delta waves. These are mix together with smaller and faster brain waves.

Stage 4 the brain start producing delta waves almost exclusively.

Here is an interesting piece of trivia: What we normally refer to as deep sleep takes place right at stages 3 and 4. This is when some children experience bedwetting, sleepwalking or have nightmares.

Stage 5 REM or Rapid Eye Movement is where the brain waves increase to levels normally experienced when a person is completely awake.

At REM your breathing becomes more rapid, shallow and irregular. Your eyes jerk quickly – hence the REM initials – and muscles in the arms and/or legs become momentarily paralyzed.

Most people should experience between three and five periods of REM sleep every night.

I’m sure you have heard that a minimum of 8 hours of ZZZ’s every night are recommended. OK true but when it comes to MSers, many sleep problems are not caused so much by the number of hours but, as Gail Hartley, an MS-certified nurse with Neurology Consultants explained, going through all 5 stages of the sleep cycle at least two or three times a night is the main thing.

Nurse Hartley said: “People with sleep disorders wake up feeling tired because they haven’t gone through those sleep cycles; they’ve not gone through those restorative levels of sleep”.

At least in my case, as I’m sure probably in many of you too, when I don’t get enough sleep or have sleep problems the night before or even when I don’t take my afternoon nap, my cognitive symptoms worsen: I find it hard to think and concentrate in whatever I’m doing.

HOW DO YOU KNOW IF YOU HAVE  SLEEP PROBLEMS?

The answer to this question is not as simple as we would like to think. Even if you, like I, have to fight MS fatigue every day, having sleep problems every night or experiencing tiredness all the time, should be looked at more closely with your doctor.

There are several conditions that MSers might experience which interfere with getting enough sleep:

Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA):  is very common amongst MSers with sleep problems. Usually OSA is accompanied by heavy snoring and the resulting bad oxygenation and interrupted sleep may in turn make other health conditions harder to treat.

Bladder problems: also known as nocturia are part of the sleep problems caused by getting out of bed several times every evening. If you think about it, all that interrupted sleep adds up sooner or later resulting in the tiredness experienced by must MSers.

RESTLESS LEG SYNDROME: the spasms, cramping and pain associated with this sporadic limb movement can easily prevent you from getting any good sleep.  They are often the cause for insomnia or non-refreshing sleep by partially arousing you.

DEPRESSION AND ANXIETY: is often the reason behind many sleep problems. Also many of the drugs currently used to treat ms depression, spasticity and ms fatigue can hamper with sleep. Something you can do when talking with you neurologist is regulate the dosage and the time during the day that the drug is taken.

As you can see, there are many obstacles to you getting a really good night of ZZZZ’s. There are also quite a few changes you can implement to improve your sleep odds:

Create a comfortable sleeping environment that promotes good sleep.
Make sure your bedroom is dark, quiet and cool.
Make sure your bed, pillow and bed covers are comfortable.

The following suggestion, which I really love to pass on to you, I got it from an article written by Chris Blosse and Angela Maas for the publication “Momentum”. They suggest to:

“Use the bedroom for sleep and SEX  ONLY”.  Is this a pearl or what?

Other suggestions, like keeping cell phones, PDA’s, BlackBerries, IPhones, computers and TV’s out of the bedroom are out there for folks to decide.

Personally, I find it extremely difficult (if not impossible) to follow this one. Shutting off any and all of these modern comforts at a fix time every evening is something I think is easier to agree too.

An excellent tip to reduce sleep problems is to create what I like to call a pre-sleeping routine. By this I mean having a set of steps that are performed each and every night before finally getting in bed to go to sleep.

The purpose is to start “educating” your body. By following a routine  like putting your pajama, brushing your teeth, preparing what you’re going to wear the next morning, read a book for 20 to 30 minutes and finally shutting off the night table’s light every night, you’re communicating to your brain and rest of your body that you’re fixing to retire (go to sleep) for the day.

Another tip for you is to try to avoid eating a huge meal or having caffeine just before bed or very late in the day. You can also try one of the STRESS MANAGEMENT TECHNIQUES presented for you and explained in my website.

I can tell you that amongst all the tips and strategies for dealing with sleep problems that I have try, the most useful one has been to learn to tune in to my body and understand my daily rhythm.

By learning to do that you’ll be able to program and choose your activities accordingly. I, for example, plan all my errands and meetings for the mornings and before lunch. Normally I would take a one hour nap after lunch and try not doing any strenuous activity the rest of the day.

SLEEPING MEDICATIONS AND OTHERS

You could try taking sleeping pills but most doctors and experts recommend them only as a last resource to deal with any sleep problems. You must remember that their use involve the risk of becoming dependant on them.

There are also various herbal supplements to help you sleep. The most important thing here that you should always remember is that they may interact with other medications or they may stimulate the immune system so the number one rule of always consulting your doctor before deciding applies here.

There are times when professional help is required. A visit to an urologist might be needed if constant waking during the night is provoking your being tired all the time.

It is a good idea that before you see your doctor you keep a sleep diary and track your habits. Here you simply keep track of things like:

What time did you go to bed?
What time do you think you fell asleep?
Do you remember waking up during the night?
How many times?
How many hours were you in bed before you got up?
Did you feel refreshed when you got up?

Simple practices like this one will allow your doctor to get a clearer picture of your sleeping habits which in turn will help him/her decipher what’s happening.

I once trapped my wife snoring and it made me look at her beautiful look with near shock. I felt disgusted with what I saw and I told her about it. Guess what? I not at all heard the snores after that. Later on she just could not bring herself to like that part of herself, so she did everything within her power to stop the snoring with very easy Ways To Stop Snoring. That was twenty years ago. Currently tell me, if it worked for my wife, why shouldn’t it effect for you?

To be sincere with my Ways To Stop Snoring you what works for me could not work for you, but the useful news is that there are ways to follow to fight the condition to a standstill. Ways to stop snoring are almost inexhaustible, but their effectiveness largely depends upon different individuals, like I earlier mentioned.

What works for you might not work for another with your Ways To Stop Snoring, and what you catch easy to do might be a major difficult for someone else. This is why it is important that you understand your own self as finest you can, and with that, run towards stopping the Ways To Stop Snoring habit. You must as well talk to your doctor whenever you come across any Ways To Stop Snoring medications either online or off line.

Click Stop Snoring Natural Ways and Sleep Apnea Threatmen for SECRET tips you didn’t know before.

I once trapped my wife snoring and it made me look at her beautiful look with near shock. I felt disgusted with what I saw and I told her about it. Guess what? I not at all heard the snores after that. Later on she just could not bring herself to like that part of herself, so she did everything within her power to stop the snoring with very easy Ways To Stop Snoring. That was twenty years ago. Right now tell me, if it worked for my wife, why shouldn’t it effect for you?

To be sincere with my Ways To Stop Snoring you what works for me can not work for you, but the fine news is that there are ways to follow to fight the condition to a standstill. Ways to stop snoring are almost inexhaustible, but their effectiveness largely depends upon different individuals, like I earlier mentioned.

What works for you might not work for another with your Ways To Stop Snoring, and what you get easy to do might be a major dilemma for someone else. This is why it is important that you understand your own self as top you can, and with that, act towards stopping the Ways To Stop Snoring habit. You must too talk to your doctor whenever you come across any Ways To Stop Snoring medications either online or off line.

Click Stop Snoring Natural Ways and Sleep Apnea Threatmen for SECRET tips you didn’t know before.

I once trapped my wife snoring and it made me look at her beautiful look with near shock. I felt disgusted with what I saw and I told her about it. Guess what? I not at all heard the snores after that. Later on she just could not bring herself to like that part of herself, so she did everything within her power to stop the snoring with very easy Ways To Stop Snoring. That was twenty years ago. At this time tell me, if it worked for my wife, why shouldn’t it effect for you?

To be sincere with my Ways To Stop Snoring you what works for me could not work for you, but the superior news is that there are ways to follow to fight the condition to a standstill. Ways to stop snoring are almost inexhaustible, but their effectiveness largely depends upon different individuals, like I earlier mentioned.

What works for you might not work for another with your Ways To Stop Snoring, and what you catch easy to do might be a major difficult for someone else. This is why it is important that you understand your own self as finest you can, and with that, run towards stopping the Ways To Stop Snoring habit. You must plus talk to your doctor whenever you come across any Ways To Stop Snoring medications either online or off line.

Click Stop Snoring Natural Ways and Sleep Apnea Threatmen for SECRET tips you didn’t know before.

I once trapped my wife snoring and it made me look at her beautiful look with near shock. I felt disgusted with what I saw and I told her about it. Guess what? I not at all heard the snores after that. Later on she just could not bring herself to like that part of herself, so she did everything within her power to stop the snoring with very easy Ways To Stop Snoring. That was twenty years ago. At this moment tell me, if it worked for my wife, why shouldn’t it effect for you?

To be sincere with my Ways To Stop Snoring you what works for me can not work for you, but the nice news is that there are ways to follow to fight the condition to a standstill. Ways to stop snoring are almost inexhaustible, but their effectiveness largely depends upon different individuals, like I earlier mentioned.

What works for you might not work for another with your Ways To Stop Snoring, and what you get easy to do might be a major dilemma for someone else. This is why it is important that you understand your own self as top you can, and with that, act towards stopping the Ways To Stop Snoring habit. You must as well talk to your doctor whenever you come across any Ways To Stop Snoring medications either online or off line.

Click Stop Snoring Natural Ways and Sleep Apnea Threatmen for SECRET tips you didn’t know before.

I once trapped my wife snoring and it made me look at her beautiful look with near shock. I felt disgusted with what I saw and I told her about it. Guess what? I not at all heard the snores after that. Later on she just could not bring herself to like that part of herself, so she did everything within her power to stop the snoring with very easy Ways To Stop Snoring. That was twenty years ago. Currently tell me, if it worked for my wife, why shouldn’t it effect for you?

To be sincere with my Ways To Stop Snoring you what works for me could not work for you, but the useful news is that there are ways to follow to fight the condition to a standstill. Ways to stop snoring are almost inexhaustible, but their effectiveness largely depends upon different individuals, like I earlier mentioned.

What works for you might not work for another with your Ways To Stop Snoring, and what you catch easy to do might be a major difficult for someone else. This is why it is important that you understand your own self as finest you can, and with that, run towards stopping the Ways To Stop Snoring habit. You must too talk to your doctor whenever you come across any Ways To Stop Snoring medications either online or off line.

Click Stop Snoring Natural Ways and Sleep Apnea Threatmen for SECRET tips you didn’t know before.

Almost forty-five percent of normal adults snore occasionally and out of the 25 percent are habitual snorers or those experiencing serious sleeping disorder. This sleeping order or commonly known as snoring is more frequently in males and overweight persons and eventually getting worse with age. Snoring is simply an indication of breathing problem. So it must not be taken for granted. Consulting a medical assistant can greatly help you to determine what makes it happen and have a medication as early as possible. Don’t take snoring in its light weight because it will cause and often an embarrassing behavior.

Snoring produces noisy sounds when there is a something that obstructs the flow of air through the passages at the back of the mouth and nose. This is so happen when the tongue and the upper throat meet the soft palate and uvula. Once each part strike and causes vibration. The tendency is the passage of air collapse which causes the noisy sound. In the case of children, this breathing disorder may be an implication of contraction between tonsils and adenoids. However, consulting to your otolaryngologist can bring the back the full health condition of your child.

People who snore may suffer from poor muscle tone in the tongue and throat. When muscles are too relaxed, either from alcohol or drugs that cause sleepiness, the tongue falls backwards into the airway or the throat muscles draw in from the sides into the airway. This can also happen during deep sleep. Children with large tonsils and adenoids often snore. Overweight people have bulky neck tissue, too. Cysts or tumors can also cause bulk, but they are rare. A long palate narrows the opening from the nose into the throat. As it dangles, it acts as a noisy flutter valve during relaxed breathing. A long uvula makes matters even worse. A stuffy or blocked nose requires extra effort to pull air through it. This creates an exaggerated vacuum in the throat, and pulls together the floppy tissues of the throat, and snoring results. So, snoring often occurs only during the hay fever season or with a cold or sinus infection. Also, deformities of the nose or nasal septum, such as a deviated septum (a deformity of the wall that separates one nostril from the other) can cause such an obstruction.

Why should snoring take seriously? Well, both social and medical aspect of your life can causes others sleepless nights and resentfulness. It disturbs sleeping pattern and deprives the snore appropriate rest. Those who snore in any position or greatly causes deprivation of peace should seek medical consultation in order not to result to severe sleep apnea. The treatments will depend on the diagnosis. But, usually most of those who suffer snoring problem find it easy to cure it naturally. Sleep apnea can cause the snorer’s sleep habit and muscle contraction in the passage of the air to the lungs.

The Aviisha Medical Wellness Institute in California is known for recognizing the integral relationship between sleep disorders and obesity.  Aviisha uses home sleep tests or an overnight session in a sleep lab to diagnose and treat patients with sleep disorders, while at the same time creating a customized Medical Weight Loss plan that puts each patient on the road to optimal health and wellness.   The result?  Effective, long term weight control with improved health and a better quality of life.

A poor sleep routine can cause weight gain: two reasons the hormones leptin and ghrelin – leptin suppressed the appetite while ghrelin stimulates it, and during a few weeks of a poor sleep routine, leptin levels can increase to 15%, sending the wrong message to the brain – the message that says, “I’m hungry!”

Some years ago, the obese community hoped that leptin would provide a solution to obesity but in fact, most obese patients also suffer from leptin resistance; a condition that leads obese people to resist the effects of the hormone.  In order to regain their sensitivity to leptin, patients must first decrease body fat.

As many as 20 million Americans are suffering from OSA (Obstructive Sleep Apnea) – a condition that causes the sufferer to experience pauses in normal breathing rhythm.  For anywhere between 10 and 120 seconds, breathing will stop completely: oxygen levels drop dramatically and this can happen several hundred times throughout a normal night’s sleep, leaving the sleeper exhausted during daylight hours.  Sleep apnea can cause obesity, leading to other serious diseases such as Type 2 Diabetes and cardio vascular disorders.  90 – 95% of sufferers are unaware they have a problem.

Sleep disorder specialist at the Aviisha Medical Wellness Institute and former Director of the Medical Weight Loss Clinic at Olympia Medical Center in Los Angeles, Dr Avi Ishaaya, recommends that all overweight people undergo a sleep test as soon as possible. “Once treated, you will be able to lose weight.   Getting a good night’s rest contributes to proper hormone function as well as providing energy for exercise – both of which are essential for effective weight loss. Patients need to recognize the importance of sleeping well for long term weight control, as well as for overall good health”, he says. 

The Aviisha Medical Wellness Institute in California uses home sleep tests or an overnight session in a sleep lab to diagnose and treat patients with sleep disorders, also customizing a medical weight loss plan to put patients on the road to health and wellness.  The result is an effective, long term weight control with permanently improved health and a better quality of life.

With all the news about the importance of belly fat as a risk factor for heart disease and other medical conditions, it’s almost gotten to the point where the press and the lay public perceive belly fat as a cause of all these various medical condition, rather than just an association. The real question is, what causes belly fat to begin with?

The Link Between Stress and Belly Fat

Any type of stress, whether physiologic, or external, can cause dramatic changes in your physiology. The sympathetic nervous system, or the classic fight or flight response, is activated when you’re under stress. This in turn diverts blood flow away from less essential body parts and organs, such as your gastrointestinal system, your reproductive organs, your skin and distant extremities. It’s like if you were being chased by a lion—every nerve and fiber of your being will be focused on getting away, not on digesting what you had for lunch.

Although you’re probably not being chased by a lion, any type of prolonged periods of stress which results in low blood flow to the intestines causes biochemical changes that lead to accumulation of belly fat. It’s also thought that increased estrogens created by belly fat further suppress the natural progesterone levels in both men and in women, aggravating the vicious cycle even more.

Poor Circulation Can Cause Belly Fat

You don’t need a serious medical condition to cause these rapid changes in intestinal blood flow. Even your emotional state, and the various life stresses that you experience every day can significantly affect the rate of blood flow to your stomach and your intestines.

Researchers have found that periods of low oxygen in the intestines can cause biochemical changes that lead to fat accumulation. Is this low oxygen level the result of the standard atherosclerosis that’s seen with cardiovascular disease as we get older, or can there be something else? Is there anything else that can cause intestinal hypoxia?

How Your Jaw Size Can Affect Your Waist Size

As I describe in my sleep-breathing paradigm, modern humans have difficulty breathing properly while sleeping at night, especially when on our backs and when in deep sleep, due to muscle relaxation. This is from a slow but significant narrowing of our jaws, due to a major change in our diets and with the addition of other feeding tools, like infant bottles and pacifiers.

The smaller the jaws, the less room there is for the tongue, and the more likely it’ll fall back during deep sleep, especially when lying flat and in deep sleep. Depending on how often this tongue collapse obstructs our breathing at night, we all fall somewhere along this continuum, where the end extreme is officially called obstructive sleep apnea. It’s not surprising that periods of interrupted breathing, whether very brief or pauses of 10 to 30 seconds (apneas), is known to cause physiologic states of stress.

And this sustained form of stress can in turn, slow down our metabolic rate making it difficult to lose weight if not gain it.

Hormones and Weight Gain

In women, there is yet another major variable that can cause you to gain weight as you get older, and that’s the role of diminishing progesterone, which begins during the late 30s and early 40s.

Progesterone is a major upper airway muscles stimulant, which essentially tenses or stiffens the tongue, especially when in deep sleep. This is why as the levels of progesterone diminish during perimenopausal age, women begin not to sleep as well as they did before the onset of menopause. A relative change in a woman’s sleep-breathing status can then lead to neurologic symptoms, such as night sweats, hot flashes, weight gain, mood swings, and irritability. Not too surprisingly, these same symptoms can be seen even in young men who are moving up the sleep-breathing continuum. Lack of deep or efficient sleep is a major cause of physiologic stress.

Sleep Your Way to Weight Loss

A recent article in Glamour magazine profiled 7 women who where all slightly overweight, and asked them to do one thing for 4 weeks: sleep more. Without making any other changes, they all loss anywhere from 7 to 21 pounds. Sleeping longer is one way to restore health in our sleep deprived culture, but increasing sleep efficiency while you sleep is another way to increase your energy levels, improve your health, and lose weight more easily.

Not Only Your Breathing Problem

Not being able to breathe well at night while sleeping, and not sleeping long enough are important factors to address, but there are many other factors that also prevent you from achieving the quality sleep that you need: Eating late close to bedtime is a common modern ritual that occurs for a variety of different reasons. Gastric juices still lingering from your last meal (or snack) can be suctioned up into the throat, causing more swelling and inflammation, causing more obstructions and arousals. Drinking alcohol close to bedtime causes your throat muscles to relax more, leading to more frequent obstructions and arousals, as well as louder and more frequent snoring.

The Right Way to Lose Weight

Before you begin that new diet plan, or take advantage of your new gym membership, make sure that you’re able to breathe properly at night. If your nose is stuffy for whatever reasons, do everything possible to straighten it out first. If you’ve had a stuffy nose for years or decades, you may not realize that your nasal breathing is compromised. Proper sleep and lowering your stress levels is critical to getting rid of that excess belly fat.