I know… you wanted the magic number… a benchmark — a norm that you could compare your hours of sleep to what the scientists say is normal. Sorry, it doesn’t work that way.
You see, there is…”no magic number” for sleep. There is of course a range that most scientists agree on and that is from 7-9 hours each night seems ideal. In a recent study published in Science 14 August 2009, the authors found that sufficient sleep is necessary for optimal daytime performance and well-being, yet there is a large difference in how much sleep people need, ranging from less than 6 to more than 9 hours. People at all points along this range exhibit no noticeable differences in health and waking performance.
The amount of sleep you need for health is called basal sleep. This is the amount of sleep you need to be your best. If you have sleep problems, such as sleep apnea, the quality of your basal sleep is what concerns your doctors the most… not the fact that you may be falling asleep at work.
Think of basal sleep as a “bank account.” When you do not get enough sleep to keep your bank account full, and start making withdrawals, you have incurred a “sleep debt.” This is the amount of sleep lost because you spent extra hours on a project, the kids were sick, you were sick or you had to work a lot of overtime. In other words, this is the accumulated amount of sleep you did not get that you need in order to stay healthy.
Making up the sleep debt is not always necessary. The more pronounced it is, the more likely you will need to sleep additional hours in the upcoming nights to make up for the loss. Researchers believe that you can make up your sleep debt by getting additional sleep in the days following.
Not getting enough basal sleep slows your reaction time, which can lead to an increased risk of motor vehicle accidents. Chronic lack of sleep can lead to increased appetite, depression, and anxiety, increase risk of diabetes and heart problems.
I hope this has been helpful. Until next time, sleep well.
You hear the advice all of the time that people need to get eight hours of sleep, but does that apply to every person? What about all of the people in my area of the world, Silicon Valley in California, who commit to 12-16 hours days months before their company launches a new product. Or the people working longer and harder just to keep their jobs in this recession. And what about children, teens and older people? Many people seem to get by on less than eight hours. Is it normal? Is it healthy? So…
How Much Sleep Do We Really Need?
Many of you may be asking yourself this same question — especially when your day ends well before the last item on your to-do-list. And in these uncertain times that have shrunk many 401k’s to 210k’s, many of us are working longer hours than ever before.
And what about the effects a heavy workload has on the family members who have their own busy schedules… school, homework, football practice, dance class, overnights with friends. You name it and kids seem to be doing it.
When our two daughters were in school, one was studying acting with ACT in San Francisco, so my wife drove her to the City weekly. Our other daughter was active in rowing which meant taking her to practice and the regattas held locally, but also to the ones held as far away as Sacramento, California.
You might begin to wonder about your family’s sleep habits. Do they often forget to put their sleep needs ahead of their other priorities? Sleep is important so how does one figure out when “enough is enough?”
While the news media and health organizations keep saying “get more sleep,” it might me confusing how may hours are necessary to make sure you and your family members are adequately rested. Well, it’s no surprise that there are experts in this subject and they are not bashful about sharing their opinions and views with the public.
What the Research Says About Sleep?
The first thing experts will tell you about sleep is that there is no “magic number.” Great! Not only do different age groups need different amounts of sleep, but sleep needs are also individual. Just like any other characteristics you are born with, the amount of sleep you need to function best may be different for you than for someone who is of the same age and gender. While you may be at your absolute best sleeping seven hours a night, someone else may clearly need nine hours to have a happy, productive life. In fact, a 2005 study confirmed the fact that sleep needs vary across populations, and the study calls for further research to identify traits within genes that may provide a “map” to explain how sleep needs differ among individuals.
Be sure to read my next blog “How Much Sleep Do We Really Need.” Dr. Hilton
If you think you or someone you know may have sleep apnea, please watch this video. This is man going through single sleep apnea event.
In the video watch how the tongue drops back to seal off the airway preventing air from entering or exiting the lungs. The simulated “flashes” being displayed in the brain is a depiction of it trying to “arouse” the person and get them to start breathing.
In severe cases of sleep apnea, a person may experience over 60 events just like this every hour. It is important for someone who snores loudly, stops, makes a choking sound, then snores again to get an appointment with a physician who specializes in sleep medicine, for they are likely suffering from obstructive sleep apnea.
For additional information, please visit my website: www.draldonhilton.com
Modern clinical dentistry and research has expanded our understanding of health, and today dentist are trained to look out for signs of emerging diseases not necessarily related to your teeth.
Diabetes is one disease that your dentist can often detect while doing a routine oral exam and help those suffering from the disease to managed. A new study that appeared in the journal Diabetes Care,found that nearly 87 percent of individuals with type 2 diabetes reported of having sleep apnea symptoms, but were never diagnosed as having sleep apnea. In other words they were experiencing the tiredness, lack of energy, sleepiness during the day while at night they were having episodes where they stopped breathing.
In factthe study reported more than 30 percent of the participants were having between 16 to 20 episodes each hour where they would stop breathing.As you might have read in a previous post this is extremely high and dangerous.
Dr. Gary Foster, who was the lead author of the study stated that, “the high prevalence of undiagnosed, and therefore, untreated sleep apnea among obese patients with diabetes constitutes a serious public health concern”.
The findings of this study indicate that it is important that doctors, dentist, and medical professionals be aware of this potential link and screen patients who have type 2diabetes for the presence of sleep apnea.
If you know of anyone who has Type 2 diabetes share this information with them and have them contact my office for further information.
There is new research that was published in the second May issue of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine,showing that strengthening and toning the oropharyngeal muscles (also known as the oral airway muscles) actually does help people who suffer from mild to moderate obstructive sleep apnea.
The study had 31 participants exercised these muscles by playing the didgeridoo. The didgeridoo (also known as a didjeridu or didge) is a wind instrument of the Aborigines of northern Australia. It is sometimes described as a natural wooden trumpet or “drone pipe”.
The results of the study demonstrated that after three months the treatment group showed significant improvements in:
A picture of a Didgeridoo
lowest oxygen saturation levels in blood, subjective sleepiness, snoring symptoms, and quality of sleep scores.In the end the treatment group showed a 40% decrease in their obstructive sleep apnea severity.
The important thing to note from this study is that the exercise was monitored by a team of physicians to make sure that the correct muscles were targeted. As Doctor Lorenzi-Filho stated, “A strong muscle may be working on the wrong direction and not necessarily helping to open the airways.The good news is that this is another treatment approach that can be incorporated and studied further in the management of obstructive sleep apnea. It may also be fun and interesting thing to do as well.
Researchers in Sweden were interested in understanding what was the impact of active, passive, and obesity on habitual snoring. Habitual snoring, was definedas loud and disturbing snoring that occurred at least 3 nights per week. This was a pretty big study with a totalof 15,555, randomly selected men and women, ranging in ages from25–54 years, from Iceland, Estonia, Denmark, Norway, andSweden participating.
What these researchers found was 24% of smokers and 20.3% of ex-smokers were most affected with habitual snoring. However, snoring was also more prevalent in people who never smoked but were exposedto passive smoking at home on a daily basis. These people were 19% more likely to snore than those individuals who never smoked and did not have exposure to passive smoke.
The bottom line is that the frequency of habitual snoring increased with the amount of tobaccosmoked.Active smoking and passive smoking were related to snoring,independent of obesity, sex, and age.What makes this study important is that until this study passive smoking was unrecognized as a risk factor for snoring among adults. Snoring is usually a first sign of the deleopment of sleep apnea.
Brain damage may explain problems related to sleep apnea such as memory loss and mood changes.
A recent study in the Journal of Sleep Research shows evidence of physical damage to your brain tissue caused by sleep apnea.This damage can explain memory loss, attention lapses and mood changes.
Sixteen adults in France had been diagnosed with sleep apnea.After taking images of their brains, distinct areas had loss of “gray matter” as well as a reduction in brain metabolism.The areas most affected are those that store memory, both short term and long term.
What causes this brain damage? The authors suggest that the damage may involve lower blood-oxygen level, blood flow and blood pressure.Frequent episodes of apnea can produce drastic changes in blood oxygen level as well as reduce blood flow to the brain.Both of these conditions can be potentially damaging to brain tissue.
Sleep apnea involves breathing pauses that can occur hundreds of times during a night of sleep. These pauses can produce drastic changes in oxygen levels.
These breathing pauses also reduce blood flow in the brain. People with sleep apnea also are at risk for high blood pressure. Both of these conditions create a potential for brain tissue damage.It is unknown if these changes can be reversed.
The best thing you can do is treat your sleep apnea and prevent the changes from taking place.
Low quality (and quantity) of sleep can seriously affect your mental sharpness, according to Dr. James Maas, Cornell University sleep expert.Dr. Maas lectures to over 1300 Cornell students each year in his PSYCH 101 classes on the importance getting a restful night’s sleep.
On the faculty since 1964, Dr. Mass has seen a drop in the number of hours Cornell students sleep from an average of 7.1 to 6.1 hours per night.Lack of sleep causes a decrease in mental clarity.The brain moves memories into long-term storage during deep sleep, he explains.“Anything that disrupts this process can interfere with the ability to retain this information.”
Lack of sleep causes work related projects to take much longer than they should.Although if you ask people who are sleep deprived if it has effected their job performance, they will tell you no!What they don’t realize—they are not well rested and therefore have no idea how much more productive they would be if they did get a restful night’s sleep.
In difficult economic times and with more and more buyouts and corporate mergers with lay-offs, you don’t want to give your employer any reason to terminate your job due to a lack of performance on your part.
SLEEP TIPS:
1.Stick to one bedtime
2.Keep your bedroom quiet, dark and cool
3.Remove the TV from you bedroom
4.Do not take your laptop into the bedroom
5.Limit caffeine, night-lights and late afternoon naps, all of which can zap sleep.
This information is especially important to people who suffer from sleep apnea due to the fact that they are in fact losing sleep due their condition. Aside from the performance issues outlined here there are also safety hazards that lack of sleep cause and this is something to take very seriously.
Most of us have heard of elderly persons falling down and severely injuring themselves. In some cases the resulting injury may involve broken bones and long recuperation times. Eldercare facilities have for some time reported on the incidents of falling-asleep-related injured falls and are concern to control these occurrences.
We now know that some of the benefits of treating obstructive sleep apnea include: improve attention, daytime vigilance, and consequently gait and balance control.
Therefore, researchers wanted to know if treating patients for obstructive sleep apnea would reduce the incidents of falling-asleep -related injuries in geriatric patients.
The Journal of the American Medical Directors Association (Onen F, Higgins S, Onen SH. J Am Med Dir Assoc2009; 10(3): 207-10) reported on one study where they treated geriatric patients (average age 82) who all shared the following characteristics: self-reported daytime sleepiness, falling-asleep-related injured falls, recurrent fall history, medical comorbid conditions, and sleep studies that confirmed they did have obstructive sleep apnea. After following the patients for 9 to 24 months the researchers found that patients who were treated for their obstructive sleep apnea had resolved their sleepiness and attention without any further incidents of falling.
The results of this study are still preliminary, but it does demonstrate that there is a causal relationship between treating patients for obstructive sleep apnea and reducing (or even eliminating) the incidents of falls in geriatric individuals.
If you know of anyone who is elderly and perhaps complaining of sleepiness during the day, followed by episodes of falling, it is my recommendation that you have them checked out by a sleep physician for the potential of sleep apnea to be present.
In our office we have helped many senior citizens improve their lifestyles by helping them with treat their obstructive sleep apnea with a comfortable oral appliance. If you would like more information please call our office for free details.
A neat story about this years Boston Marathon was recently reported that I wanted to share with you (www.capecodonline.com). The story involves Nils Ahilin, a 52 year old manufactures’ representative, and his participation in the Boston Marathon this year. What makes the story so remarkable is all the things that Mr. Ahilin had to overcome to just be able to run in the marathon.
Like a lot of Americans, Mr. Ahilin was caught up in just getting through the hectic life that most of us have to endure. His breakfast consisted of coffee and pastry followed by a mid-morning coffee and snacks. Lunch was often from a fast food dollar menu and while on the road there would be more snacks.Add to this a sedentary lifestyle and he ended topping 350 pounds and suffering from a whole sort of health problems.
On his 50th birthday he was dealing with shortness of breath and had been diagnosed with sleep apnea. So between his friends and family persuading him, along with the fear that he would end up dying early like his father, he began to workout.
At first it was not much more than just walking and trying to run a bit.literally all he did at first was walk for 90 seconds and them do an easy jog for 30 seconds. 12 weeks later he was jogging 3.1 miles.By the time the marathon had arrived he had lost 120 pounds and made a bunch of new friends along the way.
The take away here is that we can all do something to be more active and we don’t have to kill ourselves in the process. Small incremental steps do add up and who knows what each of us is then capable of accomplishing.
“To Dr. Hilton and Staff... I would like to take this opportunity to tell you guys that you are A O.K. ...Never thought a dentist visit would be so pleasurable!!! I want you to know, that my Oral Appliance is as advertised...I am sleeping much better and my blood pressure is down to normal! How good is that? I am hoping that eventually I will discontinue using all medications. Thank you and God Bless.” — Samir Moghannam
