It’s a bit startling that getting good night’s sleep is given such a low priority when it comes to healthy living.

Maybe this will soon change. There is a rather off-putting term known as “sleep hygiene” seeping into medical journals. And now a lay person who himself sleepwalks has delved into the subject of sleep and has written a book about it. There is an article in the Wall Street Journal referring to it.

DECODING THE SCIENCE OF SLEEP

Zlatko Glusica was the captain of an Air India Express plane carrying 166 passengers from Dubai to Mangalore, a bustling port city on India’s southern coast. As his Boeing 737 approached the city, Mr. Glusica woke up from a nap in the cockpit and took over the controls. His co-pilot warned him repeatedly that he was coming in at the wrong angle and that he should pull up and try again. The last sound on the cockpit recorder was the co-pilot screaming that they didn’t have any runway left. The plane overshot the landing and burst into flames. Only eight people survived. An investigation found that the captain was suffering from “sleep inertia.”

The accident was a fatal reminder of the power of something prosaic that most of us typically don’t give much thought: sleep. Yet it’s a lesson that is habitually forgotten. Since that 2010 Air India flight, sleepy pilots have been at the center of several near-accidents, including two this year. In April, 16 passengers of an Air Canada flight were injured after the plane’s pilot went into a sudden dive after he mistook the planet Venus for an oncoming plane. And in July, a Texas judge found that a JetBlue pilot’s bizarre ranting in the cabin was a psychotic breakdown that may have been caused by a lack of sleep.

The book is:

“DREAMLAND : ADVENTURES IN THE STRANGE SCIENCE OF SLEEP”
By David K Randall

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We spend an awful lot of our life sleeping, and tiredness and exhaustion make us feel awful and unable to function. So even without any research at all on the subject of sleep, it seems logical to conclude that sleep is at least as important to our health as food and water.

Here are ten tips on how to help achieve a good nights sleep without resorting to medication.

10 TIPS TO BEAT INSOMNIA

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1. Keep regular hours

2. Create a restful sleeping environment

3. Make sure that your bed is comfortable

4. Exercise regularly

5. Less caffeine

6. Don’t over-indulge

7. Don’t smoke

8. Try to relax before going to bed

9. Write away your worries

10. Don’t worry in bed

If you can’t sleep, don’t lie there worrying about it. Get up and do something you find relaxing until you feel sleepy again, then return to bed.

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Well, this baby is dressed up to face the day  but is sound asleep. At his age it’s likely he won’t sleep through the night.

Its also likely that his parents are feeling pretty exhausted from time to time. They might even feel exhausted all of the time, especially if soon after his birth there has been an influx of daily visitors bringing gifts and good wishes.

It’s probably best for new parents to consider sleepless nights are the norm at least for a while. It’s best too, not to be be put off or develop guilt feelings when the parents of other infants proclaim their babies are great sleepers – sometimes the implication being that they are better at parenting than you are!

All babies are different just as you yourself are like no-one else in the world.

But somehow or another, get rest yourself so that you feel refreshed and able to care for the new baby. If visitors deprive you of rest in the early days, thank them for their gifts, tell them to wait a while, make their own tea or coffee, and if they are well known to you and reliable, tell them your glad they came because  now you would like to go to bed and grab some sleep while they are cooing over the baby. They will be happy to do something to help. On the other hand, they might not come back!

The Mayo Clinic offers some help – things you can try to help you to get a reasonable nights sleep as soon as possible. Some of the advice they give may work for you and your baby, but others won’t. It is all worth a try. You may discover some little tricks of your own that might help in your situation.

BABY SLEEP : HELPING BABY SLEEP DURING THE NIGHT

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Keeping it in perspective

Getting your baby to sleep through the night is a worthy goal, but it’s not a measure of your parenting skills. Take time to understand your baby’s habits and ways of communicating so that you can help him or her become a better sleeper. If you continue to have concerns, consult your baby’s doctor for additional suggestions.

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This little fellow is just born and is already giving two fingers to the world.

It is likely that very soon his parents will experience sleepless nights because it is normal for a young baby to need fed during the night. When babies are hungry they cry, and cry and cry. After all, how else can they communicate?

Sometimes the crying and the night wakening can go on until they are much older so it’s as well to try to get into some sort of a bed-time routine as soon as possible so that bad habits don’t set in. This is not always easy to do since babies are all different as are domestic circumstances.

There is a charity called Cry-sis that offers help for the parents of crying babies. At the time of writing this post they also offer a helpline from 9.0am to 10.0pm seven days a week.

The link below gives some advice on how to cope if your baby is crying right now:

CRYING BABIES

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N.B. While much of the advice given in the “Cry-sis” website is helpful, I would disagree completely with some statements relating to (1) consulting a homeopath or (2) consulting a cranial osteopath whether or not they have paediatric experience. Most medical practitioners would agree this is contrary to good medical practice and such “alternative medical treatment” is without any evidence base whatsoever.

Another link gives some more advice on the routines that might help a baby and toddler sleep through the night:

SLEEPLESS BABIES

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One of the dubious “privileges” of being a junior hospital doctor a few decades ago was that you experienced many of the symptoms and signs that go along with sleep deprivation. Indeed being on call from a Friday morning to a Monday evening with only the occasional odd hour or so of sleep grabbed between emergencies was not all that uncommon. Shift work for doctors did not exist then – that would have been a real luxury during these years.

Possibly as a consequence of experiencing total exhaustion during that time, getting enough sleep to function properly has always been very important to me.

Most of us, including myself are of the view that 8 hours unbroken sleep a night is what is required to refresh and enable you to function optimally the next day.

However, there was an article on the BBC website yesterday that I found fascinating and it suggests that perhaps we should be sleeping in two chunks of four hours with a period of being awake for one to two hours in between.

THE MYTH OF THE EIGHT HOUR SLEEP

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“In the early 1990s, psychiatrist Thomas Wehr conducted an experiment in which a group of people were plunged into darkness for 14 hours every day for a month.
It took some time for their sleep to regulate but by the fourth week the subjects had settled into a very distinct sleeping pattern. They slept first for four hours, then woke for one or two hours before falling into a second four-hour sleep.
Though sleep scientists were impressed by the study, among the general public the idea that we must sleep for eight consecutive hours persists.”

History supports this. Apparently, up to the late seventeenth century, normal sleep was considered divided into “first sleep” and “second sleep.” This concept gradually disappeared and by the 20th century it seems to have been forgotten about.

Roger Ekirch is a historian and has researched the phenomenon of first and second sleep.

“During this waking period people were quite active. They often got up, went to the toilet or smoked tobacco and some even visited neighbours. Most people stayed in bed, read, wrote and often prayed. Countless prayer manuals from the late 15th Century offered special prayers for the hours in between sleeps.”

Roger Ekirch has written a couple of books about this:

ROGER EKIRCH

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It is fascinating stuff, but will it have any implications for insomniacs? Perhaps it is the normal work patterns imposed on us nowadays by society that turns some people who cannot adapt to an uninterrupted sleeping pattern into insomniacs. Who knows?

Although not an insomniac myself, I’m temped to buy the book and after reading it hand it on a friend who has been bedevilled with insomnia all her life.

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The Restless Leg Syndrome is common possibly affecting about 10% of the population at some time and to some degree. The Restess Legs Syndrome Foundation began in 1989 in the USA by a few people who thought they had a rare condition perhaps because most doctors didn’t know much about it then. The Foundation has since grown from strength to strength producing information and support for those afflicted and for their doctors too!

Today those goals have taken on a life of their own. The Foundation has grown from a simple volunteer staff to a staff of seven employees in their Rochester, Minnesota location. Our understanding of RLS has also grown. We now know that the condition is not rare at all. In fact, recent research suggests that up to 10 percent of the general population has this neurologic condition. It is perhaps the most common condition you have never heard of, affecting more people than even type 2 diabetes.

THE RESTLESS LEG SYNDROME FOUNDATION

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THE RESTLESS LEG SYNDROME (National Heart Lung and Blood Institute)

The Restless Legs Syndrome is a poorly understood condition that is associated with a strong urge to move your legs due to a feeling of discomfort that is often described as tinging, burning, itching, crawling etc. It is particularly troublesome at night and can prevent sleep.

Key Points

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Restless legs syndrome (RLS) is a disorder that causes a strong urge to move your legs. This urge often occurs with strange and unpleasant feelings in your legs. Moving your legs relieves the urge and the unpleasant feelings.
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People who have RLS describe the unpleasant feelings as creeping, crawling, pulling, itching, tingling, burning, aching, or electric shocks.
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The urge to move and unpleasant feelings occur when you’re resting and inactive. They tend to be worse in the evening and at night and are temporarily relieved in the morning.
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RLS can make it hard to fall asleep and stay asleep. It may make you feel tired and sleepy during the day. This can make it hard to learn, work, and do your normal routine. Not getting enough sleep also can cause depression, mood swings, and other health problems……..read more – link below

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