Insomnia and Stretch to Sleep-Program - Brossura

Zell, Claes

Brossura

ISBN 10: 1475979975 ISBN 13: 9781475979978

Casa editrice: iUniverse, 2013

Riassunto

Today, men and women all over the world are experiencing higher stress levels as a result of poor or reduced sleep. According to author Claes Zell, the answer to this problem could be as simple and enjoyable as stretching and targeted exercise. After years of self- experience practicing, Zell discovered that many who suffer from insufficient deep sleep complain of the same issues-restlessness, stiff limbs, and difficulty reaching the pre-sleep alpha rhythm. With this information, Zell has developed an effective ten-minute program (minimum) design to target and lengthen specific muscle groups, relaxing your body in order to allow you to relax your mind. The market for chemical remedies for sleeping disorders has become vast, and yet the problem of inadequate sleep remains. Rather than subject your body to chemical interventions that may or may not work, interventions that could cause any number of new and unpleasant problems, why not give yourself ten minutes at the end of the day? With just ten minutes, you can bring your body and mind into alignment and finally get the deep, quality sleep you've been missing.

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Insomnia and Stretch to Sleep-Program

By Claes Zell

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2013 Claes Zell
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-4759-7997-8

Contents

Preface....................................................................
9
Acknowledgments............................................................
10
Introduction...............................................................
12
Increased Stress Level.....................................................
14
Part 1: Sleep..............................................................
24
Sleep Positions............................................................
24
Sleep Architecture.........................................................
27
Dream state................................................................
37
Sleep in Adults............................................................
41
Circadian rhythm...........................................................
44
Jetlag.....................................................................
50
Shift work.................................................................
51
Power Nap..................................................................
54
Sleep Hygiene..............................................................
56
Part 2: Insomnia...........................................................
64
International Classification of Sleep Disorders............................
68
Stimulants.................................................................
70
Pharmacological Treatment..................................................
80
Part 3: S2S Program in Theory..............................................
86
The Autonomic Nervous System...............................................
89
The Human Constitution.....................................................
93
Exercise and Stretching....................................................
104
S2S Program Blueprint Symptoms.............................................
114
Part 4: S2S Program in Practice............................................
124
S2S-1 Thighs...............................................................
125
S2S-2 Calves...............................................................
129
S2S-3 Back of Thigh........................................................
132
S2S-4 Back of Leg..........................................................
134
S2S-5 Bottom...............................................................
137
End of First Part..........................................................
139
S2S-6 Neck.................................................................
140
S2S-7 Shoulder.............................................................
144
S2S-8 Lower Arm............................................................
148
Conclusion.................................................................
153
Index......................................................................
157
References.................................................................
161

CHAPTER 1

Sleep

Sleep is important for all people. Without sleep, we can't function properly. Allpeople have various sleeping needs. Some prefer mornings; others prefer lateevenings or nights. We all need a number of sleeping hours each night, and withoutdoubt, sleep quality also has a major importance. The needs of sleep apply in manytheories, one of which is the possible connection between sleep and learning inhumans. A 2009 study by Peyrache and associates suggests that sleep quality (interms of deep-sleep hours) has a large impact on learning abilities, based on theelectrophysiological recordings of a large number of isolated cells in the prefrontalcortex of rats. The study revealed that the cells that formed upon learning were moreactive during subsequent sleep episodes. This means that those replay events weremore prominent during slow-wave sleep and were coacting with the hippocampusevents.

Is sex more important than sleep? I read about a survey not long ago. Sleep isimportant, we know that. But is it more important than sex? Some of you may say,"Absolutely not!" But what do men think about this issue? Well, a survey clearlyshowed that 80 percent of British men preferred a good night's sleep, than to beinterrupted with a close encounter with their mates. This is surely not due to lack oflust, which is the problem. Sex is just not at the top of the list; many other thingshave to be taken care of during the day, researchers say.

A major contribution to improving your sleep is how you prepare yourself. Are youstill tense and stressed despite several hours having passed since you stoppedworking for the day? Of course, late evenings for morning people are a bad habit. Butthose people who like to wake up early in the morning used to go to bed in time inthe evening. It is more likely that if you stay up late in the evening, you're doing itbecause you can't sleep at the right time. This can have a lot of different causes.However, scientists agree that sleep quality is more important than the total numberof sleeping hours and that sleep requirements fluctuate from person to person.

Sleep Positions

There are some issues based on sleeping in different positions. Through the years,you have obviously determined your favorite sleep position and you will not sleep ina position that feels unpleasant. My experience, though, is that your favorite sleepingpositions may change through the years. I always slept, in my younger years, on mybelly, with my left leg drawn up. This used to be called the recovery position.Nowadays, I lie flat on my back, without snoring hopefully. And snoring,unfortunately, is not dealt with in this book. Snoring is normally about a physicalthroat problem, which needs a lot of medical attention. But what you do in thedifferent sleep stages is harder to do something about. Science states that sleeppostures have both negative and positive factors.

You must have heard many times that someone woke up with pain somewhere,mostly in the neck, and said, "I've been sleeping in the wrong position," or somethingsimilar.

Belly Position

The belly position, or front position, is sleeping with the legs mostly straight and flatagainst the bed. This position will help for breathing problems, but you can findcomments against this position due to head issues. The head-body junction can be ina strained momentum; that front position can lead to nerve problems in the upperbody. Make sure that your cervical vertebrae are not put out of alignment with thespine. This is even more important for older people and for those with increased riskfor arthritis conditions.

Half-Side Position

Sleeping in the half-side position used to be described as the "recovery position,"because it's similar to the posture used in emergency situations. The main factor is torecover or restore the breathing option. Also, if you have trouble with a medicalcondition known as gastroesophageal reflux disease, you should sleep on your leftside. Sleeping on the right side gave longer recovery from draining out of theesophagus, as compared to sleeping on the left side. Patients felt more discomfortsleeping on that side. It has also been suggested that the sleep-side posture cancause more wrinkles on that side of the face.

Side Position

This is one of the popular position, seven of ten sleepers use this position, and is alsocalled the fetal position. You lie on one side, on your shoulder, with legs more or lessdrawn up toward your belly. There are some key areas, checkpoints, to consider.What is important in the side position is to have your spine in a straight position; thisis often what bed fabricants mention to sell their products. The neck is the other areato look at in this position. The neck and the spine should be in the same horizontalline to be optimal and not give any pain or complaint when waking up. Even so, tohave the legs toward the belly gives a release, by curling the body inward, opening upthe back, and reducing pressure on the discs. A too-soft bed makes the spine curvedown, according to gravitational pull.

Back Position

Sleeping on your back is often used at some time during the night. A well-knownfactor is that these positions aggravate snoring and sleep apnea. The muscles in thejaw and tongue are relaxed and are pulled down by gravity. Nevertheless, the backposition has good influences for distributing weight throughout the body. Researchhas shown that those who sleep on their backs are more likely to have decreasedoxygen levels in their bloodstream, which is a particular concern in patients withheart and circulatory problems. On the other hand, the back position can help giveyou relief for your tired legs after standing or running about at work. To put a pillowunder your legs can switch the nervous system. There is, however, something to bearin mind

Sleep Architecture

You might think that an active life should balance a calm and inactive brain duringsleep. In fact, the first third of sleep is a deep state of sleep and there is not muchgoing on; the brain waves are not very active. But after the first part of the sleepcycle, it's the opposite. A Harvard Medical School professor and researcher, J. AllanHobson, stated that this nightly process accounts for the varied shifts in brain activitythroughout the night, resulting in changes in body temperature, chemistry, andsensory activities. The whole function of sleep has not been completely understood,and the absolute hours of necessary sleep are still unknown. The fact is that thehuman species have a lot in common, but each is still very unique. So when someindividuals show full effectiveness with only four to five hours of sleep, others needeight hours of sleep (or even more) to perform at their best.

To measure the animal kingdom sleep habits, you will find that pigs have exactly thesame sleeping hours in general as humans, eight hours. But what can we learn fromthat information, probably nothing. Except that pigs eat in general the same food, avariety of everything, as humans. As more meat you eat more rest/sleep you seemsto need, according to animals. And the opposite is; no meat, eat around the clock.

What is probably accurate is that the more quality sleeping hours you get, the morerefreshed you feel. Sometimes I think, "How can I feel refreshed when I slept fewerhours than usual?" I have also noticed that if you can't remember waking up in thenight, you probably had a good night's sleep without any major breaks. Quality sleepbefore length of sleep! But there are obviously a lot of parameters to take underconsideration.

The knowledge of sleep was described for the first time in the previous century. LeeLoomis provided the earliest detailed description of various stages of sleep in themid-1930s. With the technique of electroencephalography (EEG), he discovered in1937 "the sleep K-complex," a typical waveform that occurs in stage 2 sleep.Aserinsky and Kleitman (1955) identified rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. There canbe a misconception about sleep, due to its calm and relaxing appearance, but duringEEGs you find that sleep isn't a passive and constant state; in fact, it's quite thecontrary. Sleep consists of different phases, which are revealed in EEG monitoring,although EEG monitoring has other purposes than to explore sleep, for instance,when it is to discover Alzheimer's plaque in the brain. Both the brain and the bodyare active during sleep, and the brain is (in some sense) even more active duringsleep. The more common (these figures have some variations through medicalestablishment) brain waves revealed in an EEG are the following:

~ Beta waves, normal awake state: 12–30 Hz

~ Alpha waves, relaxed with closed eyes: 8–12 Hz

~ Theta waves, REM sleep: 6–10 Hz

~ Slow-wave, Delta Sleep: 0.1–4 Hz

Hypnogram

Hypnogram show simplified sleep depths and sleep stages. Every stage representsbrain waves (Hz) of a specific category, and a hypnogram is easily describes as a step-by-stepdiagram. Originally it was based on a set of visual sleep stage scoring rules,which classified the sleep as wakefulness, rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, non-REMsleep stages S1 (lightest sleep) to S4 (deepest sleep), and movement time (MT).Normally a sleep session has six periods, and the first two periods of three hours eachcontain deep sleep, which you do not often wake up from. If you wake up, it's oftenafter the deep sleep state, and then you can experience or feel overheated. ThenREM sleep takes over. At first it may not feel so prominent, but as the night goes by,the sleep gets lighter and REM sleep more characteristic. Hypnogram also revealspecific steps between every stage.

The two major sleep patterns

There are clearly physiological differences between the two major sleep patterns,NREM and REM. NREM sleep represents the calming and rebuilding phase, and REMsleep is the total opposite, which can be seen belove It has been shown (Van Cauter,Leproult) that sleep—more specifically, slow-wave sleep (SWS)—does affect growthhormone levels in adult men. During eight hours' sleep, studies show that the menwith a high percentage of SWS (average 24 percent) also had high growth hormonesecretion, while subjects with a low percentage of SWS (average 9 percent) had lowgrowth hormone secretion. And we know that growth hormone is extremelyimportant for many processes in your body, for instance, stimulate growth, cellproduction and regeneration.

The two major sleep patterns:

Physiological Process During NREM During REM

Brain Activity Decrease Increase
Heart Rate Decrease Increase
Blood Pressure Decrease Increase

Table 1. Physiological process

Through EEG findings, it's possible to divide sleep into different parts or stages.Doctors normally divide sleep into two main rubrics, which have totally oppositeeffects toward the human body:

1. Non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep

2. Rapid eye movement (REM) sleep

Non-Rapid Eye Movement (NREM) Sleep

What can you find from the name? Non-rapid eye movement sleep is about sleepwithout rapid eye movement. NREM sleep represents the main part of the sleepcycle, normally 70 to 80 percent of the total sleep time. In the beginning of theperiod, you'll find the deepest sleep; this is probably the most important period interms of the renewal processes of the body system. REM sleep represents a very lightsleep, with paralytic muscles due to a very hectic dream phase. Without the paralysisstate, you would "live out" the dream. In some cases, people do live out the dream,and unfortunately that is not the purpose.

The basal forebrain, including the hypothalamus, is an important region forcontrolling NREM sleep and may be the region keeping track of how long we havebeen awake and how large our sleep debt is. The brainstem region known as the ponsis important for induced REM sleep. During REM sleep, the pons sends signals to thevisual nuclei of the thalamus and to the cerebral cortex, which is responsible for mostof our thought processes. The pons also sends signals to the spinal cord, causing thetemporary paralysis that is characteristic of REM sleep. Other brain sites are alsoimportant in the sleep process. For example, the thalamus generates many of thebrain rhythms in NREM sleep that we see as EEG patterns.

Newborns sleep an average of seventeen hours per day. By the time a child is threeto five years old, total sleep time averages twelve hours a day, and then it furtherdecreases to eight hours per night by adulthood. One of the most prominent age-relatedchanges in sleep is a reduction in the time spent in the deepest stages ofNREM (stages 3 and 4) from childhood through adulthood.

The real functions of NREM sleep remain unknown, but one (Benington and Heller)theory proposes a decreased metabolic demand of glycogen stores. This state isshown by PET (positron emission tomography) camera studies, which show that theblood flow decreases throughout the entire brain. As NREM stages progress, strongerstimuli are required to result in an awakening.

NREM sleep stages

During more than half a century, ever since Loomis in 1937, there has been researchdone on the character of brain waves, according to different sleep stages. There isclearly an oscillation of brain waves through the entire life span, like the heart isbeating to supply blood through all the areas of our body. In an awake state, thebrain shows alpha waves with electromagnetic oscillations in the frequency range of8 to 12 Hz.

Alpha waves are reduced with closed eyes, drowsiness, and sleep. The most widelyresearched stage is during the relaxed mental state, where the person is at rest witheyes closed, but is not tired or asleep. The mature alpha wave, at ten waves persecond, is firmly established by age.

Alpha waves are common during meditation. You sit with your eyes closed andusually with your legs crossed. The major difference between alpha waves andmeditation is that you maintain clearness. You don't want to sleep. Almost twentyyears ago, I had a period of half a year where I was very dedicated to meditation. Iwoke up at four o'clock in the morning and sat for one and a half hours.

Stage 1

In this stage, sleep is at a state of unconsciousness, in which the brain is relativelymore responsive to internal than external stimuli. The brain gradually becomes lessresponsive to visual, auditory, and other environmental stimuli during the transitionfrom wakefulness to sleep, which is mostly considered as stage 1 of sleep. Slowrolling eye movements (SREM) are usually the first evidence of drowsiness seen on anEEG. This movement is most often horizontal but can also be vertical or oblique. Thisstage is referred to drowsiness or presleep and is the first or earliest stage of sleep. Itis considered to be a transition between wakefulness and sleep. It usually accountsfor 2 to 5 percent of total sleep time. If you can't sleep for some reason, this stageincreases in duration. And it will also do so as you get older, unfortunately.

Stage 2

This stage is the predominant sleep stage during a normal night's sleep and occursthroughout the sleep period; it represents 45 to 55 percent of total sleep time. Thedominant feature in an EEG that establishes stage 2 sleep is the appearance of "sleepspindles" and the K complex.

Both the K-complex and delta wave activity in stage 2 sleep create slow-wave (0.8 Hz)oscillation and delta (1.6–4.0 Hz).

During sleep, these spindles are seen in the brain as bursts of activity immediatelyfollowing muscle twitching. Researchers think the brain, particularly in the young, islearning about what nerves control what specific muscles when asleep. Also, spindlesgenerated in the region of the thalamus have been shown to aid sleeping in thepresence of disruptive external sounds (Dang Vu et. al). Sleep spindle activity hasfurthermore been found to be associated with the integration of new informationinto existing knowledge (Tamminen et. al).

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Insomnia and Stretch to Sleep-Program by Claes Zell. Copyright © 2013 Claes Zell. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse, Inc..
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Dettagli dell'edizione

• Editore: iUniverse
• Data di pubblicazione: 2013
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 1475979975
• ISBN 13: 9781475979978
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero di pagine: 178
• Contatto del produttore: non disponibile
• Persona responsabile: GPSR Kontakt; gpsr@libri.de; ; Europaallee 1; Bad Hersfeld; 36244; Germania