Spring Sleep Makeover!

In some parts of the country, winter is still holding down the fort. But for many of us, spring is really right around the corner and soon we'll be embracing the outdoors and welcoming warmer weather. Where I live in Arizona, it is time to break out the flip flops!

Now is also when we start to think about cleaning house literally and figuratively. Attempts to clean out the garage or closets are met with similar attempts to clean up our diets and get ready for shorts and bathing suit season.

I've blogged numerous times about the benefits of sleep on the body, particularly its ability to stay trim and shapely. Around this time of year, those New Year's Resolutions to get more exercise and eat higher quality foods are a thing of the past. Way past. So here's a suggestion:

Stop beating yourself up on what you've failed to accomplish thus far this year, and instead, just put sleep at the top of your priorities and watch what happens!

Sleep - not exercise or diet - is the stronger common denominator to feeling and looking better. Sleep is what will restore you from the inside out. It will boost your immune system, maintain your memory (so you can remember those commitments to getting into shape), and keep certain hormones in balance, including the ones that, when they run amok, will sabotage any efforts to lose weight because you won't be able to keep your hands out of the feedbag.

Imbalanced appetite hormones, for instance, can set the stage for gorging on high-calorie sweets and unhealthy carbs. Yet getting restful sleep can help optimize your body's hormonal system (not to mention prepare your body for burning up those calories throughout your day).

I'll admit, there are a lot of new wrinkles in this year's spring cleaning. The economy has most people on edge. I have no doubts that today's intense stress levels are adversely affecting the quality and quantity of our sleep. Not only do we take our worries to bed with us, fueling insomnia, but we also delay going to bed as we tool around the Internet late at night paying bills or seeking support through others on the Web.

So if you do one thing differently this month, hoping to arrive a little more refreshed and a little less stressed come May, try a sleep makeover:

• Commit to relaxing for at least 30 minutes before bedtime. No internet, no bill paying, no stimulating activities. If worries begin to creep in, write them in a journal, include a To Do list if that helps, and be done with them for the night.



• Go to bed and get up at the same time 7 days a week. Make sure to get the right amount of sleep. For most of us, that's 7 or 8 hours.



• Watch what you eat and drink late in the day and into the evening. Too much caffeine and/or alcohol can disrupt sleep, and so can drinking water that will have you going to the bathroom in the middle of the night.

A little spring cleaning of our sleep hygiene will allow us all to spring forward...and achieve the kind of vibrant health we all dream about year round. For more tips and ideas, see my blog.

Sweet Dreams,

Michael Breus, PhD
The Sleep Doctor

This sleep article is also available at Dr. Breus's blog, The Insomnia Blog.

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• Watch Your Sleep, Watch Your Weight
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• Get the Sleep Well newsletter in your inbox weekly

What's in a Dream?

Apparently, a lot. An intriguing article posted online summarizes studies exploring how much people value - and heed - their dreams. In short, most of us put a lot of significance on our dreams and believe they speak the truth to us.

What do you think? Ask yourself...

Let's say you're about to embark on a plane trip and the night before you take off, you have a vivid dream that has you in a terrible plane crash. You wake up the next morning to learn that security has been "heightened" at airports. Which bothers you more: the heightened terror alert or the dream (ahem, nightmare) of you crashing to earth from thousands of feet in the sky?

If you're like most people who answered a similar question, the dream bothered you mightily and now you don't want to walk onto that plane. The anxiety you feel is chiefly from the dream, as if it were a warning.

Dreams are indeed wondrous events (minus the occasional nightmare), and we don't have a full understanding of them yet. Most of us remember our dreams on a regular basis, especially during times of acute stress or psychological mayhem. There's been a surge in the study of dreams lately, fueled by an increased interest in understanding them as meaningful representations of our deepest concerns and emotions.

So when do dreams happen, and why do they seem to be tied to our feelings?

I get these questions a lot, and I start by explaining that the most memorable and emotionally powerful dreams happen during the REM (rapid-eye movement) phase of sleep, which is the stage of sleep when our brains are most similar to a wakeful state.

It is during REM that the hippocampus and amygdala, two organs in our heads responsible for memory and emotions respectively, and areas in the frontal and prefrontal lobes near the forehead responsible for attention and coordination, work together in dream production.

If, for example, you have a fear of flying and it's literally on your mind, you're more likely to produce an associated image of that fear, which then emerges during REM as those emotionally-charged areas of the brain become activated.

Exceptionally vivid and memorable dreams occur just before we wake up, but it's possible that we've been dreaming similar themes all night long during the four or five phases of REM that we go through. So even though we recall just what we dreamed about in the last cycle, it could be reflective of the night's cumulative dream content. Like a single television show with one theme interrupted by unrelated commercials, which are the other phases of sleep where we don't dream.

I've heard all kinds of stories from people who claim they work out their emotions in their sleep, or how they've come to rely on dreams as an important "survival strategy." Indeed, I think dreams do serve a role in our survival - otherwise, what would be the point?

This doesn't mean that I believe dreams are to help us avoid plane crashes or catastrophic events. But, I think there's something to be said for taking dreams seriously once in a while when they do touch us in a deeply mysterious way. They are, after all, part of what make us human.

What I'd like to know is whether other animals dream, too. Or is this just a human experience? Ever asked a rat or reptile what he dreamed about last night? Science has yet to find a way to capture the dreams of animals. Maybe that's best left to Mother Nature.

Same goes for future events, however good or bad.

Sweet Dreams,

Michael Breus, PhD
The Sleep Doctor

This article on sleep and dreaming is also available at Dr. Breus' official blog, The Insomnia Blog.

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• Get the Sleep Well newsletter in your inbox weekly

Don't Take the Election TOO Seriously

Highly emotional moments can be stressful... and deadly. I think we all know someone who has been taking the election so seriously that thoughts of their party losing has them contemplating a move to another country.

But too much can be, well, too much. Take Terence Tolbert as an example. Working tirelessly for Obama as his campaign director in Nevada, he died of a massive heart attack Sunday night while driving alone near the offices in North Las Vegas. He was a young 44.

While I cannot speculate that the campaign had anything to do with his death--for all we know he could have had a congenital defect in his heart or some such and would have died even under the least stressful situations--I think it's fair to point out that when someone young dies suddenly under a very stressful job situation or environment, you have to wonder.

Within days before E-Day (the actual election), McCain and Obama crisscrossed the country with very little sleep to capture last-minute votes. McCain even held a rally in his home state long after midnight. What does that do to a septuagenarian? Obama was caught yesterday giving a talk in Florida thinking he was in Ohio. The sleep deprivation is definitely taking its toll and spotting his memory.

We were all blessed (except for the candidates, no doubt) with an extra hour of sleep the other night, and it could have meant more than you think it did. The end of daylight savings could not have come at a better time this year, as a new study shows the impact that one extra hour can actually have on you.

And you can thank the Swedes for finding this: the extra hour of sleep we gain from turning back the clock may protect us from a heart attack. We've long known that Mondays tend to be "heart attack days." Because they are usually considered the worst day of the week for many, there's a pattern of higher heart attacks on Monday morning as people dread the new work week, stressful thoughts rush in, and there's an uptick in activity following the restful weekend.

After poring over 20 years of records, Swedish researchers discovered something else is actually going on. Time shifts negatively affect our biological rhythms, but when those shifts offer more sleep, there's a 5 percent drop in Monday Blues heart attacks. Pretty amazing, don't you think? Yet another example of how sleep really has an impact on our stress level and ability to cope. In the spring, when we "spring forward," there's an increase in heart attacks after that one-hour loss of sleep.

So what's my point here? Well, today is a very stressful, exciting, and activity-filled day for millions of Americans. If there is no clear winner by suppertime, how many will stay up late watching the coverage on television? How many hearts will sink--or race like a rabbit--when their candidate loses or wins?

Take heart: this is an historic election. Experience it in stride. Whatever the outcome, great reform and change is likely on the way. Just don't take is so seriously that it ruins your health. Or you may not be around to watch this next president in action. (And if you've been emotionally involved in this election for the past 18 months, then think about all that accumulated stress. You, more than anyone, need a good night's sleep.)

Vote early. And get to bed early!

Related Topics:

• WebMD Video: Heart Disease Detection: A New Era in Diagnosis
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This article about sleep is cross-posted at The Insomnia Blog.

Get Sleep, Get Smart, Get Sane

It's hard not to comment on the financial doom surrounding us this week like a darkening tunnel, but I want to point something out that's very positive and that can potentially help you to navigate these uncertain times. It's the value sleep can have on your smarts. Yes, you read that right: sleep can make you smarter. And saner.

Unlike a stock that you buy and declines in value (with your sanity), if you buy yourself more sleep you could add value to just about everything that makes you, well, you. And perhaps one of the best payoffs to more sleep is getting smarter. Simple as that. A sharper, wittier mind can make better decisions, manage stress more easily, put things into perspective, and generally make sense of a world that oftentimes seems so crazy and out of balance.

An article I read online yesterday reminds us just how critical sleep is in our ability to maintain our wits. It's no joke that sleep increases our judgment, creativity, and memory. Our bodies may be resting up and repairing before the next day at battle, but our minds are hard at work in the night - performing all the actions that need to get done behind the scenes for us to be able to learn new things, complete difficult tasks, solve challenging problems, and capture profound memories the next day so they don't just dissipate. In fact, memories can have emotions attached to them, which help us keep track of what's safe or not, what brings us joy or pain. Those memories could be critical to our survival, and sleep is what allows us to keep them.

I say all this knowing, though, that sleep is so hard to come by, especially given our current economic climate. You may be watching the news like a hawk and having nightmares about your retirement fund. You could be worried about your job and ability to pay the bills next month. None of this bodes well for a good night's sleep.

This week, I have a 3-piece recipe for you to try; get our your daily agenda or calendar out and mark these down as reminders:

1. Within EIGHT HOURS of bed (between 2:00 and 3:00 PM for most people): quiet the caffeine and sugar. Stop consuming highly-caffeinated and sugared beverages. What I'm really getting at here is halting coffees and sodas. We tend to drink them mindlessly, then wonder why we're wired and tired, and having a hard time sleeping later on. All that sugar and caffeine will feed your worries and distort your perspective.


2. Within THREE HOURS of bed: quiet your mind by eliminating all sources of stress and anxiety. This means avoiding certain conversations, work, media (including the Internet), and anything that will bring stressful topics to your eyes and conscious.


3. Within ONE HOUR of bed: quiet your body by engaging in an activity that is soothing, relaxing, and pleasurable. It could be a warm bath, light reading, light stretching, or even sex. Have a cup of herbal tea if you like.

Keeping the mind nourished and nurtured is much easier that you think. The mind is a terrible thing to waste in sleep deprivation. Remember, get sleep to get smart! It also helps to remember this: stocks are NOT necessary for survival, but sleep is. The more refreshing sleep you get, the saner life seems to become.

This sleep article is cross-posted on Dr. Breus's official blog, The Insomnia Blog.

Related Topics:

• WebMD Video: How Your Memory is Affected by Sleep.
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The News Got You Down? Turn It Off

The Olympics are over and we are deluged with the old, depressing news again, wrapped around the incessant coverage of the upcoming election. Between the energy and housing crises, between the bickering about global terrorism and war, and between woes about the stock market and the future of health care, it's no wonder most Americans are gloomy. But should we be this gloomy?

There was a fascinating op-ed piece in the Los Angeles Times written by Dan Ariely, a Duke University professor of behavioral economics who commented on the doldrums of consumer confidence today, which is at a 40-year low. The problem we have, according to Ariely, is that we're experiencing "learned helplessness."

This phenomenon happens as a result of chronic exposure to an alarming sequence of market disasters. First we had the tech bubble burst, then came the housing tumble, and now oil prices and the mortgage meltdown keeps people up at night. Add to that all the depressing news circling daily about new and old wars, and threats to our health like tainted food and toxic products. All these events have occurred in quick succession and in some regards, unexpectedly. No one, for example, could have predicted the housing fallout during the boom just a few years ago.

Of all the remarks Ariely makes, I particularly enjoy his pointing out the fact we consume news much differently today than in previous decades. Not only do we seek sensational news rather than that which can help us make sense of the world, but we eat it up 24-7 on our televisions, radios, computers, and even cell phones. He writes, "Even stories about the economy take the shape of gossip about people who are struggling, who have lost their jobs and can't pay for gasoline." How true that is.

Now you're probably wondering what all this has to do with sleep. Well, my friends, how many of us sit up late at night watching re-runs of news we've already seen on TV earlier in the day? Watching television can be relaxing for some, but I'm not sure there's anything sedative about today's news (unless, of course politics really puts you to sleep - then you're in luck!).

I think we would all do well if we were more mindful of when and how we get our news. Unlike the recent Olympics, which were stimulating, warm and friendly, today's news is mostly rousing and disheartening. A bad mix for restful sleep and insightful days.

I challenge anyone who feels down to try this: like caffeine, avoid all news within four hours of bedtime. This includes newsy journals and magazines, too. See if you sleep better. Watch how you feel better.

Top 5 Things to Avoid before Bedtime (within 4 hours)

• Caffeine (including medications that include caffeine like headache medicine)
• Arguments and heated conversations (ahem, this includes your kids)
• Too much alcohol or rich foods that can cause digestive issues
• Electronic overload, such as computer usage, texting, e-mail, and Internet surfing
• Stimulating, depressing news or TV shows
  

This article is cross-posted on Dr. Breus's official blog, The Insomnia Blog.

Related Topics:

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