Friends,

I've recently completed a sleep medicine program, and I would like to help my fellow friends here to get better sleep to contribute towards a significant reduction in inflammatory processes in the body which can cause pretty much any chronic disease.

If you have questions let me know.

I am by no means a specialist but pretty much all questions will be answered. (with citings from latest research papers if requested)

Address your sleep patterns TODAY, it genuinely can save your life!

:)

Kam

Could you please elaborate? What problems were you having or what are some of the most common problems?

Doc, I'm unable to text while I'm sleeping. Can you help me?

"How do you sleep? Is your sleep killing you?"

I read an article in my local newspaper about this just the other day. I can't seem to find it now. But IIRC it was about how certain sleep disorders tie in with increased chances of developing pneumonia, depression, Alzheimer's, and a whole bunch of other things.

This isn't the article I was looking for, but it may be of interest to anyone curious about the subject:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/heal......5632095/

I generally nod off about midnight watching late night TV, wake up about 3 or 4, wobble off to bed and sleep till 9 am.

Any alarms going off about that sleep habit? I can change it, since there's a TV in the bedroom, but so far the pattern seems to be working for me pretty good.

I'd be interested in your feedback, Kam. Thanks.

As we generally sleep in a 90 minute cycle I generally time it to sleep for 4.5 hours or six hours, with perhaps once a week a lie in for 7.5 hours. I sleep the instant I decide to sleep, and all seems to be good. But I would welcome an elaboration...

I heard about this next thing a few years ago ... short summary, until recently (in the last few hundred years or so) people used to sleep twice each day. Once in the early evening for an hour or two, then for a longer period later at night. Much more at the links below:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Segmented_sleep

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-16964783

In 2001, historian Roger Ekirch of Virginia Tech published a seminal paper, drawn from 16 years of research, revealing a wealth of historical evidence that humans used to sleep in two distinct chunks.

His book At Day's Close: Night in Times Past, published four years later, unearths more than 500 references to a segmented sleeping pattern - in diaries, court records, medical books and literature, from Homer's Odyssey to an anthropological account of modern tribes in Nigeria.

Much like the experience of Wehr's subjects, these references describe a first sleep which began about two hours after dusk, followed by waking period of one or two hours and then a second sleep.

"It's not just the number of references - it is the way they refer to it, as if it was common knowledge," Ekirch says.

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.

Ekirch found that references to the first and second sleep started to disappear during the late 17th Century. This started among the urban upper classes in northern Europe and over the course of the next 200 years filtered down to the rest of Western society.

By the 1920s the idea of a first and second sleep had receded entirely from our social consciousness.

Today, most people seem to have adapted quite well to the eight-hour sleep, but Ekirch believes many sleeping problems may have roots in the human body's natural preference for segmented sleep as well as the ubiquity of artificial light.

The idea that we must sleep in a consolidated block could be damaging, he says, if it makes people who wake up at night anxious, as this anxiety can itself prohibit sleeps and is likely to seep into waking life too.

All things in the universe, from works of art to people, are made of logical and magical stuff. It is for that very reason that a good performance of magic is a balance of the logical and magical stuff. The magic experiment is made of the logical and its nonsense dressing of the magical stuff. The logical stuff satisfies the logical side while the nonsense satisfies the magical side of human psyche. The magical side is the stuff that dreams are made on and there is no dilemma in dreams as all is possible on the spirit side. Nobody lives without body and spirit. The body we call the universe would not exist without the spirit in the sky. The spirit can exist without the body otherwise the spirit wouldn’t have been able to create the universe and wouldn’t have any ghosts. All magicians are ghosts as they do not exists in reality but are merely fictional characters.

"We must never forget that we are human, and as humans we dream, and when we dream we dream of money."

George Lang (Ricky Jay)
The Spanish Prisoner

Oh dear.

I've never been a morning person. Aways hitting the snooze button and sleeping in til 10am on weekends. That is until I had my heart surgery in March. Now I routinely wake up between 5 and 6am. Must be all that extra oxygen my brain is getting. Anyone else been through heart surgery and had a similar experience?

I sleep with my eyes closed so not sure how I sleep.

When I hear the question, "how do you sleep?", it always makes me wonder how Paul sleeps. I myself use a CPAP. It makes me feel old and ugly and like a character in a Batman movie.

Hi Bill

It's not a problem I am having per se (although I'm going to get myself checked) but let's put it this way.

Sleep apnoea is a serious problem which is one of the most poorly diagnosed conditions in medicine.

Sever sleep apnoea if left untreated increases an adults chances of death within 10 years by 30%. That's a fact.

Secondly, in children. If your child snores, they have sleep apnoea. If your child grinds their teeth at night they have sleep apnoea. If your child over the age of 5 wakes up to go to the bathroom regularly during the night, they have sleep apnoea

70% of ADHD diagnoses are misdiagnoses of sleep apnoea in children.

It's a serious medical condition, and most general medical practitioners have NO IDEA what it is and how to diagnose it.

Kam

Kam, that's why I use a CPAP. My apnoea is pretty severe.

CPAP is the golden service for apnoea, especially severe forms.

The CPAP can be a very difficult device to get used to initially, but it saves lives. There is a new "cord free" CPAP about to be released, much more comfortable, will keep you all posted on that development.

Stone, have you had a CT scan done on your airways?

Kam

I am a big guy. Big guys often have problems with sleeping and the sleep apnea. I have a BI-Pap actually. The CPAP was not enough pressure for me.

Sleep is quite important. Believe it or not it will help with weight loss if you sleep properly.

Using a CPAP can help with high blood pressure and many things. It is really enlightening what just sleeping properly can do for your health.

It is not as tough to get used to as many think. The relief far outweighs the problems. The new masks are very easy to wear.

You need to help me with that one Magnus

If your aim is to text while sleeping, I. AM. LISTENING

Kam

I'm glad it's helping you Danny. If you haven't had a CT scan for airway blockages, I would urge you to look into it.
Otherwise, I'm glad you're onto this already, its a life saver, and a life changer.

Have you noticed any change in your general well-being since starting treatment for the apnoea?

Kam

I had a deviated septum fixed. So yea I have had the scans.

Well as far as better life it is not fair in my case to put it all in one basket.

I (As some know here.) had some physical issues. I had to have a shoulder replaced, a ACL replaced, a deviated septum fixed and some other minor things. As it was I was not too mobile. (Shocking huh?) I gained some weight, and that contributed to the apnea. Being a big guy in the first place just added to it.

So in the past few years I had all those things fixed, and while doing that had the BIPAP and the other thing fixed. I am far more active now so the weight dropped, and sleeping right helped tremendously.

So while I could never say it was ONLY the sleeping that did it I can certainly say it didn't hurt the cause!

Hi Tom,

The research indicates an optimal continuous sleep time of 8hrs 15min will enable balance of the 3 main systems of the body that control inflammatory responses. The reason for this is that during the regular sleep cycle, the REM sleep (where the majority of systemic repair occurs) initially starts with a small, short time, then as you progress through subsequent cycles you get more and more REM sleep. The largest block of REM sleep usually occurs between hours 6-8 of sleep, and you only get that when you are asleep continuously until that time.

So, in answer to your question, it is a disaster waiting to happen (not trying to scare you, but it's real) if you continue with this sleep pattern for a extended period of time.

Discipline yourself to go to bed at a reasonable hour, preferably without electronic stimulants before sleep (read a book (not Kindle) or meditate instead) then let me know if you are still waking up at 3 or 4am still. If you wake up in the middle of the night to go to the toilet etc, then it is highly likely that you have some form of apnoea. Waking up to get out of bed is your brain telling you that you are about to die (due to lack of oxygen) and you better survive, so "WAKE UP"....and you do....

The more you wake up during the night, the less chance of systemic repair of inflammation.

At the moment, it is difficult to assess if the problem is arising from the fact that you are asleep in front of the TV or if it actually is a sleep breathing disorder.

Kam