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There is nothing better than to wake up after a restful night’s sleep feeling fully restored, bounding with energy and ready to face the coming day.
Sadly many people suffer from sleep disturbances, which can over time lead to
- A lack of energy
- Irritability
- A compromised immune system
- Loss of focus and concentration
- Becoming accident prone
 The Basics of Sleep
Sleep is a natural restorative process, during which time much of the body’s healing work takes place. Without the need to attend to all of the functions of daily life, your immune system and organs of detoxification can focus attention on cleansing and restoration. This is the time when your body does its major housecleaning, taking care of wastes that have accumulated during the day and repairing cellular damage.
As we sleep our brain progresses through a series of stages in which different brain wave patterns are displayed.
There are two main types of sleep:
- Non-Rapid Eye Movement (NREM) Sleep in the first four stages of sleep. Characterised by very restful sleep in which the body movements, casal metabolic rate, blood pressure and breathing are reduced. Dreaming may occur in these stages but most people don’t remember them.
- Rapid Eye Movement (REM) Sleep in the 5th stage, or dreaming stage. Research has shown that through dreaming, sleep helps the brain to lay anxieties quite literally to rest – and so leaving it, and us, ready for the next day’s challenges. The sad truth is that many of us are failing to get enough sleep, and having difficulty getting to sleep in the first place. Poor sleep habits and nutritional deficiencies can lead to a lack of dreaming time and dream recall.
HOW MUCH SLEEP DO YOU NEED?
Take the following test to see if you are getting enough sleep to function at your best.
This is a quick way to assess how alert you are feeling. If it is during the day when you go about your business, ideally you would want a rating of a one. Take into account that most people have two peak times of alertness daily; at about 9am and 9pm. Alertness wanes to its lowest point around 3pm, after that it begins to build again.
| The Stanford Sleepiness Scale (SSS) |
Degree of Sleepiness
Feeling active, vital, alert or wide awake
Functioning at high levels, but not at peak: able to concentrate
Awake, but relaxing: responsive but not fully alert
Somewhat foggy, let down
Foggy; losing interest in remaining awake; slowed down
Sleep, woozy, fighting sleep; prefer to lie down
No longer fighting sleep, sleep onset soon; having dream-like thoughts
Asleep |
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
X |
Time of day to take a note of your level of sleepiness during and “average day”:
- On waking
- one hour after waking
- two hours after waking
- 11am
- 1pm
- 3pm
- 5pm
- 7pm
- 9pm
- Just before retiring
Does your average sleepiness rating for the day, from above, accurately describe how your feel a lot of the time?
If you go below a three when you should be feeling alert, this is an indication that you have a sleep issue and you need more sleep.
If you have excessive daytime sleepiness, you should probably not drive a car or operate heavy machinery until you are getting better sleep and are less tired during the day.
Lack of sleep had been linked to heart disease, obesity and mental health issues.
SLEEP DISORDERS AND THEIR CAUSES
Generally sleep disorders fall into two categories:
- Difficulty in falling asleep and/or problems maintaining sleep
- Excessive sleepiness during the day.
Perhaps the most common type of sleep disorder is insomnia.
Insomnia may present as:
- Sleep onset insomnia, where you take 30 or more minutes to fall asleep
- Sleep maintenance insomnia, which sees you waking up one or more times per night and taking a long time to return to sleep. How often has this happened to you and you finally fall to sleep again only to be woken by the alarm clock a few minutes later!
- Early morning awaking insomnia, which characterised by waking before dawn and an inability to return to sleep.
Other less common forms of sleep disorder include:
- Sleep apnea (intermittent breathing ceasation)
- Restless legs syndrome
- Narcolepsy (falling asleep at inappropriate times during the day)
- Hypersomnia (sleeping for prolonged periods of time)
- Sleepwalking
- Night terrors
- REM sleep disorder (sleepers physically engage in their dreams, without being conscious of doing so)
- Bruxism (teeth grinding)
- Bed wetting
What causes these disorders?
There are basically seven reasons why you can’t sleep properly.
There may be just one cause or there may be a combination of two or more.
- Poor diet and food allergies
- Accumulation of toxins in the body from drugs, environment, food and other sources.
- Emotional factors, including stress related issues
- Physical pain
- Poor sleeping conditions, ie trains running past your house
- Hormonal imbalances
- Biochemical stress
How we can help you with sleep disorders
At Wattle House we can assist you with your sleep disorders by using complementary medicines, which are not addictive in nature, relaxation and counselling techniques.
It is important to understand the factors leading to the sleep disorder, because sleep disorders are rarely caused by one thing alone and no two people have exactly the same casual factors.
We use a battery of tools to gain an individual picture of your condition, and then set about a treatment plan that suits you.
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