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Why Sleep Loss Can Make You Gain Belly Fat

Dieting and weight loss has surpassed baseball as America's national pastime. It's estimated that 2/3 of all Americans are officially overweight, and 1/3 are obese. Besides the routine bulges that you see on the outside, the presence of visceral fat (or belly fat)—not the flabby fat under the skin that you can grab—but the fat deep within your abdomen that's attached to your intestines, is thought to increase your risk of heart disease, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, high blood pressure, colon cancer, and in women, breast cancer.

With all the news about the importance of belly fat as a risk factor for heart disease and other medical conditions, it's almost gotten to the point where the press and the lay public perceive belly fat as a cause of all these various medical condition, rather than just an association. The real question is, what causes belly fat to begin with?

The Link Between Stress and Belly Fat

Any type of stress, whether physiologic, or external, can cause dramatic changes in your physiology. The sympathetic nervous system, or the classic fight or flight response, is activated when you're under stress. This in turn diverts blood flow away from less essential body parts and organs, such as your gastrointestinal system, your reproductive organs, your skin and distant extremities. It’s like if you were being chased by a lion—every nerve and fiber of your being will be focused on getting away, not on digesting what you had for lunch.

Although you’re probably not being chased by a lion, any type of prolonged periods of stress which results in low blood flow to the intestines causes biochemical changes that lead to accumulation of belly fat. It's also thought that increased estrogens created by belly fat further suppress the natural progesterone levels in both men and in women, aggravating the vicious cycle even more.

Poor Circulation Can Cause Belly Fat

You don't need a serious medical condition to cause these rapid changes in intestinal blood flow. Even your emotional state, and the various life stresses that you experience every day can significantly affect the rate of blood flow to your stomach and your intestines.

Researchers have found that periods of low oxygen in the intestines can cause biochemical changes that lead to fat accumulation. Is this low oxygen level the result of the standard atherosclerosis that's seen with cardiovascular disease as we get older, or can there be something else? Is there anything else that can cause intestinal hypoxia?

How Your Jaw Size Can Affect Your Waist Size

As I describe in my sleep-breathing paradigm, modern humans have difficulty breathing properly while sleeping at night, especially when on our backs and when in deep sleep, due to muscle relaxation. This is from a slow but significant narrowing of our jaws, due to a major change in our diets and with the addition of other feeding tools, like infant bottles and pacifiers.

The smaller the jaws, the less room there is for the tongue, and the more likely it'll fall back during deep sleep, especially when lying flat and in deep sleep. Depending on how often this tongue collapse obstructs our breathing at night, we all fall somewhere along this continuum, where the end extreme is officially called obstructive sleep apnea. It's not surprising that periods of interrupted breathing, whether very brief or pauses of 10 to 30 seconds (apneas), is known to cause physiologic states of stress.

And this sustained form of stress can in turn, slow down our metabolic rate making it difficult to lose weight if not gain it.

Hormones and Weight Gain

In women, there is yet another major variable that can cause you to gain weight as you get older, and that's the role of diminishing progesterone, which begins during the late 30s and early 40s.

Progesterone is a major upper airway muscles stimulant, which essentially tenses or stiffens the tongue, especially when in deep sleep. This is why as the levels of progesterone diminish during perimenopausal age, women begin not to sleep as well as they did before the onset of menopause. A relative change in a woman's sleep-breathing status can then lead to neurologic symptoms, such as night sweats, hot flashes, weight gain, mood swings, and irritability. Not too surprisingly, these same symptoms can be seen even in young men who are moving up the sleep-breathing continuum. Lack of deep or efficient sleep is a major cause of physiologic stress.

Sleep Your Way to Weight Loss

A recent article in Glamour magazine profiled 7 women who where all slightly overweight, and asked them to do one thing for 4 weeks: sleep more. Without making any other changes, they all loss anywhere from 7 to 21 pounds. Sleeping longer is one way to restore health in our sleep deprived culture, but increasing sleep efficiency while you sleep is another way to increase your energy levels, improve your health, and lose weight more easily.

Not Only Your Breathing Problem

Not being able to breathe well at night while sleeping, and not sleeping long enough are important factors to address, but there are many other factors that also prevent you from achieving the quality sleep that you need: Eating late close to bedtime is a common modern ritual that occurs for a variety of different reasons. Gastric juices still lingering from your last meal (or snack) can be suctioned up into the throat, causing more swelling and inflammation, causing more obstructions and arousals. Drinking alcohol close to bedtime causes your throat muscles to relax more, leading to more frequent obstructions and arousals, as well as louder and more frequent snoring.

The Right Way to Lose Weight

Before you begin that new diet plan, or take advantage of your new gym membership, make sure that you're able to breathe properly at night. If your nose is stuffy for whatever reasons, do everything possible to straighten it out first. If you've had a stuffy nose for years or decades, you may not realize that your nasal breathing is compromised. Proper sleep and lowering your stress levels is critical to getting rid of that excess belly fat.

7 Simple Ways To Get Rid of Your Snoring For Good

If your spouse or bed-partner snores and keeps you up at night, then you're not alone. Most people snore at least occasionally, while about 25% snore all the time. Snoring is a major problem that not only can affect your relationship, but your health as well (snorer and snoree).

Snoring may be a sign that you have obstructive sleep apnea, a condition where you literally stop breathing repeatedly while sleeping. Untreated obstructive sleep apnea can cause or aggravate depression, anxiety, hypertension, diabetes, heart disease, heart attack, and stroke.

Even if you don't have sleep apnea officially, studies have shown that snorers have a much higher risk for relationship problems, car accidents, and cognitive impairment.

One important thing to note is that you don't have to snore to have sleep apnea. Even young, thin women who don't snore can have significant sleep apnea.

Here's a checklist of the 7 “musts” of snoring cessation. Try these simple strategies before you resort to more invasive and expensive options:

1. Don't eat within 3-4 hours of bedtime.
If you snore, chances are, you'll stop breathing once in a while. When you do stop breathing, you'll create a vacuum effect in your throat which suctions up your normal stomach juices into your throat, causing you to wake up partially or fully. This also causes more swelling and inflammation which narrows your throat and nose even further. This leads to less efficient sleep, leading to weight gain, which narrows your throat even further.

2. Don't drink alcohol within 3-4 hours of bedtime.
Alcohol is a strong muscle relaxant, so it will make your throat muscles more slack and more apt to collapse and obstruct. And any obstruction around your airway as you sleep means more snoring.

3. Don't sleep on your back.
Due to gravity, everyone's tongues can fall back when on our backs. This narrows the space behind the tongue and along with muscle relaxation during deep sleep, you'll snore more and stop breathing more often. The traditional recommendation for pinning a tennis ball to the back of your pajama shirt ma work for a few people, but there are a lot more sophisticated ways to keep you off your back.

4. Clear up your nose.
Make sure that you're able to breathe properly through your nose, since having a stuffy nose will create a slight vacuum effect in your throat, aggravating partial to total collapse of the soft palate and the tongue. Whether through over-the-counter remedies, prescription medications, or with surgery, get this taken care of first. Unfortunately, this works only sometimes and in many cases, nothing changes. Regardless, if you need further treatment, you need to be able to breathe through your nose for the other options to work. It's been shown that definitively optimizing nasal breathing through surgery cures obstructive sleep apnea in only 10% of cases.

An interesting study published about 10 years ago showed that when given a nasal decongestant as well as a medicine that helps to empty the stomach faster, about 80% of snoring was significantly improved.

5. Lose weight.
Needless to say, this is easier said than done. One of the reasons why you may be overweight is because you don't sleep well. Less efficient sleep promotes weight gain, which not only cause you to expand on the outside, but also narrow in on the inside of your upper airways. But how about some of you who are not overweight, or even very skinny? Snoring and sleep-breathing problems occur due to a structural narrowing of the entire upper airway, from the tip of your nose to your voice box.

6. Try any of the various over-the-counter anti-snore gadgets, devices, and pills.
But don't expect dramatic results. Yes, sometimes, it'll help with your snoring, but even if it works, the effects don't usually last. The reason why you snore is due to your jaw anatomy and additional inflammation. Covering it up with any of these options is only a temporary solution. A study showed that compared with controls, the throat spray, nasal dilator strips, and anti-snore pillow was not any better.

7. Seek medical help.
If all the above don't work, it's time to see an ear, nose and throat doctor. A comprehensive exam is needed to find out which areas of your upper airway (from the tip of the nose to the voice box). We know that for most people it's the soft palate that flutters, making the annoying, chainsaw sounds. Usually, snorers will have a combination of areas that contribute to snoring, with the tongue being the most common culprit, due to having small jaws.

In most cases, a sleep study is needed to check to see if you have obstructive sleep apnea. If you do have sleep apnea, then treating this condition will help your snoring. Even if you don't have obstructive sleep apnea, all the different treatment options for sleep apnea can be used. As I mentioned in Step #4, you must first optimize nasal breathing and then deal with your tongue. The timing for eating and drinking alcohol is something that you should continue for a lifetime.

Unfortunately, things only tend to get worse as you age. The soft tissues in your throat tend to sag and collapse, especially after decades of repeated strong inspiration. This is why it's important to get your snoring taken care of, first using the conservative steps outlined in his article, and later by seeing a physician that can help you with this condition.
 

Breathing Lessons for Sleep Apnea Sufferers

Proper breathing is fundamental to good health and vitality. It’s also the most basic physiologic function that we must do to survive. Improper breathing can lead to illness, disease, and ultimately, death. Ancient Hindu cultures recognized this basic principle and developed very sophisticated breathing techniques that we now realize are scientifically sound when it comes to promoting optimal health, energy and life balance. These breathing concepts have spread across various continents to different cultures, but the basic fundamental principles remain the same.

What Most Holistic Doctors Already Know

Breathing means spirit in many languages (Hebrew, Latin, Greek, and Sanscrit), but not in English. In Latin, the word for breath and the word for soul are the masculine and feminine roots of the same root. In Greek, the two words are the same.

Breathing is a natural physiologic function which continues, regardless of whether or not you notice it. It’s controlled by two parts of the autonomic nervous system: the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. The sympathetic nervous system is the classic fight-or-flight half that’s needed if you’re in a fight or running from a tiger. The parasympathetic nervous system is the relaxation half, promoting sleep, digestion and reproduction.

Inhalation is activated by the sympathetic nervous system and exhalation is activated by the parasympathetic part. When you slow down your breathing, your heart rate slows down. If you take a little longer exhaling relative to inhaling, then you’re spending more time activating your parasympathetic nervous system. This is the physiologic reason why breathing techniques such as the relaxing breath is literally relaxing. These same concepts also apply to singing, humming or whistling. Notice that when you sing, you’re spending up to 10 to 20 times longer exhaling relative to inhaling. By activating your vagus (parasympathetic) nerve, this is why you feel good when you sing.

What Some Doctors Don’t Know

We all take it for granted that the physical air passageways that we breathe through is more than sufficient as conduits for air to travel into and out of our lungs. However, our upper air passageways are dynamically changing all the time, depending on your head position, weather status, allergies, emotions, moods, stress levels and even what you just had for lunch. Your nose is exquisitely sensitive to pressure or humidity changes, swelling or shrinking your internal nasal turbinates to significant degrees. Air passing through the nasal cavity is being filtered, humidified, and warmed before passing into the lungs. Any temporary or permanent blockage to proper breathing in this area can prevent optimal airflow into the lungs.

In addition, the nose and sinus cavities make a gas called nitric oxide, which has two important beneficial properties. The first property is that nitric oxide is antimicrobial, both in the nose as well as in the lungs. This gas, when inhaled even in small amounts into the lungs, can increase oxygen absorption up to 20%. Not breathing through your nose for whatever reason has potentially detrimental effects on your health.

What Most Doctors Don’t Know

Everyone in the Western, alternative and complementary fields of healing naturally assume that we are able to breathe properly at night. We now know that there are certain medical conditions such as sleep apnea where you have complete obstruction and repeated bouts of oxygen deprivation. Most practitioners still think that this typically occurs in some people who are overweight, snore, and have big necks. But now we know that even young, thin women who don’t snore can have significant obstructive sleep apnea. Even more, many people who don’t officially meet the criteria for obstructive sleep apnea still can have significant breathing pauses but wake up too quickly to be classified as an apnea. These are the patients that are commonly diagnosed with idiopathic hypersomnia.

However, the bigger issue is that by definition, all modern humans are susceptible to breathing problems at night for the following reason: Due to jaw narrowing and dental crowding from a radical change in our diets, our tongues take up relatively too much space, and as a result, we’re more susceptible to obstructing the airway when sleeping on our backs (supine) and in deep sleep due to muscle relaxation. In his classic nutritional text, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, Dr. Weston Price documented these physical changes. Our ability to talk also positioned our voice boxes below the tongue, which can aggravate this process.

Many modern humans can’t sleep on our backs anymore since the tongue and voice box falls back the most in the back position. As a result, we compensate by sleeping only on our sides or stomachs. The problem is that it’s not good enough. A simple cold or an allergy attack, or with even 5 to 10 pounds of weight gain, can cause more frequent obstructions occur, leading to less efficient sleep.

Less efficient sleep leads to a physiologic stress response that can cause or aggravate a number of various medical conditions such as anxiety, depression, insomnia, cold hands, digestive problems, high blood pressure, etc. What I describe in my sleep-breathing paradigm is that all modern humans are on a continuum, where the one extreme end is called obstructive sleep apnea. The rest of us are lower down, but we creep up during various life stages, such as puberty, pregnancy, and menopause. A simple cold, by causing nasal congestion in a young, healthy woman, can cause her to toss and turn at night, due to repeated tongue collapse. Once the cold improves, sleep improves as well.

What We All Must Know

Breathing should never be taken for granted. We must do everything to make sure that proper breathing occurs not only during the day, but also at night. Many younger, thinner patients who complain of being tired all the time will also be found to have hypothyroidism, anemia, cold hands and feet, low blood pressure, anxiety, depression, or other various disorders. Later in life, as they slowly gain weight, they move up the continuum, and eventually will go into obstructive sleep apnea.

Almost invariably, one or both parents will snore and have known or unknown cardiovascular disease. If you see a high-arched hard palate, an extra small mouth or a recessed jaw, or scalloping on the side of the tongue, ask about sleep position, fatigue issues, and sleep. You’ll be surprised how often all these features come together to explain your chronic fatigue and various health problems.

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To hear Dr. Park’s interview with master Yoga teacher and Feldenkrais expert on the proper principles of breathing for better health and better sleep, click here.

5 Things You MUST Know About Sleep Apnea Surgery

Sleep apnea surgery is one of the most controversial subjects in sleep medicine. There are heated debates within the sleep community as well as in online forums and support groups. Sleep apnea surgery is definitely not for everyone, for some, it can be a life-changing experience. Here are 5 important issues that you must be aware of before considering any form of sleep apnea surgery:

1. Does sleep apnea surgery work?

Yes, but only when done properly. Just like with CPAP or dental devices, if you don't use it properly or use it at all, it won't work.

One of the most common misconceptions about sleep apnea surgery is the relatively low success rate of the uvulopalatopharyngoplasty (UPPP) procedure, which is often quoted at 40%. But performing this operation is like bypassing only one blocked heart vessel when you have 3 other vessels that are blocked. For some strange reason, ENTs are overly obsessed with the soft palate, since this is where snoring usually comes from and we have the most research and procedures for the soft palate.

We now know that if you address the entire upper airway together (nose, soft palate, tongue), then your success rates are much better, approaching 80%. Why only 80%? There's only so much you can do with the soft tissues within the small space within smaller jaws (which is the main anatomic reason for sleep apnea). The more aggressive you are, the higher the success rate, but the more chance of pain and complications.

If you go to the next level and enlarge your jaws (upper and lower), then success rates can reach 90 to 95%.

To put things into perspective, if you bypassed everything with a tracheotomy (placing a breathing tube below your voice box), then you'll have a 100% "cure", but obviously, this is not a very practical option.

One question you must ask then, is, what's the meaning of success? In surgery, one common definition is that the final AHI (apnea hypopnea index) on a formal sleep study drops greater than 50% of the original and the final number has to be less than 20. One of the main criticisms of sleep apnea surgery is that even if "successful", you may still have mild sleep apnea. Surgeons will argue that it's better than not using CPAP at all.

2. Not All Surgeries Are The Same

There are probably dozens of procedures for sleep apnea from various nasal, soft palate and tongue operations to skeletal framework procedures. These can range from minimally invasive to major surgery. The problem is that by definition, they'll all work to a certain degree. For example, procedures for a stuffy nose have been shown to "cure" sleep apnea in 10% of patients. But for the most part, none of these options by themselves have very good success rates.

The key is to examine the upper airway for each individual and figure out where the obstruction is and take care of it simultaneously. Most people have more than one area of obstruction. Surgeons at Stanford have about a 75 to 80% success rate with soft palate and tongue base procedures. This is called multi-level surgery for sleep apnea. You have to look at the airway from the tip of the nose all the way to the voice box.

3. There's No Cure for Sleep Apnea

Unless we all undergo tracheotomies, there's no way to prevent breathing pauses at night. Modern humans' upper airway anatomy is thought to be predisposed to breathing problems at night, which only gets worse as we age. I talk about why this problem has gotten much worse in recent years in my book, Sleep, Interrupted. All of us are on a continuum, where various factors (anatomy, age, weight, inflammation, etc.) contribute to forces that make our tongues and palates to collapse. The older we get, we'll either gain weight, which narrows our breathing passageways, or our throat tissues will sag and collapse easier.

Surgery will shift the line of this continuum downwards, but it won't bring it down completely. This is why it's important to incorporate a healthy diet and lifestyle and exercise regimen into any sleep apnea treatment regimen.

For most people, lowering the numbers significantly will make you feel much better. But sometimes, the numbers will go down dramatically, but you may not feel any better. This just goes to show that there may be other issues besides sleep apnea that have to be addressed. You've had sleep apnea for years or decades. Just by fixing your sleep apnea won't immediately fix problems that can arise from sleep apnea, such as hormonal problems, weight gain, or memory problems and brain fog.

4. Surgery is the Last Resort, But Don't Rule It Out

Admittedly, there are many people who rush to surgery prematurely, but there are also many others that aren't even offered surgery due to misconceptions by physicians. There are also many patients that are turned off by all the conflicting information that's available on the internet.

Before you even think about surgery, make sure you've tried or considered all the other options thoroughly. Most people who fail CPAP do so because of poor counseling, support and follow-up by the medical system. Just like everything else with life, your chances of success depends on which doctors you see. The follow-up and support offered by your CPAP equipment vendor can also play an important role in whether or not you'll benefit from CPAP. The same issues also apply with dental devices for sleep apnea.

This is why it's important to educate yourself about all the treatment options, and not to give up too easily. Too many people give up at this point, and don't consider any further treatments. Surround yourself with a group of trusted doctors and professionals that forms a team. Use their expertise and guidance to find a way to make things work. If nothing works for you, don't rule out surgery just for the sake of avoiding surgery. Learn and educate yourself about surgery before rejecting it.

5. How to Find the Right Surgeon

Finding the right surgeon for your sleep apnea condition can be challenging. Everyone claims to specialize in snoring and sleep apnea surgery. Who are you to believe?

First of all, find someone who's comfortable performing a wide range of procedures in all the three areas of the upper airway (nose, soft palate and tongue). Are they familiar with the minimally invasive procedures as well as the standard options? No everyone will be an expert at all the procedures, but it's important to know about all the other options as well as well as to make appropriate referrals when necessary.

There are a variety of "minimally invasive" procedures out there, especially for the soft palate, but these procedures have to be offered very selectively. Even if successful initially, is your surgeon prepared for relapsed that are likely years later? Is the goal of surgery only to cover up the snoring, or will it treat the underlying anatomic causes?

If your surgeon recommends palatal surgery "just to see," without addressing the entire upper airway from the nose to the tongue, go for a second opinion. If you do decide to undergo a palatal procedure (with or without tonsillectomy), be prepared for a 60% failure rate, which means that the tongue needed to be addressed as well. Sometimes, more needs to be done to the soft palate or the nose has to be addressed. Everyone is different, and the treatment recommendations have to be tailored to the individual.

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For a more detailed free report on The Truth About Sleep Apnea Surgery, click here.

5 Quick And Easy Ways To Get Better Sleep Fast

 

In our over-stressed, over-weight, sleep-deprived society, there’s a tendency for experts to offer you the latest, greatest, high-tech, and usually expensive advice when you want to get better sleep. From the new Zeo (which measures your brain waves while you sleep), to $3,000 mattresses with reclining features and NASA engineered memory foam, there’s an unlimited number of gadgets and devices that promise to give you a better nights’ sleep.

But before you consider these expensive options, try the following 5 quick and easy tips to help you sleep better for free, or at a relatively low cost.

Tip #1: Avoid Acid Reflux

Acid reflux is a major cause of poor sleep, especially if you eat just before going to bed. If you have a sleep-breathing problem, this condition becomes even worse, since stomach juices are actively being suctioned up into your throat every time you stop breathing. In sleep apnea patients, vacuum forces are created in the throat with each obstruction, which forces normal stomach juices into the throat.

Two of the most common ways of treating this condition is to either take acid reflux medications, or sleep inclined, with your upper body angled up. Before you invest in an expensive adjustable bed that can incline your body upwards, just stop eating close to bedtime. Make sure you stop eating at least 3-4 hours before you go to bed. This way, even if you do stop breathing, you won’t have as much stomach juices that can come up into your throat (which also includes bile, digestive enzymes, and bacteria).

Take Power Naps

There are tons of research studies that tout the benefits of taking short naps in the mid to late afternoon. Our bodies naturally have sleepy tendencies during this time, so why not take advantage of it? It’s been shown that not only will you have more energy for the remainder of the day, but your chances of heart disease and dying early can be lowered if you nap regularly.

If you have a sleep-breathing problem, like obstructive sleep apnea, make sure you don’t sleep longer than 30 to 45 minutes. Sleep-deprived people tend to go into REM sleep earlier than the 90 to 120 minutes it normally takes to reach REM sleep. This is when your muscles relax the most and you’ll be more likely to have obstructive events.

Take Breathing Lessons

Deep breathing exercises have been shown scientifically to calm your nervous system. Thy is why people who engage in yoga, tai chi, or any other discipline that teaches proper breathing techniques feel so much more relaxed.

If you don’t have time or the funds to take classes on a regular basis, make it a point to take 4-5 slow deep breaths every 1-2 hours, especially when you’re transitioning from one activity to another, or if you’re feeling stressed. You can also make it a habit to meditate on your deep breathing anytime you’re waiting on the phone, standing inline, walking somewhere.

Take A Media Vacation

Modern humans are inundated with too much information. Too much news coming from too many sources can lead to information overload, not to mention anxiety-provoking states that keep your mind racing before you go to sleep at night. Turn off the TV, don’t read the paper, check email only once a day, and limit surfing the internet. Think of it as a cleansing that empties your mind of needless clutter. The world will go on without you if you don’t know what’s going on.

Undergo Natural Phototherapy

Rather than investing in bright light boxes or suntan sessions, expose yourself to more sunlight. Early morning sunlight is the best time since it’s not as intense, and exposing your eyes to light at this time helps to strengthen your sleep clock. This is also the best time to exercise outdoors, if you have the time.

If you’re already supplementing with vitamin D and calcium, exposing yourself to more natural sunlight can help to optimize theses supplements’ beneficial effects. Don’t worry too much about skin cancer, since sleeping better can help to fight off cancer.

These 5 tips are some of the many free or inexpensive ways that you can get better sleep. Without laying the foundations for these fundamental sleep habits, sleeping pills, beds, pillows, and gadgets won’t ultimately help you sleep better in the long run.

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Click here to find out the secrets of using ancient Chinese herbal medicine to get better sleep quickly and easily from , Dr. Maoshing Ni (AKA: “Dr. Wow” from Sex and the City).

Attention All Mouth Breathers – 5 Important Reasons Why You Must Breathe Through Your Nose

If you’re a chronic mouth breather because of a stuffy nose, you’re not alone. As the weather chills and allergies and colds abound, and nasal congestion becomes a common trend, mouth breathing inevitably follows-especially when you’re sleeping. I’m sure you’ve seen many passengers asleep on the subways and trains, head and pitched back, mouth wide open, and snoring louder than a diesel engine. Mouth breathing can surely ruin your social image, but that’s nothing compared to the havoc it can wreak on your health.

 

5 Potent Benefits of Breathing through Your nose

One of the most important reasons to breathe through your nose is because of a gas called nitric oxide that’s made by your nose and sinus mucous membranes. This gas is produced in small amounts, but when inhaled into the lungs, it significantly enhances your lung’s capacity to absorb oxygen, increasing oxygen absorption in your lungs by 10-25%. Nitric oxide also can kill bacteria, viruses and other germs. This is why you often hear fitness and yoga instructors emphasize inhaling and exhaling through your nose during workouts.

Also, if you can’t breathe well through your nose, your sense of smell will suffer and therefore your sense of taste, since your smell and taste buds are connected. This can lead to disturbances in your appetite and satiation levels, wreaking havoc on those struggling with weight issues.

Your nose also has vital nervous system connections to your lungs and heart. Not breathing well through your nose can alter your heart rate and blood pressure, as well as increase your stress responses.

Your nose makes about 2 pints of mucous every day. If your nose isn’t working properly and mucous isn’t cleared, the stagnant mucous can lead to infections such as sinusitis or ear infections, not to mention bad breath.

Lastly, not breathing well through your nose can aggravate snoring or obstructive sleep apnea. Nasal congestion alone doesn’t cause obstructive sleep apnea, but it can definitely aggravate it. If your palate and tongue structures are predisposed to falling back easily due to sleeping on your back and muscle relaxation in deep sleep, then having a stuffy nose can aggravate further collapse downstream. Untreated obstructive sleep apnea can lead to chronic fatigue, depression, anxiety, weight gain, high blood pressure, heart disease, heart attack and stroke.

Knowing all these benefits of breathing through your nose, however, doesn’t help much if you don’t know why you’re not able to do so.  To stop mouth breathing, the first thing you must do is to figure out what’s blocking up your nose.

What Can Stop Up Your Nose

Nasal congestion is something everyone experiences now and again. Yet, if you’re trying to prevent this from happening it’s important to explore the various reasons behind why and when this occurs.

Here are five of the most common reasons for a stuffy nose:

"I Have a Deviated Septum"

By definition everyone has a slightly crooked (deviated) nasal septum. There are various reasons for having a deviated septum, including trauma, but the most common reason is no reason at all. It’s just the way your nose developed. What’s more important than how deviated your septum is is what’s happening in front of an around your septum.

Wings in Your Nose

Turbinates are wing-like structures that attach to the sidewalls of the nasal cavity, opposite the midline nasal septum. They normally smooth, warm, humidify, and filter the air that you breathe, but they also become enlarged and produce mucous when inflamed. Turbinates also swell and shrink alternating from side to side, which is a normal neurologic process called the nasal cycle.

Is It An Infection or Allergies?

If you have allergies, a cold or any kind of infection, then your turbinates will swell up, clogging your nose with lots of mucous production. Contrary to popular belief, the color of the mucous has no relation to bacterial vs. viral infections.

Flimsy Nostrils

Once you have inflammation and swelling inside your nose, for some people, depending on the configuration of your nose, your nostrils can literally cave in as you inhale. Different noses have differently shaped nostrils with various nostril thicknesses. The more narrow your nose, the more likely your nostrils can cave in. People who undergo cosmetic rhinoplasty are more at risk years later, since narrowing the nose can weaken the support structures of the nose.

A Nervous Nose?

Some people’s noses are extra sensitive, especially to weather changes, like temperature, humidity, and pressure changes. Certain chemicals, scents and odors can set off a reaction as well. Many people mistakenly think this reaction is an allergy, but it’s really your nasal nervous system over-reacting to the weather or to odors. One of the most common reasons is from poor quality sleep, which causes a low-grade stress response, which can heighten your senses.

It’s All Under Your Nose

A chronically stuffy nose doesn’t happen by itself. Usually it’s part of a bigger picture, where the entire upper and lower jaws are more narrow and constricted, in addition to more narrow nasal cavities. I’ve described this process in my book, Sleep Interrupted, where due to modern human’s eating soft, mushy, processed foods, our jaws are much more narrow than normal, with dental crowding. Bottle-feeding, which is another modern, Western phenomenon, is also thought to aggravate this problem.

If you have a stuffy nose, it can also aggravate soft palate and tongue collapse when in deep sleep, due to muscle relaxation. With more obstruction, more stomach juices are suctioned up into the throat and nose, causing more swelling and more nasal congestion. All this from smaller and more narrow jaws.
 

Sleep Is The New Black: 5 Steps to Get What You Need and Want

When a Need Becomes A Want

Imagine a day when you can wake up naturally on your own, on time, without an alarm clock, revived and refreshed in the mornings, ready to face whatever challenges that may come your way. You work hard, and play harder, and when you hit the pillow, you fall asleep instantly, sleeping soundly and restfully, without a care in the world.

For most of us, however, things are very different. Getting a good night’s sleep is the holy grail of modern society. We all want it, but it remains as elusive as ever.  So the question is: how can we get more of what we all want and need? The answer is simple: Change your mindset.

Can You Get Instant Sleep?

You may have guessed by now that this article is NOT about the latest sleeping pill on the market. Although it would be easier to pop a pill to get some sleep, the results wouldn’t last too long. In fact, many of the short term solutions out there that promise better sleep fast, only deliver just that: speed without substance. Also, if clinical studies are any indication, taking a sleeping pill isn’t proven to help you get to sleep faster than a sugar pill will.

Sleep in modern times has become commodity—something to be bought, measured and traded. In some cases, it’s even thought of as a nuisance. Who can sleep when there’s so much to do, and so little time to do it in?

More often than not, we ask ourselves, “What can I take (or do) to sleep better?,” rather than, “How can I think differently about my sleep in general?” By cutting out the initial step where we change how we think about sleep, we set ourselves up for failure.

However, if you’re willing to shift your mindset for the benefit of getting more sleep, here are some steps you can take to help you on your quest. Take the time and effort to go through each step and in no time at all, you should be getting the kind of restful nights sleep you need and desire.

Step 1: Learn From Sleep

In yoga or any other discipline where proper breathing is emphasized, observing your breathing before you take control is a common theme. This is what’s emphasized long before the stretching or the poses. Similarly, it’s good practice to observe your sleep quality and habits, being mindful of which activities, foods, or habits give you a good night’s sleep versus a bad night’s sleep. Write down these observations in a daily sleep log, including times you went to bed and woke up, and how you felt in the morning. Once you’re able to observe, reflect on and document your sleep qualities and characteristics, it’s time to either fine-tune your sleep or even undergo a complete sleep makeover.

Before you begin to make any changes to your sleep patterns, it’s important to get yourself in the right frame of mind. Rather than say to yourself, "I just want to sleep better," think about and even write down why good sleep is important to you. I know that this sounds elementary, but clarifying the end result in this way, rather than setting sleep up as the ultimate desired goal, can help you leverage more of what you want in the long run. After all, it’s not the sleep itself that you probably want, but the results that good, quality rest can yield, like your health and vitality. So ask yourself the following clarification questions:

•    If you are able to achieve better quality sleep, what will it enable you to do, feel, or accomplish?
•    Will it allow you to enjoy more of what life has to offer? Like more time to enjoy spending with friends and family without having to struggle with fatigue and exhaustion
•    Will you look forward to getting up in the mornings and not dreading it like you do now?
•    Would losing weight and feeling healthy be important for you?

Next, write down your answers to these questions and rank them as goals in order of importance. Then picture in your mind what you ranked as being the most important aspect of getting better sleep. It may be that you could play with your children without feeling a sense of overwhelming fatigue or being able to look and feel well rested and refreshed at work and throughout the day. Picture them until these visual images evoke the emotions you desire. Anchor these feelings to the specific goals you want to achieve.

Finally, think about the consequences of not doing anything at all. Will you continue to feel too exhausted to do anything? As I’ve stated earlier, without changing the way you think about sleep, as a means and not an end itself, nothing will change even after you get the sleep. This is why sleeping pills let us down, literally.

Step #2: Change The Way You Think About Sleep

Earl Nightingale, a self-improvement guru from the 50’s in his classic recording, The Strangest Secret, states, "We become what we think about." If you are constantly thinking about your ultimate goal, then your actions will reflect your ultimate goal. Just like every important habit in life, you have to take small consistent steps. Always keep in mind your ultimate goal. Then give yourself a reasonable timeframe in which to accomplish your goal and to set small manageable initial tasks for yourself.

How will you know when you’ve succeeded? Again, Nightingale states, "Success is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal." Stated another way, making gradual progress toward your goal is considered success. But this takes effort that you must ingrain into a daily habit.

I’ve written various articles in the past on specific steps you need to take to obtain better quality sleep. What I want to focus on here is the mindset that’s necessary to progress towards your worthy ideal, rather than specific steps. Take, for example, the common habit of eating close to bedtime. In New York City, it’s almost a norm that you’ll come home late and eat dinner just before crashing in bed. Or you may have erratic work schedules.

Eating late close to bedtime prevents quality sleep because juices from your stomach can be actively suctioned up into your throat, especially if you stop breathing once in a while (for most modern humans). This not only wakes you up (before you turn over), but also inflames your throat with stomach juices, causing post-nasal drip, throat clearing, chronic cough, and a lump sensation in your throat. (I explain in much more detail why this happens in my book, Sleep, Interrupted.) Drinking alcohol before bedtime is even worse—by relaxing your muscles, it aggravates the obstructed breathing episodes.

Many of you take my advice and have reported to me dramatic changes in not only the quality of your sleep, but your overall sense of well-being and improved productivity during the day. However, there are some of you who absolutely can’t or even refuse to change, for various reasons. Excuses include: I get home too late from work, I have to exercise, or I’m not going to stop going out with my friends. Some insist on a pill for the throat pain, hoarseness, lump or cough, despite the fact that changing your eating and alcohol habits alone may be enough to help. Even if a medication is given, there’s a very low chance that you’ll feel any better in the long run. It’s like giving a cough medication when you continue to smoke 2 packs per day.

Step #3: Don’t Fixate on Sleep

Another mindset change that’s necessary to achieve the goals you desire is to simply become more flexible. In the international bestseller, Thick Face, Black Heart: The Warrior Philosophy For Conquering The Challenges of Business and Life by Chin-Ning Chu, the author points out that one small blade grass, unlike even the tallest trees, can withstand enormous gusts of wind by yielding and bending to the force.

Similarly, the demands of modern society pose many challenges for sleep and rest. Although it may be true working late is an inevitable part of your job, you’d be amazed how well you can work around these challenges once you make sleep a priority.

Yes, we all have certain limitations with our schedules, our jobs and other commitments, but what I’m describing is the limitation of your mind. If your main priority is to sleep better, and you have obvious nighttime habits that are clearly detrimental to your sleep quality, you’ll have to first change your mindset. Only by changing your values and priorities can any real change begin to happen.

If you can’t change your work schedule, you can order out and eat while at work. You can exercise in the morning rather than in the evenings. You can have a large lunch and eat a small snack early after coming home from work. You also have a choice in whether or not to go out late drinking with your friends 2 times per week. Once you decide to make changes you’ll see that there are always options available. Whether or not you choose to make these changes, however, is up to you.

Simply by being consistent with and not resisting the natural biorhythms of our nature, many people have found that not only can they work better, they can enjoy the fruits of their labor that much more. Isn’t that, after all, the ultimate benefits of sleep and work?

The Hidden Truth About Allergies Revealed

Everyone knows that allergies cause sneezing, itchy, watery eyes, and nasal congestion and that for some people these symptoms can be more severe than for others. For these people allergies can feel like a curse, making them feel sleepy, irritable and downright miserable. There are many medical explanations for allergies, including the theory that the body is overreacting to the typical allergens.

But there’s one other reason why some people with allergies are more affected than others, and this has to do with their jaw size. If you had normal-sized jaw anatomy, then it’s less likely an allergy attack would bother you; in fact, it’s less likely you’ll even have allergies in the first place. Let me explain.

Why Your Jaw Size Matters

If you have smaller than normal jaws, it means that there’s less space for your tongue, so it takes up relatively too much space, especially when you’re on your back due to gravity. Even worse, whenever you’re in deep sleep, due to muscle relaxation, you’ll stop breathing to wake up and turn over. During these breathing pauses, a vacuum effect is created temporarily, which literally suctions up your normal stomach juices into your throat and nose. It’s been shown that stomach bacteria and digestive enzymes can be found in sinus and lung washings. This leads to inefficient sleep, which eventually makes your nervous system and immune system overactive.

This is why it’s important to avoid eating too close to bedtime. The more juices you have in your stomach, the more it’ll come up and cause nasal inflammation. And since alcohol is a strong muscle relaxant, indulging in a glass of wine before bedtime can make you stop breathing more often and cause more stomach juices to come up into your throat, in addition to heightening your immune and nervous systems.

What You May Not Know Will Surprise You

Sometimes, what seems to be allergy symptoms may not be related to allergies at all. Whether or not your allergy testing is positive, you may be suffering from non-allergic rhinitis or chronic rhinitis, which is linked to sleep breathing problems or silent acid reflux (LPRD). With non-allergenic rhinitis, your nose becomes sensitive to temperature, pressure, humidity changes, chemicals, odors, and emotions. Non-allergic rhinitis responds somewhat to allergy medications, so you may think you have an allergy problem.

One of the most under-appreciated things that most allergy sufferers (and doctors) don’t think about is getting a good night’s sleep. It’s been shown that lack of quality (or quantity of) sleep can adversely affect your immune system through the following mechanism: a low-grade physiologic stress response is created which heightens your immune system, making it over-react to common pollens or other allergens. (The same process occurs with your nervous system, too). So how does this relate to allergies?

Hay Fever Defined

Hay fever (or allergic rhinitis) results in congestion, sneezing, runny nose, irritated eyes and other annoying symptoms for more than 35 million Americans every year. It occurs when your body has an allergic reaction to something in your environment. During this time of the year, ragweed is the most common cause of hay fever, though mold, pet dander, dust mites and cockroaches can also cause allergies year-round.

When your body comes in contact with these allergens, your immune system kicks into overdrive. At the initial allergen exposure, the body creates an antibody called immunoglobulin (IgE), which rests on a type of white blood cells called mast cells. After repeated exposure to the same allergen, a massive release of histamines and other inflammatory mediators occurs. The end result—runny nose, watery eyes and sneezing.

When Allergies Cause You Misery

Obviously, a little sneezing and congestion never hurt anyone. For most people, these symptoms are no more than a mere nuisance and most can get by without any medications or for others, simple over-the-counter medications (see chart). However, some people with allergies feel completely miserable, with poor sleep and severe daytime fatigue.

As I alluded to in my book Sleep, Interrupted: A physician reveals the #1 reason why so many of us are sick and tired, anything that causes swelling or inflammation in your nose or throat can set off a vicious cycle where due to narrowing of the upper air passageways, the soft tissues of the throat (palate and/or the tongue) start to obstruct your breathing, which creates a vacuum effect in your throat that suctions up normal stomach juices into your throat. This causes more swelling and inflammation in your throat and nose, aggravating this self-perpetuating cycle.

Steps You Can Take

During allergy seasons (trees during the spring, ragweed during the fall, molds all year round), there are a number of conservative step you can take to lessen your symptoms, to more formal medical treatments:

● Stay indoors during high pollen counts with air conditioning (check pollen counts on pollen.com)

● Wash your hair before going to bed if you’ve been outdoors during the day. You don’t want to rub your face on your pollen-contaminated pillow all night long

● Most plants release pollens in the early morning, so if possible stay indoors until after 10AM. Pollen and molds can also be high in the late afternoon and early evening hours

● Wash your bedding every week in very hot water

●Invest in allergy-free bedding (if you’re allergic to dust mites)

● Try the Asian custom of taking off your shoes before entering your living spaces. Think about all the microscopic dust, pollen, molds and dirt that get tracked into your house, where your toddler is crawling on.

● Invest in a HEPA filter for your bedroom

● Keep pets out of the bedroom

● Remove rug or carpeting from the bedroom

● Finish eating at least 3-4 hours before bedtime

● Avoid alcohol within 3-4 hours of bedtime

● Regularly practice yoga, breathing, tai chi, or some form rhythmic meditative breathing (which also includes swimming).

A few natural and/or herbal remedies include:

● Regular irrigation with nasal saline. There are many options, including a Neti-pot, saline sprays, mists, pumps and squeeze bottles. The key is to find something you’re comfortable with that you’ll use every day. ●

Butterbur and stinging nettle extracts are two herbs that have anti-allergy properties. You can find them at any health food store or order them online. If the above conservative options are not good enough, you can try any of these over-the-counter allergy medications:

● Loratadine (brand name Claritin, Allavert, etc.) or Zyrtec. Zyrtec is stronger, but has a slightly higher chance of making you drowsy. If you take it regularly at night before you got to bed, this any potential drowsiness won’t be an issue and this effect wears off after a few days. ● Diphenhydramine (Benadryl). This is an older, stronger antihistamine, which can definitely make you drowsy. It’s also used to severe allergic reactions and rashes.

● Oxymetazoline (Afrin) can be used for severe nasal congestion only occasionally and should be used no more than 2-3 days at a time.

If you also have nasal congestion, then you can get the "-D" version of the various antihistamines. The D stands for decongestant, which is usually an oral version of phenylephrine or pseudo-ephedrine. This can sometimes be stimulating, so if you’re sensitive to these medications, don’t take it just before bedtime. If you have high blood pressure or a heart condition, talk to your medical doctor before taking these specific medications.

There are a number of prescription medications for allergy: Allegra (which should be coming out over-the-counter soon), nasal steroid sprays (Flonase, Nasonex, Rhinocort, Nasacort, Veramyst), and Singulair. Astelin is an antihistamine nasal spray. Different people respond differently to each of these medications, so it’s important to talk to your doctor about which one may be right for you. My preference for moderate to severe allergies is to use one of the topical nasal steroid sprays on a regular basis, since it works much better at preventing allergies, as well as treating it. In general, these sprays are not absorbed into the body in significant amounts and can be used for long periods.

Allergy shots (immunotherapy) are another option that you may want to consider if your allergies don’t respond to medications or if you don’t want to depend on medications as much. With immunotherapy, the sufferer receives regular injections of purified allergen extracts for between two to five years. The goal of immunotherapy is to rewire the immune system so it no longer overacts to allergens and causes hay fever.

Putting It All Together

If you have an underlying sleep-breathing problem such as obstructive sleep apnea or upper airway resistance syndrome (most people to some degree—I explain why in my book, Sleep, Interrupted), then it’s likely that you’ll have some kind of allergies or nonallergic rhinitis, whether mild or severe. Not only will your nose be overly sensitive to allergens or weather changes, it can also be irritated by your stomach juices.

This process supports observations that children who were bottle-fed as infants have higher rates of allergies later as children. It’s been suggested that bottle-feeding promotes jaw narrowing and dental crowding, which leads to smaller airways. This occurs despite the protective effects of the mother’s antibodies in breast milk, since it may be given in a bottle. So the next time you suffer from seasonal allergies or even year-round allergies, resist the temptation to simply take a pill. Go down the list of conservative options I’ve outlined, and most importantly, optimize your sleep quality. Any activity that’s calming and relaxing to your nervous system (yoga, breathing exercises, tai chi, swimming) can also help to alleviate your symptoms. Many of you will be surprised to find that conservative and simple lifestyle changes can lead to many more allergy-free, symptom-free days.

The Facts About Anti-Aging: Science or Scam?

 

September for those of you who weren’t aware is Healthy Aging Month. This brings to mind my father who just turned 77 this August even though my wife says that he looks like he’s 10 years younger. Everyone who knows him agrees. But the funny thing is my father is the antithesis of what most would consider “Anti-Aging”. He doesn’t take any supplements or vitamins, nor does he undergo cleanses or detox regimens. Yet he looks and acts like a man who’s in his 50s or 60s, and not someone who’s in his 70s.

So why doesn’t my father look and act more like his age? He’s living the life of his dreams.

Live, Not Strive

It’s widely known that the longest living people are in Japan, and I’m willing to bet that these 90 and 100 year olds aren’t taking multiple vitamins, detoxing, cleansing, or paying lots of money for the latest exercise trend.

Similarly, my father, as far as I can see, doesn’t do anything special to maintain his youthful exuberance. He simply eats a healthy diet (mostly vegetables), is physically active, and has a very health-promoting lifestyle.

Take for instance my father’s routine weekly schedule: He takes courses with undergraduates at Hunter college, plays tennis, performs in musicals and plays, sings in his church choir, hikes some very challenging trails in the Catskills, and regularly takes in the opera and the symphony on the weekends. He also jokes that when he wears his baseball cap on the subway or on the bus, no one offers him a seat.  But when he takes off his hat, he’s offered a seat instantly. Much to the chagrin of his peers, who are confined to walkers, and need the aid of home health aids to get by, my father is one of the most active people I know even amongst my peers.

The only thing that my father has that would be considered “typical” for a man his age is that he has prostate cancer. Since 10 years ago when he was first diagnosed with the disease, he has had a persistently elevated PSA. And after multiple treatments for prostate cancer, for which no source can be found, he has received estrogen-like hormone treatments once in a while, but his youthful appearance is more pronounced now than when he was on a more intensive anti-testosterone regimens in the past.

Also, despite his cancer, his blood pressure and his glucose levels are better than most of his doctors and he doesn’t take any prescription medications. 

Your Age Is A Matter of Chronology Not Biology

If you read the magazines or surf the internet, you’ll see various buzz words such as anti-aging, youth-promoting, regeneration, and age-reversal. It seems that the search for the fountain of youth is still alive and the secret is out. It’s not about how old you are that matters. It’s more a matter of how young you want to look and feel.

There’s even a medical specialty called Anti-Aging Medicine to assist people in their quest for agelessness.  It’s almost as if we’re engaged in some sort of mythical battle for immortality. Yet unlike most battles of this sort, our enemies don’t have three heads, or turn you into stone. It just makes you look and feel that way.

Anti-Aging or Anti-Living?

The word Anti-aging to me is an oxymoron since you can’t literally change your chronological age. This also implies that the deterioration in the way you feel or the way you look can be slowed, or even sometimes reversed. There’s definitely value in looking and feeling younger (even for me), but what most of these programs tout is that one pill or supplement that can make you look and feel younger, without addressing the big picture. Yes, there are programs out there that are more “holistic,” but essentially, you’re told you have to replenish what your body is missing in order so that you don’t miss out on all that life has to offer.

The problem is, no one seems to have figured out what that missing ingredient is. Who do you believe if you want to stay healthy or maintain your vitality? Are you not drinking enough water, or are you eating nutritionally deficient foods, or is your water laced with toxins and chemicals? Is it a vitamin B12 deficiency or lack of calcium? Are you eating too many acidic foods or too much alkaline foods? How can you figure out if you’re allergic or sensitive to nuts, gluten, or milk?

Recent studies are now suggesting that vigorous exercise doesn’t really help you lose weight, since you’ll eat more. More confusion. Studies are published almost routinely giving conflicting results on any potential benefits of herbal or nutritional supplements, including valerian for sleep, echinacea for colds, and multi-vitamins for health in general.

With all the different opinions on how to stay young and healthy, it can be a maddening process that can actually make you age faster. Honestly, I don’t have a good answer for you. Even as a physician, I’m stuck in the same conundrum within the medical fields as well, with conflicting studies and vastly differing opinions.

But here’s my personal advice – do what feels right. If you truly believe in something, do it with all your might. Science actually invalidates one individual’s experiences and can only generalize based on large population studies. Since everyone responds differently, your only way to know whether or not it’s going to work is to try it (within reason, of course). Rather than trying to exclude the placebo effect that most studies try to do, take advantage of your body’s natural ability to heal itself, no matter which option you choose.

However, realize that that one pill, supplement or exercise regimen is not going to make you younger.  Eventually, something will work for you, but without changing your mindset and daily habits, your health problems will return and you’ll be back to square one.

One plausible explanation to why people who take vitamins feel healthier is that they are naturally health conscious, eating the right foods and making healthy lifestyle choices. But when vitamins were tested in a prospective, randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blinded study, no benefit is found. Not too surprising. Rather than using the vitamin as the cure-all for all their ailments, healthy people use vitamins as part of a well-balanced, nutritionally smart, and stress free lifestyle, where youth and vitality is a state of mind as well as a continuing process, rather than an end point.

After all, you can draw infinite possibilities in the finite period of time that you have if you want it to. Take my 77 year old father as an example.  Perhaps the best secret to living a long life is just this: Just live.

 

Why Your Child Can’t Sleep

Whenever I get together with other families with young children, almost invariably, there will be one or two parents who struggle with their child’s sleep. Issues range from frequent awakenings to too frequent feedings to sleeping in the parent’s bed. It’s no surprise then why so many adults in this country suffer from a myriad of sleep problems. Perhaps this is also the reason why sleep aids are one of the most popular drugs in this country and why children as young as 7 years old are being prescribed sleep aids to help them fall asleep. Although it’s difficult to admit, America has become the land of the free and the home of the… sleepless.

Resources For Getting Your Child To Sleep

These days,  many households with young children endure daily battles with sleep. It’s not that the parents aren’t equipped with the right information. in fact, the number of resources and books that focus on how to get your child to sleep has doubled if not tripled over the last 2 to 3 years. Sleeplessness is no longer the problem reserved for the old and restless. It’s now one of the most serious problems that parents of young children face each and every night.

Ten years ago, with our first child Jonas, we only had about a third of the resources we have now on getting your child to sleep.  At that time, Dr. Richard Ferber’s technique was in vogue. Despite its slight overtone of 50’s style rigidity and inflexibility, his concepts made the most sense to us and we agreed with his primary principle that children should and can be taught how to soothe themselves back to sleep. Essentially,  “Ferberization” is a gradual desensitization process. Using this technique, we were able to teach Jonas to sleep through the night (10 hours) around 4 months. Since then, this method of teaching our other two children to sleep has been a lifesaver both for their health and our sanity.

Of course just because this method worked for me doesn’t mean that it will work for everyone. Every baby and what appeals to parents are different. Even for us, there were nights when my wife would cry outside the bedroom door, along with the baby, conflicted by her instinct to burst right in to comfort our child and her desire to teach the baby to soothe himself back to sleep as prescribed by Dr. Ferber.

What ultimately did it for us was that we believed and desperately needed a good nights sleep. As simple as that sounds, we knew back then what so much research and study are telling us now: That poor sleep can lead to a host of health problems if not managed early on.

As parents of young children it’s hard to tell sometimes how much sleep your child needs. Some people say that it’s better to let nature take its course—for the child to determine for him or herself how long or short they need to sleep. In my case, this would have never worked, as our oldest would only sleep, prior to Ferberization, 10 to 15 minutes at a time.

With children, going natural, like breast-feeding rather than bottle-feeding, cooking your own baby food rather than giving them processed foods in jars is infinitely better. Yet, sometimes, given certain situations, parents need to assess now and then it costs to hold on to those ideals. It’s important, in other words, not to lose sight of the forest for the trees.

When Sleep Evades

When my brother had his first child, the situation was vastly different. In the four years since I had my oldest son, the pro-baby movement was in full swing. At that time, it was considered okay by most pediatricians to suggest that their child sleep in two to three hour spurts even at night. What was more important was that the child be nursed on demand—even at 9 to 12 months when solid foods should have diminished the frequency of these late night feedings.

His older daughter, as a result often slept in their bed until the age of 3-4. It was much easier for my sister- in-law to nurse her right then and there, to get in a few minutes more sleep, rather than getting up every 2 to 3 hours to get the baby out from the crib. Even now, at age 6, my niece is not a “good sleeper”. Even worse, her sister, who just turned 3 has recently been waking up multiple times during the night.

Another woman I met is experiencing similar problems with her 8 month old. Her baby has recently been waking up two to three times at night to nurse even though he was sleeping through the night at 3 months. Yet another couple I recently met complained that their 5 year old still wakes up 3-4 times every night. In general, children should be able to sleep through the night after 3-6 months. It’s obvious that these guidelines are not the norm.

Pediatric Problems Linked with Poor Sleep

Believe me when I say that I’m the last person to make any moral judgments about parents with sleepless children. If anything, I wrote a whole book explaining why and how adults and children alike are getting less and less sleep (find out more at, www.sleepinterrupted.com).

It’s not that what they’re doing is wrong, but that bad sleep habits for the child eventually affects not only the parents, but studies have shown that sleep problems as a young child has been linked to various serious health issues later on in life.

One such study showed that the presence of sleep problems at age 3-8 strongly predicted the onset of alcohol, cigarette and marijuana use later in life for boys and alcohol use for girls. Another Finnish study showed that perceived tiredness was related to use of psychoactive substances in teens. Other studies have shown that sleep problems are related to anxiety and depression in teens. Children with sleep-breathing problems also had a higher incidence of inattention and hyperactivity.

How to Get Your Child To Sleep

The most important thing to begin with when helping your child develop good sleep hygiene is to develop a sleep routine that both of you can keep consistently. Feeding times, nap times, and bed times should be kept as close to schedule as possible. As any parent of young children can tell you, one late night out with the baby or a severe cold can severely throw off not only the child’s sleep patterns, but the entire family’s as well. Last month when Kathy and I were at the movies (our children were with our baby sitter) I was disturbed to see so many infants and young toddlers out with their parents watching an action-packed movie at 11:30 at night. What’s worse was that they were eating popcorn and drinking caffeinated soda.

These days, cutting down on any form of stimulation just before bedtime can be a challenge. Cell phones, computers, cable TV, and all the noisy and annoying children’s toys can be difficult to control entirely. But even the activities they engage in during the day can affect their sleep. One recent study showed that for every hour a child is sedentary during the day, either watching TV or on the computer or even reading, it takes an additional three minutes to fall asleep at night. A related ad hoc study showed that children who were more active during the day, playing outside or involved in sports activities, fell asleep faster and slept longer throughout the night than children who were more inactive. Simply put, turn off the TV if you want your child to sleep better.

Sugar is also blamed for various health and sleep issues today. It’s common sense to avoid a brownie or a soda just before bedtime. Eating healthier in general can promote better sleep overall.

Once your child has passed the infant stages, she should be able to sleep through the night after a good dinner. But don’t feed him just before bedtime. Eating too close to bedtime affects  hormones that affect weight, appetite and metabolism. This is true even for grown ups. In these situations if you have even a slight sleep-breathing problem (24% of men and 9% of women), then juices get suctioned up into the throat, not only waking you up, but causing various throat symptoms like throat pain, post-nasal drip, chronic cough, and hoarseness.

An underlying sleep-breathing problem can also be a major cause of sleep problems especially between the ages of 3-6. Large tonsils and adenoids are very common at this age, and if your child’s breathing is labored in any way, or if he snores, or is a mouth breather, see your pediatrician about it, especially if your child seems tired all the time, or has difficulty staying focused or concentrating during the day. If either of the parents snore or stop breathing, then there’s even more reason to suspect an underlying sleep-breathing problem.

For the many other various issues that can arise, help is available. Go beyond the generic information that’s available on sites like WebMD, or the Mayo Clinic’s site. Invest in books, DVDs, or professional counseling for your child’s sleep needs, as well as for your own sleep needs. Set a good example by following good sleep habits yourself. Ask your friends who have succeeded what works for them, and don’t give up. Believe me, being able to get a good night’s sleep consistently is well worth the effort.

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Copyright © 2008 Doctor Steven Y. Park, MD | New York, NY | Integrative Solutions for Obstructive Sleep Apnea, Upper Airway Resistance Syndrome, and Snoring · Design by Fervent