Did you know?

Here are a few things you may not have known about sleep.

1) Your body's internal alarm enables you to wake up spontaneously at the time that you feel is right for you, is triggered by the stress hormone adrenocorticotropin. The levels of this hormone may occasionally rise an hour or two before an expected wake up call to prepare your body for waking up. Sometimes this works "too efficiently" and you wake half and hour or an hour before the time you had in mind.

2) In a study, completed over six years, and looking at a million adults, it was demonstrated that people who get only six to seven hours of sleep a night have a lower death rate than those who get eight hours.

3) The Spanish, possibly because of their "Siesta" in the afternoon,sleep an average of 40 minutes less per night than other Europeans. This is balanced by the fact that Spain also has the highest rate of workplace accidents in the EU, and the third lowest productivity rate. In a gesture to integrate Spain into the EU a campaing was launched to eliminate these afternoon naps/siestas.

4) Oxford University researchers, in 2002,unsurprisingly concluded, that the traditional practice of counting sheep is an ineffective cure for insomnia. This mental activity is so boring that other problems and concerns inevitably surface.

5) During REM sleep, every 90 minutes or so, there are bursts of electrical activity through the brain stem. These are related to dreaming. During an average lifetime, the ordinary person spends more than six years dreaming, clocking more than 136,000 dreams in all. The reasons why we dream have been speculated on for many years, but no one has yet identified the reasons for dreaming.

Insomnia

Insomnia is defined as a difficulty falling asleep, and/or maintaining sleep and includes early morning awakenings. In many cases this is secondary to another sleep or medical disorder. In contrast Primary Insomnia is accompanied by learned sleep preventing or delaying assocciations and physiological arousal resulting in complaints of sleeplessness and decreased daytime functioning.

To date no studies have been done to look at how often this occurs in children of school age or in adolescents. About 12-13% of adolescents report that they are poor sleepers. This appears to be slightly more common in women than in men. Although there are a number of theories about the causes of insomnia no conclusive evidence supports any particular theory.

It is widely recognised that genetics may play a part and that stress, obsessive thinking styles, poor sleep habits and caffine intake, exacerbate the problem.

Difficulties in falling asleep can be related to medical problems such as asthma, allergies, headaches and physical discomfort. Some medications cause insomnia as a side effect.

Fortunately there are a variety of treatments which are effective without resorting to medication. Research has not been conducted on the long term outcome of insomnia in children and adolescents but certain personality traits make it likely that affected individuals are more likely to experience recurrant problems. The learned nature of this disorder makes it more likely to persist if it is not treated.

If you think this applies to your children contact Dream-Angus for support and advice.

The Baby's Song T.Gunn

From the private ease of mother's womb

I fall into a lighted room

Why don't you simply put me back

Where it is warm and wet and black

Padded and jolly I would ride

The perfect comfort of her inside

They tuck me in a rustling bed

I lie there,, raging, small and red.