Sound Sleep Guide

Archive for September, 2008

Are you a snorer, well there are many successful remedies and treatments that one can rely on, but one of the most accepted of all these days is the laser snoring treatment. If you are one of the millions of snoring victims around the world, you are going to want to find out more concerning the laser snoring treatment and regarding what it offers.

What it is

The laser snoring treatment utilizes a carbon dioxide laser. This laser is ideally suited to treat tissues of the throat and tonsillar area, and procedures that are used to require hospitalization can now be done right in the office, which makes it as quick and easy for patients as possible.

The laser snoring treatment is a very safe treatment, one that proves to be almost completely effective at treating snoring conditions. The patient remains awake during the laser snoring treatment, the doctor starting by applying a local anesthetic to the throat. The laser will then be sued to ablate the uvula, trim and reshape the excessive tissue, and although only a single treatment are typically required, a second treatment may be required after a month or two.

Before you go ahead with this treatment, you are going to have to speak to your doctor. They will work together with you, assess your snoring condition, and determine whether or not you are going to be an eligible candidate for the procedure.

Keep in mind that even if you are not allowed to go through with the surgery, there are many other wonderful treatments and products available that you can use and which will be effective at relieving your snoring.

There is an array of different pills and powders, potions and products that will bring you relief of your snoring and which you may want to try out for yourself to eliminate the snoring condition that is causing you problems in your life.

Going Natural?

We all hear about the more commercial, pills and potions on the drug store shelves that we can use for our problems, including snoring, but what about if you choose to go naturally? If you are interested in finding a natural cure for snoring, one of the best things you can do to start yourself off is make a change in your diet and lifestyle.

You need to stop eating unhealthy foods and start making sure that your body is receiving proper nutrition. As well you are going to need to start being more physically active and quitting unhealthy habits such as smoking and drinking alcohol.

Despite the fact that we have known for a long time that children who suffer from sleep apnea commonly get relatively low scores on IQ tests (normally scoring an average of 85 as opposed to a score of 101 for children who are not suffering from sleep apnea) one thing which has not been known until recently is that this arises out of chemical changes within the brain. As a result an otherwise bright child may well produce a second-rate performance as a result of nothing more than a sleeping problem that, in almost all cases, can be treated quite simply.

In a recent study carried out in Baltimore, 31 kids aged between 6 and 16 (19 of whom were suffering from severe sleep apnea) were examined with a special form or MRI and it was discovered that those children suffering from sleep apnea displayed significant changes in the right frontal cortex and hippocampus which are areas of the brain which are associated with learning and higher mental function.

This study also discovered that these kids were suffering from levels of three brain chemicals which were indicative of brain damage. This change to the chemistry of the brain resulting from sleep apnea may or may not be permanent and, at this point, further studies will be necessary to see if this effect can be reversed.

Even if reversal is possible however and the brain chemistry and cognitive function can be normalized, kids with sleep apnea will suffer learning problems as long as they have untreated sleep apnea and will certainly not be able to rewind time and regain this period of learning.

Parents should of course already be looking out for the signs of sleep apnea in their kids but this study clearly indicates that an early diagnosis and treatment of this sleep problem may have a substantial affect on a child’s success in life.

The signs of sleep apnea include frequent pauses in breathing during sleep which often result in an arousal from sleep and to tossing and turning in bed. Children may also display labored or loud breathing, snoring, gasping, coughing and, sometimes, bedwetting at an age when should generally have passed.

Parents might also notice that a child is sleeping in a strange position, perhaps with their bottom pointing up into the air and their head tilted back in an unconscious effort to keep their airway clear.

In very many cases child sleep apnea can be treated by removing the tonsils and adenoids, or excess tissue from the nose or the back of the throat. In addition, a continuous positive airways pressure machine (or pediatric CPAP) may also be employed to give the child a flow of air delivered through a mask worn while sleeping to keep the airway open.

In itself sleep apnea is debilitating for any child and the effect of night after night of inadequate sleep are going to take their toll on your child. But, when you combine this with an impairment of your child’s IQ, it becomes essential that you act at the earliest possible opportunity to get the condition diagnosed and treated.

Lucid dreaming is where you are in a dream and actually notice that you’re dreaming. We all dream regularly but we don't often remember what we dreamed about. When you start to take control of your dreams, you’re starting to dream lucidly.

So how easy is it to learn to dream lucidly? Why would you want to start controlling your dreams? After all, most dreams don't exactly count as "normal" experiences anyway?

It will take a bit of practice to learn how to dream lucidly, but it's likely easier than many of the other things you've already learned so don't worry.

Up until now, you’ve probably known when you’ve dreamed, but only if it was a particularly vivid dream. We all dream every night, several times a night. But we only remember the occasional dream out of all the dreams we have.

Keep a notebook and pen handy, close to where you sleep. If you haven't got a bedside light, you may want a small flashlight as well. This book is your own private dream journal.

Each time you wake up, the first thing you do should be to write down as many details as you can remember from your most recent dream. To begin with, there is unlikely to be much detail. But within a few days, you'll find yourself remembering more about more dreams.

When you look back over your dream journal, you're almost certain to spot themes that keep cropping up, over and over again, in the dreams you've written about. Possibly you have dreams about flying through the air or even space. Possibly your dreams involve water lots of the time. Whatever you're dreaming about is fine. It’s one of your minds ways of resolving the various issues you come up against in the day. You can interpret your dreams with one of the many different dream interpretation books you can find online or in Amazon.

The next step is to start to control your dreams. This is where the fun begins! It's a big subject but you've already taken the first, very important, step by keeping your dream journal. You can find out more about lucid dreaming here.