Recent News and Articles on the Keywords: sleep + can + remedies  Related to the article below (Last Update: 8/7/2008)

Health Canada draws blank on tainted herbal sleep medicine Canada.com, Canada - The medical examiner later discovered estazolam in his blood - a rare, powerful tranquilizer which can cause drowsiness and dizziness. ... Consumer Reports Survey: 44% of Americans Are 'Problem Sleepers ... MarketWatch - Aug 4, 2008 In fact, survey respondents told Consumer Reports they are turning to drugs when other remedies can be just as effective. Even sound machines, which can be ... Are you Britain's loudest snorer? Dereham Times, UK - Called 10 Things You Didn't Know About Sleep, the programme will suggest some of the remedies that actually work but in order to test them they want to find ... Alta. trucker's death raises questions about natural remedies Canada.com, Canada - Jul 31, 2008 Health Canada warned Canadians not to use Sleep Well and two other herbal remedies because of the dangerous side effects. Four months later, 55-year-old ... Alberta fatality inquiry probes role of drug in trucker's death Vancouver Sun all 6 news articles » Metro Find the energy to stop your break-up Metro, UK - New Age therapy may sound like hippy rubbish but for centuries we have turned to alternative remedies to solve our sexual problems. ... Losing sleep over FDA's quinine ban Seattle Times, United States - Aug 3, 2008 People with nighttime leg cramps may benefit from home remedies. Tonic water, which contains some quinine, is one option. Others include yellow mustard or ... Good Night's Sleep Eludes Many in US CBS News, NY - "What people don't realize is these medications can pose a host of side effects, including daytime drowsiness, even bizarre behavior like sleep-walking, ... docwright.com cures ills Gold Coast News, Australia - Aug 5, 2008 Q: Is there a nice simple non-drug remedy to improve concentration. I have exams coming up and am also a bit stressed out. A: Adequate sleep at night is the ... How not to conduct national affairs The Punch, Nigeria - Aug 5, 2008 It is likely that the President will raise yet another committee to study the harmonised report and suggest remedies. Give that committee another six months ... Reliability pays off at Alcoa power plant Reliable Plant Magazine, OK - Focus on root cause: The plant has sought to eschew patchwork solutions and pursue remedies that address the root cause of a problem. ...

The Sleep Blues

Worries often surface at night. That's when you think about making the presentation to the boss, the breakup, the rent check. So it's no surprise that that difficulty sleeping is one of the primary symptoms of depression.

Oftentimes, sleep problems can be remedied with a simple change in sleep habits or improvements in sleep environment. Experts agree that getting help for depression is the first order of business. This can be achieved through psychotherapy and, if necessary, the use of antidepressants. But it is also crucial that people with depression are evaluated for sleep problems. And new research has emerged that indicates that poor sleepers may be at risk for depression. Below, James O'Brien, MD, president of Talk About Sleep, an educational Web site, and Arthur J. Spielman, PhD, a professor of psychology at City College of New York, discuss the association between sleep and depression and how people can get better sleep for their mental health.

What role does sleep play in regulating your mood during the day?
JAMES O'BRIEN, MD: Mood is affected by many factors, and one of those factors is sleep. One of the elements of sleep that affects mood is REM-stage sleep, or rapid eye movement sleep. We need to achieve 25 percent of our total sleep time in REM-stage sleep. REM-stage sleep is the level of sleep where our brain is actually more active than when we are awake. REM-stage sleep is where we deal with emotions and neurocognitive functions, which if we don't deal with properly in sleep, will affect us in terms of our daytime functioning on a mental and emotional level.

JAMES O'BRIEN, MD: Depression affects people in a variety of ways. They have less energy in terms of doing activities, their libido is down, their memory is poor, and their sleep is lousy. They might sleep too little or too much. They're eating more than they usually do, or they're eating less than they usually do. They're not participating in life, and they know something isn't right.

How prevalent are sleep problems for people who are depressed?
ART SPIELMAN, MD: Sleep loss often goes hand-in-hand with depression. It's very common. The majority of patients with depression have difficulty staying asleep or falling asleep. At first it was thought that patients with depression only had trouble in the morning, waking up really early. But they also have trouble falling asleep.

Why do some people with depression seem to sleep too much?
ART SPIELMAN, MD: There is a subgroup of people with depression who do sleep more, and some of them have bipolar disorder, so when they're in the depressive phase of that illness, they will tend to sleep a little bit more. And then there are patients with minor depression, not major depression, who also sleep more, and we think that that's an adaptive coping mechanism. It's a way to kind of dampen their pain.

Can antidepressants affect sleep?
JAMES O'BRIEN, MD: Antidepressants can come in a variety of forms. You have sedating antidepressants and more stimulating types of antidepressants. Clearly a stimulating antidepressant can have an effect on one's ability to initiate and maintain sleep. So it's very important that we use the appropriate type of antidepressant in order to optimally manage patients.

ART SPIELMAN, MD: If insomnia appears to be secondary to a particular antidepressant, it's still important to continue with the medicine to see if it's going to affect the depression. Because once your depression is better, insomnia can be dealt with in various other ways.

How can better sleep habits help?
JAMES O'BRIEN, MD: When you're assessing a patient who's depressed and having trouble sleeping, it's important that you assess their sleep hygiene measures [such as whether they go to bed around the same time every night]. You may discover that their sleep hygiene is horrible and clearly is a major basis for some of their problems with sleep, which could affect their depression.

ART SPIELMAN, MD: One of the methods which is tried and true is to not stay in bed awake thrashing around and feeling hopeless about whether you'll ever get to sleep. That builds an association between sleeping and that turmoil. There's a treatment called stimulus control, which says if you're not asleep within about 10 or 15 minutes, get out of bed. Only get back into bed when you think you can fall asleep.

You also don't want to associate the bed and your sleep environment with non-sleep related activity. So if you're in bed, on the phone, doing your checkbook or playing card games, you are associating that bed experience with an activity other than sleep. And if you have a sleep problem, you want to avoid that.

I hope to help people for the long run, and the way to do that is to give them various tools to help them readjust their sleep so they can get better now and get better when they have an insomnia again because it's a recurrent problem.

What are the benefits of using a sleeping medication?
JAMES O'BRIEN, MD: Patients who are depressed feel that they've lost control of their lives. It's extremely important that they begin to regain their control by regaining their ability to fall asleep and to maintain sleep. The short-term use of a sleeping medication may be required to facilitate their control so that they can achieve good, sound sleep.

What advice would you give to someone who is depressed?
JAMES O'BRIEN, MD: Sleep issues are epidemic in our society and can result in a variety of both mental and emotional and physical problems. If an individual is experiencing depression or symptoms of depression, it is exceedingly important that they be evaluated for depression and any improper sleep process that may also be occurring that might be contributing to this problem.