Sleep Secrets

For those of you with children, their naptime is a quiet time well anticipated. Although we’re tempted, we don’t want for them to sleep too much in the day. Needless to say, they’ll be too wound up at night and that won’t be beneficial for you. It’s a fact that our current culture in America frowns upon sleep in the middle of the day. However, it’s proven that most of us that get about 8 hours of sleep a night or less experience an increase naturally in afternoon drowsiness, usually 8 hours after getting out of bed. In the latest research, you can actually become more alert, diminish stress and boost brain functioning with a power nap. Imagine living life daily with less stress, more patience, increased learning, more efficiency, better reaction time and improved health. An afternoon nap can result in all of these improvements in lifestyle. This doesn’t suggest that we should spend our days sleeping and our nights watching infomercials and TV land on television. That would be…I don’t know—counterproductive.

Although the human body requires 7-8 sleep hours a day, as less than 6 basically triples the risk of an automobile accident. Ironically, over 9 hours of sleep can also be perilous for the body. In regards to the power nap, 20 minutes of afternoon sleep offers more benefit than 20 minutes of more morning sleep. Here are the top 10 tips to take a power nap:

• Take a nap for 20 minutes to increase productivity and alertness in the day.
• Nap either in the late morning or early part of the afternoon.
• Before a nap, evade sugar and caffeine.
• Ascertain you don’t consume food, which is difficult to digest. This can keep you from a comfortable sleep.
• Noises shouldn’t disturb you, so seek a quiet area.
• Turn off lights, draw curtains or shades and/or wear a sleep mask for naptime. This helps to stimulate melatonin (hormone that’s sleep-inducing) and capitalize on rest.
• Cover up with a blanket, as the temperature of our bodies decrease during sleep.
• Set the time on the alarm at desired time of more than 60 minutes for a power nap to repair muscles and bones.
• After a power nap, you’d want to wake up in a peaceful mode. Try to set an alarm clock with serene, melodic tones, rather than jolting sounds and aggressive music.
• It’s imperative to enjoy a guilt-free nap. A power nap only increases your job performance.

It’s advisable to take a power nap to perform better at work (and play) and feel more vibrant. Thus, it’s important to map out of one hour of lunch, or even suggest a naptime in the office. This is why more sophisticated businesses create “quiet rooms”.

William Shakespeare has, in one of his famous plays, rightly extolled sleep as the “nurse of life”. It is something that comes naturally to us- simple yet so beautiful. But there are thousands of people in the world who suffer from chronic sleep disorders and who are unable to enjoy even a single night’s sound sleep. Putting someone to sleep is an activity that can range from being easy to near impossible (especially in the case of patients suffering form sleep disorders).

When one speaks of “putting someone to sleep”, it certainly helps if we can classify that ‘someone’ as either a child or an adult. Putting babies to sleep is normal while in the case of adults only those suffering from sleep problems need to be put to sleep.

There are a number of different ways in which you can nicely put a baby to sleep. The important point to emphasize here is to set up a bedtime ritual for the baby that conditions the baby to feel sleepy. Sleep conditioning rituals can range from singing lullabies and playing soft music to gently rocking the baby in a comfortable cradle. Giving the baby a warm bath followed by soft massaging to relax the body muscles can also work positively in encouraging sleep induction. In the case of older children who know how to read and write, reading out bedtime stories can help the child fall asleep. In all scenarios, it is important to make sure that loud noises, which disturb sleep, are kept out.

Putting an adult to sleep is a totally different proposition since normal healthy adults can get to sleep without needing anyone to help them do so. However, you can sometimes help a person relax and go to sleep by using some hypnotic techniques. Such hypnotic techniques usually involve giving suggestions to the mind either in the form of carefully selected words or by employing certain visual cues. To successfully put a person to sleep using hypnotic techniques requires a good deal of practice and can harm the mental status of the subject if done in an inappropriate manner.

In the case of patients who suffer from various conditions that affect sleep, the treatment usually is aimed at removing the cause of the disease. Sleep clinics provide environments in which the medical practitioner can diagnose and treat sleep disorders. Again, putting a person (with a sleep problem) to sleep can be a challenging task. A common cause of sleep disorders stems from the build up of conscious or subconscious worry, stress or tension. In such cases, giving psychiatric counseling can help. Here too, hypnosis aids to relive subconscious stress and provide mental relaxation.

Alternatively, asking a person to shift his or her sleep patterns may also help. For example, the common monophasic sleep enjoyed by the majority of us can be slowly replaced by a polyphasic schedule.

The art of putting someone to sleep can only be acquired gradually. Even some adults can be put to sleep by playing soft melodious music. Sarcastically, talking about boring topics in a soporific manner can sometimes be the best way to put someone to sleep, especially in a bedtime setting or after a heavy meal!