The Insomnia Blog - Sleep Doctor Michael Breus, PhD

Link Between Sleep Apnea and Eye Disorders

Like severe back pain or battling a bad stomach flu, your world can stop dead in its tracks when you’ve got an distressing eye disorder. What if the problem in your eyes, however, were associated with your sleep habits?

That’s what one recent study has found with regard to a rare eye disorder called floppy eyelid syndrome (FES). A British study points to a strong link between FES and obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), implying that when doctors see FES in a patient, they should also look for OSA, and vice-versa.

A Good Night’s Sleep for Good Sex

It’s still a taboo topic: sex. Sleep deprivation may be a hot topic lately, but few people consider the toll sleeplessness has on a sex life. An article I read on WebMD summarizes the relationship between sex and sleep very well. The highlights:

• Sleep disorders and chronic sleep loss put a serious ding into a sex life. No surprise there. When some partners resort to separate bedrooms due to snoring, sleep apnea, or restless sleep, that pretty much rules out any opportunity for spontaneous action.
• The effects of sleep deprivation—low energy, fatigue, and sleepiness—won’t inspire sex. No surprise there either.
• Men with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), an inability to breathe properly during sleep, commonly report low libidos and sexual activity.
• OSA may be associated with lower testosterone levels. A 2002 study of men at the Technion Sleep Laboratory in Israel found that nearly half of those who suffered from severe sleep apnea also secreted abnormally low levels of testosterone during the night.
• Sleep loss can make you quarrelsome: you’ll be “feisty” in an irritable kind of way—not a sexy kind of way.
• Sleep loss makes you less able to cope with life’s ups and downs. Sex can be a great stress reducer, but if you don’t have energy for it, then that reduces your opportunities to unwind.
• People with insomnia are also less likely to engage in social activities. This doesn’t bode well for the single person looking to make an intimate connection.

Okay, so I’ll stop there because I could go on and on about the link between a healthy sex life and a healthy sleep life. I could argue that you can’t have one without the other.

Given the fact our relationships constitute the heart and soul of so much of our existence, you’d think we’d all preserve those relationships as best we can to in turn enhance the quality of our lives.

And I’m not just talking about the intimate relationships we keep for which sex is part of the equation. I’m also referring to the fabric of our social lives in general that makes us human and interactive with other people in platonic ways. When we’re sleep deprived, we’re not much fun to be around and we cannot work on the relationships that add to our well being.

So it’s a forgone conclusion: focus on healthy sleep. Watch everything in your life go up a notch or two—from your bedroom to your boardroom. 

Sweet Dreams,

Michael J. Breus, PhD
The Sleep Doctor
www.thesleepdoctor.com

Follow me on Twitter:   http://twitter.com/thesleepdoctor

Click here to order Dr. Breus's book, Beauty Sleep, on Amazon or Kindle, or here to buy it for the Barnes & Noble Nook.

Is Sexsomnia Real?

“Sexsomnia“– sounds like a made-up, weird word, but this appears to be a sleep disorder. While doing research for a recent TV appearance , I investigated what looked like a new and intriguing parasomnia. A parasomnia is a classification of sleep disorder where people can do some pretty complicated behaviors in their sleep.  Sleep walking, sleep talking, sleeps eating, but sleep sex? I have to admit I was skeptical.

Social Networking, Sleep Deprivation, Drug Use and Teens

A few months ago, the media led with a headline that your friends can make you fat. As you can imagine, it caused quite a stir—showing the hidden impact our relationships can have on our behavior and lifestyle choices.

But can friends make us sleep deprived and more likely to abuse drugs?

Sleep Violence. Rare, but Real.

If you think you’ve got it bad because your bed partner snores, think again.

In an engrossing editorial about sleep violence, a man chronicles what it’s like to commit violent acts in his sleep (granted, his didn’t go much further than punching the headboard or acting like a defensive lineman). But sleep violence can be serious. And it’s not something to joke about. It entails a spectrum of disorders, including:

• Night terrors: momentary, frightening hallucinations, resulting in panic and confusion. Night terrors are common among children. Most children grow out of them, though some can progress to more violent forms of this behavior in adolescence.
• R.E.M. Sleep Behavior Disorder (R.B.D.): this is characterized by vivid dreams that portray threatening persons or objects. Mild instances result in restlessness and abnormal twitching in bed; more serious are occasions when people, in acting out their dreams, attempt to fight back against their imaginary foe, thereby raising the risk of serious injury.

For centuries, high-profile cases have involved sleep violence. If you strangle your wife to death in your sleep, should you be held 100 percent accountable? This has been a tricky subject for legal scholars.