The Insomnia Blog - Sleep Doctor Michael Breus, PhD

Marriage Problems for Parents, Sleep Problems for Baby

Here’s some sobering, if unsurprising, news: A recent study indicates that strength of your marriage can have an effect on your baby’s sleep. Researchers studied 350 families looking for a possible link between parents’ marital problems and sleep problems in their children. They followed the families over a nine-month period, beginning when the children were 9 months old. Here’s an important note: the researchers chose to study only adoptive families, in order to rule out the possibility of a genetic link between parents’ behaviors and their young children’s sleep habits, and to focus on the stress level in the family.   What did they find?

Marital instability among couples when their children were 9 months old predicted sleep problems in children 18 months of age.  The sleep difficulties for these toddlers included both falling asleep and staying asleep.

This study reinforces just how important it is to tend to our relationships with our partners. The health of your marriage can affect your children no matter how young they are. To me, this is also a perfect example of how sleep is at the very crux of our lives, as individuals and as families. Think about it:

• Marital difficulties affect children’s sleep, even at a young age.
• Parents of young children are often sleep-deprived--this is often especially true for moms--which can directly affect the quality of their relationship.
• Moreover, studies have shown a strong correlation between sleep habits of parents and their infant children.

At every turn, sleep matters! Before you start feeling overwhelmed, keep this in mind: creating strong sleep habits—for you and for your child—is not just an important goal, it’s an achievable one. There are several simple, practical steps you can take to help your entire family get the nightly good rest they need.

As all of us who’ve been through it can attest, new parenthood is both wonderful and stressful. The demands of having a young child can put pressure on a marriage. Sleep deprivation, so common among parents of young children, can make things worse. To be sure, sleep isn’t the only issue in marital problems among parents of young children: financial pressures, work issues and grueling daily schedules are issues for many of us. But being sleep deprived can make all of these problems seem worse. Lack of sleep is also a critical factor in one’s individual health and well being, and therefore has an impact on the version of ourselves that we’re able to present to our partners.

Keep in mind these basic new-parent strategies for protecting your sleep, and your relationship.

Share the workload: Rotating feedings at night, trading off chores—when both partners are involved in family work, everyone gets a break.

Know yourselves: Pay attention to your own natural inclinations, when it comes to sleep. The night-owl of the two of you is probably better suited for the midnight feeding than the early bird.

One-on-one time: It can be tempting to put every moment of attention to your baby, especially new moms. Nurturing your marriage is important too. Find time every day to connect with your spouse.

To help your child develop strong sleep skills, start early with these basic habits:

Slow things down: As bedtime approaches, quiet the activity level in the house. Television, music, and high-octane running around can be replaced with reading and quiet play as you prepare for your child’s bedtime ritual.

Bath, bed, repeat: Create a bedtime routine that you can follow nightly. Maybe it’s bath, then PJs, followed by a book and a back rub. Your child’s routine should be quiet, soothing, and enjoyable for you both.

Set that bedtime: Once you’ve picked a bedtime for your child, stick with it. Toddlers ages 1-3 should be sleeping from 12-14 hours a night. (The National Sleep Foundation has recommendations for sleep amounts for children from infancy to adolescence.) Whatever time you pick, remember—consistency is the key.

Don’t skip the naps: Skimping on naps won’t make babies more apt to sleep. Also, it’s best to put your child when she’s sleepy, not exhausted or actually asleep. This way, she’s better able to develop self-soothing techniques that will help her fall asleep on her own.

Protecting health of your marriage, as this study indicates, is another way to help pass along good health—and strong sleep habits—to your child.

Sweet Dreams,

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

The Sleep Doctor’s Diet Plan:  Lose Weight Through Better Sleep

Everything you do, you do better with a good night’s sleep™ 
twitter: @thesleepdoctor 
Facebook: www.facebook.com/thesleepdoctor

Erectile Dysfunction and Obstructive Sleep Apnea

Feeling tired?  There are many reasons why we sleep poorly, from insomnia to obstructive sleep apnea (OSA).  Regardless of the reason, lack of sleep or lack of quality sleep can make us unpleasant people to be around, and sustained lack of sleep has been linked to more serious problems like diabetes.  In fact, difficulties sleeping often point to other underlying issues, even ones that seem to be unrelated to sleep—like impotence, for example.

For men, at least.  A new study links sleep disorders and sexual impotency.  Specifically, the study examined the relationship between obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) and erectile dysfunction.  OSA afflicts more than 12 million Americans and is characterized by repeated stops and starts of breathing during sleep when throat muscles relax and block the airway.  Left untreated, those with sleep apnea suffer from poor quality sleep and chronic sleep deprivation, leading to health issues that can be life-threatening: weight gain, diabetes, and cardiovascular problems.

The study found that

• Men with erectile dysfunction were more than twice as likely to have OSA than those without erectile dysfunction.
• The more severe the erectile dysfunction, the greater the likelihood of having OSA
• Men with erectile dysfunction should probably be screened for OSA

This is bad news for men, but somewhat of a break for women—most studies show quite a  discrepancy between the effects lack of sleep brings men versus women. For instance, if a woman gets fewer than 8 hours of sleep, her risk for heart disease goes up but men don’t seem to show such as great a risk of heart disease from lack of sleep.  This link between OSA and erectile dysfunction is obviously a uniquely male problem—and one that should be noted by men with either condition.

Getting a good night’s sleep can do a world of good for your whole body.  Get screened for OSA and if you have OSA, make sure to use your CPAP machine, oral appliance or other prescribed treatment on a regular basis.  Improve your overall sleep with better sleep hygiene.  After all, everything you do, you do better with a good night’s sleep—everything.

Sweet Dreams,

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

The Sleep Doctor’s Diet Plan:  Lose Weight Through Better Sleep

Everything you do, you do better with a good night’s sleep™ 
twitter: @thesleepdoctor 
Facebook: www.facebook.com/thesleepdoctor

Is your Bedtime Making you Fat?

When was the last time someone told you to go to bed? Were you 8 years old? 10 years old? But in truth, it was probably the best thing for you. Many of my patients tell me that they have great plans to get in bed at 10, but before they know it, they look up and it is 11:15 and they say, oh well, and stay up for another hour!

Think about it. Your bedtime is one of the few things that you can control when it comes to your sleep. Typically our “wake up” times are socially determined. We have to get up for work or school, get the kids ready, you know the drill. So our wake up time is pretty constant. But the time we can get into bed can vary, and can actually be within our control.

Restricting the time that you have in bed can be causing you to suffer significant sleep deprivation.  And we all know that sleep deprivation has some significant effects on weight loss:

• Hormone imbalance-making your appetite grow, and feelings of being full less
• Losing the last hour of sleep in a full sleep cycle, which means losing REM sleep-the stage where you burn the most calories.
• Sleep deprivation causes food cravings for high fat, high carb treats

So how do you know when your bed time should be? And how much sleep do you really need, particularly if you want your body’s metabolism to work most efficiently ?

Learn your perfect bedtime solution:

1. Determine what your  typical wake up time will be
2. Count back five 90 minute cycles or  7.5 hours
   • Each sleep cycle on average is 90 minutes long and the average person has  5 of them per night
3. Set your alarm clock or cell phone to tell you when to go to bed (but remember to reset it for your morning alarm)
4. If you wake up within 10 minutes of your morning alarm after three days of going to bed at your “bed time” you found your perfect bedtime!
5. If not, and you still need your morning alarm to wake up, then move your bedtime alarm back by 15 minutes every three days until you wake up just before your morning alarm.  When you wake up before your morning alarm, you have found your perfect bedtime.

For example:

If you must wakeup at 6:30 a.m.  every morning, set your bedtime alarm for 11:00 p.m. to remind you to get in bed within the next  15 minutes (some people will set it about 8 hours before wake up time  - 10:30 p.m. - to give them enough time to get ready for bed).

By going to bed at the right time for you, you can avoid sleep deprivation, your hormones will be in balance, and your metabolism will run smoothly.

And think – how great would it feel to wake up without that alarm clock?  You really could finish all of those dreams….

Sweet Dreams,

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

The Sleep Doctor's Diet Plan:  Lose Through Better Sleep

Everything you do, you do better with a good night's sleep™ 
twitter: @thesleepdoctor 
Facebook: www.facebook.com/thesleepdoctor

The Sleep/Weight Loss Connection

Many of us have been hearing the weight loss hormone story for a while. If you are sleep deprived:

1. Your body makes more Ghrelin-the hormone that says GO, eat more and
2. Your body makes less Leptin-the hormone that says STOP, and tells your body it is full, and
3. Your body makes more cortisol, which can increase your appetite.

But here's a critical piece of the sleep/weight loss connection that we are just really beginning to understand:

Sometimes you can burn more calories when you are asleep than when you are just lying in bed.

And it all has to do with our stages of sleep, specifically REM sleep.

During REM sleep your brain is more active than any other stage. In fact in some cases it is MORE active than when you are awake. This activity requires fuel for thought called glucose -  the basic building block of most foods.

Sleep follows a very particular, and fairly predictable,  cycle in most individuals each night: 

 

Your brain goes from: Wake to Stage 1, from Stage 1 to Stage 2, from Stage 2 to Stages 3 and 4, back to Stage 2 and on into REM sleep. You can see this in the graph above. But look at the yellow bar. This represents REM sleep, and notice how it gets longer and longer as the night progresses! This shows how your body gets more REM sleep in the very early morning hours. Just like riding a bike up hill, you have to climb up before you can coast down that hill,  and you need to go through the first few sleep cycles to get more REM sleep.

But what happens when you only get 6 hours of sleep? YOU CUT OFF THAT LAST REM PERIOD which is where your brain uses the most calories! So what does that mean for your waistline? Over the course of a year, one research study from Sao Paulo showed this could add up to as much as 14 pounds of extra weight!

So what can you do to sleep better and lose this weight?

Lose the snooze and set your alarm to tell you when to go to bed.  Use your alarm to help you know when to go bed to get the right amount of quality sleep.  Don't use the snooze button to potentially interrupt those final minutes of REM sleep!  Set your alarm in the morning for the last possible minute you need to be out of bed.

Take a quick nap if you are feeling drowsy in the middle of the day, try my Nap-a-Latte™ technique: quickly drink a small cup of cool drip coffee, and then take a 25 minute nap. The Nap-a-Latte™ reduces your drowsiness and the caffeine will wake you up, but taken at the right time (no caffeine after 2 p.m.!) will not keep you awake at night.

Try my "glass for a glass method:" drink one glass of water for every alcoholic beverage you drink, and stop all alcohol 3 hours before your bed time alarm goes off .  Alcohol can help you fall asleep, but will keep you out of the deep stages of sleep and REM sleep that you need to avoid sleep deprivation

Stop exercise 4 hours before bed Work out earlier in the evening and consider Yoga, deep breathing or stretching before bed.

Have your breakfast outside in the morning, and get plenty of sunlight to help re-set your internal biological clock.

Sleep loss affects weight loss - from your ability to burn calories to the food choices you make.  Start with a commitment to sleeping better - and you may find yourself a few pounds lighter without changing anything else.  Your body can naturally start making better food choices and wanting to get up and move, because you will be refreshed and energized every morning! Understanding your sleep, and feeling empowered to be able to get the rest you know need is amazing. 

Sweet Dreams,

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

The Sleep Doctor's Diet Plan:  Lose Through Better Sleep

Everything you do, you do better with a good night's sleep™ 
twitter: @thesleepdoctor 
Facebook: www.facebook.com/thesleepdoctor

Sleep More, Eat Less, Lose Weight

The other day I read about yet another new diet—this one an anti-carb plan imported from France.  Do you ever feel like everywhere you look there’s some new fad diet?  Some claim you should only eat protein, others that you should only eat raw greens, and still others think you should only consume liquids.  Most of these diet plans are ineffective (and some of them seem downright dangerous), and they all overlook one important aspect that can affect what and how much we eat: sleep.

The connection between sleep and diet may seem surprising.  We’ve known for a while, though, that there is a fairly well-established link between sleep deprivation  and diabetes and obesity.   A new study out of Columbia University may help explain this connection.  The study’s findings suggest that sleep deprivation may actually make you eat more.  They found that:

• People who are sleep-deprived will eat more foods high in fat and protein
• When compared to other women who had slept nine hours, women who had only slept four hours consumed 329 more calories on average
• When compared to other men who had slept nine hours, men who had only slept four hours consumed 263 more calories on average

Notice the difference between the men and women?  Interestingly, while both men and women ate more high-protein food, sleep-deprived women ate on average 31 more grams of fat than did their male counterparts.  We know that women tend to sleep more poorly than men—it seems that the increase in hunger due to lack of sleep is also not equal.   Though the study only looked at adults, other research shows that this desire to eat more food (especially junk food) is also a problem for teens.

There are several possible reasons that people with less sleep eat more.   Less sleep leads to poor judgment in many situations, and if you’re very tired throughout the day you may either eat more food to attempt to stay awake, or constantly look for quick fixes like energy drinks and bars, which are more often than not full of sugar and calories (they also can make it even more difficult to fall asleep, which makes the problem of eating because of sleep deprivation that much worse).  Also, time spent sleeping is time you aren’t eating—if you’re up late at night, you may be likely to snack.

Do you find that you eat more throughout the day after a bad night’s sleep?  Are you tired, both from lack of sleep and of useless fad-diets?  It might be time for a diet that focuses not only on what you eat, but how you sleep.

 I am very excited about my new book, coming out on May 10^th:-The Sleep Doctor's Diet Plan: Lose Weight through Better Sleep.  I wrote this book to help you learn more about how sleep can boost your metabolism, decrease your hunger, and increase your energy and willpower.  The science is there to overwhelming  show that better sleep can help you be healthier, happier, and even thinner.

For you and your whole family, a solid start to a healthy body is just a good night’s sleep away.

Sweet Dreams,

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

Everything you do, you do better with a good night’s sleep™
twitter: @thesleepdoctor
Facebook: 

www.facebook.com/thesleepdoctor

 

Can Your Brain Learn to Help You Sleep Better?

One of the most frustrating conditions that keeps people from sleeping well and through the night is Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA).  Most people with OSA aren’t aware that they stop breathing multiple times during the night.  This situation results in fragmented, poor sleep, as well as low blood oxygen levels.  OSA has been associated with an increased risk for a myriad of health problems, including hypertension, heart disease, mood and memory problems.

It’s widely known in sleep medicine circles that the most common—and helpful—treatment we have these days for patients with OSA is the CPAP machine, short for Continuous Positive Airway Pressure.  The difference a CPAP machine can make for someone with Sleep Apnea is huge, and benefits go far beyond sleep.

The problem with CPAP therapy is that not a lot of people are good about using it on a routine basis.  While I maintain that continuous use is the best way to utilize your CPAP machine, there may ultimately be another way to help those suffering from OSA: the brain.

We’ve all heard it—some of us have even said it: ‘mind over matter.’  A new study from the University Toronto suggests that not only is this true, it could eventually provide relief for millions of people who face sleepless nights because of their Sleep Apnea.  OSA is called obstructive because it obstructs the airways.  Scientists found that this obstruction might cause you to learn to breathe more effectively.  Humans are remarkably adaptive creatures, and our brains are wired for learning—apparently even from the disruption of normal breathing.

The researchers from the University of Toronto suggest that the brains of people with Sleep Apnea are using the negative effects of OSA to learn to breathe more deeply and effectively.  This is due to a brain chemical called noradrenaline, which is released during times when lung function is obstructed.  This study suggests that in the future this chemical could be used to help those with OSA sleep better and breathe deeper.

This is great news for those who live with OSA, because a CPAP machine is about the least sexy thing you could bring into your bedroom.  Relief that comes in pill form would be much less invasive and much easier to use—and much easier to remember to use consistently.  This type of treatment is still in the dream phase, so until it becomes a reality, I encourage people with OSA to stick with the machines.

Still, it’s pretty amazing what the brain can learn to do, even while we’re asleep.

 

Sweet Dreams, 

Michael J. Breus, PhD
The Sleep Doctor™
Everything you do, you do better with a good night’s sleep™
www.thesleepdoctor.com twitter: @thesleepdoctor
Facebook: www.facebook.com/thesleepdoctor

 

 

The Sleep Doctor’s Sleep Suggestions from the Top Sleep stories of 2010 (Part II)

As you saw from my last blog, we learned so much in 2010 about our sleep and what we should and should not do. Here is Part II of my practical sleep suggestions -  based on the latest cutting edge research on sleep from the second half of 2010.

July

Sleep Suggestion: Problems Sleeping? Tart Cherry Juice may be helpful.

• In an article published in the Journal of Medicinal Foods, researchers from the University of Pensylvania had adults drink 8 ounces of tart cherry juice in the morning and evening for 2 weeks and results indicate that they had reduced insomnia severity, and a reduction in wake time after they fell asleep by 17 minutes.

Sleep Suggestion: During your child’s first 2 years get all the sleep you can!

• New parents have a huge sleep deficit. A survey in the UK showed that new parents (within the first 2 years of a child’s life) lose about 6 months of sleep! Over 60% of parents with babies aged less than 24 months get on average 3.25 hours of sleep per night.

August

Sleep Suggestion: Go to bed and wake up at the same time every day-it’s good for your cholesterol

• Your Body Clock and Triglycerides. An animal study showed that disrupting the body clock or circadian rhythm can change the normal 24 hour cycle of your triglycerides and leave them high!

September

Sleep Suggestion: Falling asleep in the afternoon? Don’t eat lunch.

• Being hungry may help you stay awake and alert. Does eating a big meal make you feel sleepy? This research suggests that being hungry will not only keep you awake but alert as well. This animal research showed that the need for food was greater than the need for sleep.

October

Sleep Suggestion: Get more sleep and you will lose fat, not muscle on your diet.

• Sleep away your fat. This study showed that people who are on a low calorie diet will lose the same amount of weight if they are sleeping 5.5 or 8.5 hours, but those sleeping 8.5 hours will lose more fat, while those with 5.5 hours will lose more muscle.

Sleep Suggestion: Talk with your doctor if you have sleep problems, they may not ask.

• Menopause and sleep problems. In a survey of over 900 menopausal women, many of whom had sleep issues, it was revealed that most of their doctors did not ask them about their sleep.

 November

Sleep Suggestion: Take the phone out of your teen’s bedroom, even texting affects sleep

• Bedtime texting and internet use affect sleep. More than half of the teens that text or surf the internet at bedtime have problems falling asleep, and have mood, cognitive, and behavior problems the next day. And the average teen sends a total of 3400 electronic messages at bedtime every month.

Sleep Suggestion: Never drive drowsy

• Drowsy driving kills. In a study by AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety it was determined that 1 in every 6 fatal crashes (16.5%) involves drowsy driving. 41% of drivers say that they have fallen asleep while driving at some time in their lives. And 10% of people admitted to falling asleep while driving in the past 12 months.

December

Sleep Suggestion: Get your beauty Sleep, it is for real.

• Want to look attractive and healthy, get your beauty sleep. There is scientific backing for the concept of beauty sleep. When people were photographed sleep deprived and non-sleep deprived they were rated less attractive and less healthy looking, with less sleep.

Sleep Suggestion: Make sure your child is not ingesting caffeine, you might be surprised!

• 75% of all children (age 5-12) consume caffeine daily. Caffeine consumption has been blamed for both bedwetting and sleep problems in kids, but this research showed that bedwetting was actually not due to caffeine consumption. More shockingly, kids between the ages of 8-12 were drinking the equivalent of 3 cans of soda per day.

So there you have it, 22 sleep suggestions, maybe even resolutions,  based on some of the most fascinating sleep research of 2010.   I know that I learned a lot last year about sleep and I hope you did as well. Looking forward to a healthy, happy and well-rested 2011.

 

Sweet Dreams,

 

Michael J. Breus, PhD

The Sleep Doctor™

www.thesleepdoctor.com

Twitter: @thesleepdoctor

Facebook: www.facebook.com/TheSleepDoctor

The Sleep Doctor’s Sleep Suggestions from the Top Sleep Stories of 2010 (Part I)

Happy New Year!  As 2011 is here I wanted to look back and think about all of the amazing stories, research and clinical cases that have changed the face of sleep medicine in 2010. The amount of sleep research going on today is one of the very reasons why I got into this field, the changes are constant and exciting. While this does not encompass everything, these are what I considered some of the top stories in sleep medicine in 2010, and I have included a practical sleep suggestion to help you use this research in your everyday life.

January

• Sleep Suggestion: Set your adolescent’s bedtime before 10pm
  
  •  Earlier bedtimes may have a “protective effect” for adolescents against Depression and Suicidal thoughts-in the Jan issue of the journal Sleep researchers found:
    
    • When parents set their kids bedtimes earlier (10pm or earlier), adolescents were less likely to suffer from depression (by 24%) and less likely to think about committing suicide (by 20%). Earlier bedtimes seemed to allow for more total sleep time in these kids. And kids who report sleeping 5 or fewer hours were 71% more likely to suffer from depression and 48% more likely to think about suicide.
• Sleep Suggestion: Make sure your child is getting enough sleep
  
  • High School Kids are not getting enough sleep-In a study published in the Journal of Adolescent Health 12,000 kids were evaluated in grades 9-12 and only 8% of students were found to get enough sleep on average.
  • 10% of Adolescents sleep only 5 hours
  • 23% sleep only 6 hours
  • Nearly 20% more 12^th graders have sleep deficits than 9^th graders

February

• Sleep Suggestion: After a class or lecture or presentation; take a break, close your eyes and rest for 10 minutes - you will remember more.
  
  •   “Wakeful Resting” can improve your memory- when we rest while awake our brains are still at work. One researcher commented: “Your brain wants you to tune out of other tasks so you can tune into what you just learned.
• Sleep Suggestion: Take a 90 minute nap and boost your “Brain Power.”
  
  • Researchers at UC Berkley found that a 90 minute nap can help boost and restore brain power, not only does it refresh the mind, but they think it can make you smarter. It makes sense: a 90 minute nap is about 1 full sleep cycle.

March

• Sleep Suggestion: Those under forty need 7-8 hours a night to keep off that “spare tire” of belly fat
  
  • Research from Wake Forrest University published in the journal Sleep showed that individuals under 40 who slept 6-7 hours a night had far less belly fat than those sleeping less than 6 hours and more than 8 hours.

• Sleep Suggestion: Know your kids friends, if your kids hang out with those that do not sleep, watch out for possible drug issues
  
  • In some fascinating research on social networks influence on teen health researchers at UC San Diego showed that the spread of one behavior in social networks (poor sleep patterns) influences the spread of another behavior, adolescent drug use.  

April

• Sleep Suggestion: Keeping a daily routine helps older adults sleep better. 
  
  • In the April issue of the Journal Sleep, researchers found that when older adults living in a retirement community kept a daily schedule there was a reduction in their insomnia and an improvement in their quality of sleep.

May

• Sleep Suggestion: Find your “sleep need” number and stick to it  
  
  • Sleeping less than 6 hours and more than 8 hours is linked to premature death! Researchers at the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom that those who slept less than 6 hours a night were linked to a 12% higher chance of premature death compared to those sleeping 6-8 hours. Also those that slept for 9 hours or more were linked to premature death, but probably for different reasons.

• Sleep Suggestion: Consider Yoga as a new technique for better sleep
  
  • Yoga helped cancer survivors reduce fatigue and improve sleep quality. A 4 week low-intensity yoga program that included breathing techniques (pranayama), meditation, visualization and special yoga positions (18 different asanas) appeared to help reduce fatigue in cancer survivors, they took less sleep medication, and they reported a better quality of life.

June

• Sleep Suggestion: Use your CPAP at least 4 hours a night - it could save your brain and life!
  
  • CPAP has been shown to reduce the incidence of cardiovascular events and hypertension in OSA patients. There was a 25% reduction of hypertension and cardiovascular events risk with consistent CPAP use (4+hours per night).
  • CPAP therapy was shown to restore brain tissue in adults with OSA. After 3 months of nightly CPAP use there was a significant grey-matter volume increase (in the hippocampus and frontal areas) this is where the brain does most of its information processing.

• Sleep Suggestion: Attention New Parents: Get more sleep and enjoy your relationship
  
  • First time parents’ relationship satisfaction appears to be linked to the amount of sleep they get while caring for their new infant. Research presented at the 2010 APSS convention showed that when you looked at actual hours of total sleep vs. estimated hours of sleep there was a negative relationship (less actual sleep = poor relationship satisfaction). So do not worry about meaningless chores, sleep more and be happy.  

• Sleep Suggestion: If you child was up late studying, drive them to school AND pick them up yourself!
  
  • Earlier school start times were associated with increase in teen auto accidents. This study done in Virginia showed that in Virginia Beach (where school start times were 7:20am ) vs. Chesapeake (where school start times are 8:40am),  there were 20% more teen car accidents. Most of these accidents were in the afternoon when school was out.

Next:  Part II covers what we learned from sleep research in the second half of 2010 and more great sleep suggestions.

 

Sweet Dreams,

 

Michael J. Breus, PhD

The Sleep Doctor™

www.thesleepdoctor.com

Twitter: @thesleepdoctor

Facebook: www.facebook.com/thesleepdoctor

 

Is Your Baby Sleeping through the Night?

It’s the question every parent of a newborn gets. How well does he or she sleep at night? And every new parent asks the other, related question: When will my baby sleep through the night? Ever? (Never?)

 

No two babies are alike. That’s true when it comes to sleep as well. I’ve heard from parents whose babies sleep, well, like a baby—through the night—as early as six weeks old. And then there are those parents who still struggle to get a full night of uninterrupted sleep more than a year after their baby’s birth. What gives?

 

In the first few weeks of life, babies don’t have a circadian rhythm going yet which helps them to know the difference between daylight and nighttime. This rhythm, or body clock, starts ticking at around six weeks of age. But what’s more critical to the sleep rhythms of infants is their need for nourishment. In other words, it’s not so much that babies are missing the “on” and “off” switch that adults have when it comes to day-and-night cycles. It’s that babies cannot hold enough food (i.e., breast milk or formula) in their bellies to get through the night without needing more calories for growth. It takes a baby a few months to grow a belly big enough to accommodate enough calories so they may rest for longer periods without needing to fill up again. And because breast milk in particular gets digested more quickly than formula, moms who exclusively breastfeed typically find themselves tending to their tots more frequently than those who are formula-fed.

 

But here’s some good news for new parents who worry that they may be doomed to years of sleeplessness: a new study published in the journal Pediatrics and done by researchers from the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, states that by the age of 5 months, over 50 percent of all infants are following their parents’ sleeping times—and sleeping right through the night.

 

Sound too good to be true? Well, this also means that 50 percent of infants are not following their parents’ sleeping schedules and are not sleeping through the night.

 

There’s a difference between a baby matching his or her parents’ sleeping schedule and sleeping “through the night.” The researchers noted that achieving non-stop sleep does not take that long, but its coinciding with the parents’ schedule takes longer. For example, a baby who sleeps for six straight hours but does so from 6 pm to midnight, is not going to please most parents who would prefer to go to bed at 10 and get up at 6. But a baby who sleeps for six straight hours from, say 11 pm to 5 am, may be a lot easier to handle than a baby who has a parent (or both) up in the dead middle of the night.

 

Despite the statistics, sometimes babies just don’t comply with what’s considered “average” or “normal.” And sometimes you just have to stick it out until your baby gets on the same playing field as you. Hopefully that’s sooner rather than later. But there are a few things you can try to get your little one to fall into that first 50 percent category—the 50 percent of infants who sleep relatively well through the night. Here they are:

• Get AM Light: Make sure your baby gets a dose of morning light. This will help set the body clock up, and reset a body clock that’s may be ticking a tad off schedule.
• Preserve Nap Time: Babies nap routinely throughout the day, usually once in the morning, and another in the afternoon. Though you may be tempted to cut back on nap time in order to “save” sleep time for the night, this will backfire. Babies who get the full extent of their naps in sleep better than those whose naps are cut short. And they just might grow up smarter thanks to their naps.
• Cluster feed: to overcome the challenge of keeping your baby’s belly satiated through the night, see if you can feed him in small clusters in the evening hours and then “top-off” his belly close to bedtime so he goes to sleep with a full belly. That way, he or she is less likely to wake up within a couple of hours hungry.  
• Try the EAT, SLEEP, PLAY Method: we used this method in our house and found it to be extremely helpful. The key here is consistency in the schedule:, if it is sleep time and you are out, get home and get them to bed, it will pay off.

And for those who try everything and nothing works, consult your pediatrician, there could be reflux (sometimes called colic), or any number of digestive disorders that could be waking your baby.

 

Then be patient. One night, your baby will surprise you. You’ll wake up to the sound of nothing and worry that something happened to him or her. As you rush to the crib to check on your little one, you realize that all is well. All is asleep. And so should you be, too.

 

Sweet Dreams,

 

Michael J. Breus, PhD

The Sleep Doctor™

www.thesleepdoctor.com

Everything you do, you do better with a good night’s sleep™.

 

Facebook: thesleepdoctor

Twitter: @thesleepdoctor

Who gets up with the baby? Interrupted sleep has a gender bias!

It is 3 a.m. and you have a one year old. And we all know what is going on: it’s feeding time, it’s changing time, or it is simply time to say “hi everyone! I am up and excited to be here!” But you have a presentation at work the next day, carpool in the morning, and this is night number 10 in a row, so what does a sleep deprived parent do?

A new study has told us exactly what may be happening, and no big surprises here: Mom gets up more than Dad! A University of Michigan researcher (having reviewed 20,000 working parents from 2003-2007) has given us the “first known nationally representative data documenting substantial gender differences in getting up at night-mainly for babies and small children.”

Not only do women get up more than men (working women are 2 ½ times more likely to get up than working dads: 32% of women compared to 11% of men) but:

• Women stay up for an average of 44 min as compared to 30 minutes for men
• The difference is maintained even with many other variables taken into account, including
  • Employment status
  • Income
  • Education levels
• Sole bread-winner moms seem to have it even worse: 28% of sole provider working moms have interrupted sleep, compared to only 4 % of sole provider working dads!

The good news is that according to this study this difference and the actual interruptions decline with the age of the child. As the child gets older (ages 3-5) the difference is less, just 3% for working moms and 1% for working dads.

My suggestion for any parents with a newborn:

1. Consult with your pediatrician to make sure that there is no emergent physical reason for these awakenings (e.g., Colic or reflux)

2. Consider an “on-call” rotation similar to other professions for example:

   a. Mom takes Monday, Wednesday and Friday nights

   b. Dad takes Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday nights

   c. And you rotate every other Sunday

3. Look at your internal biological clock and see what may work better:
a. Is one parent a night owl and the other an early to bed, early to rise person?
b. Split the night in half and each take a shift!

And a special note to all the Moms who have Dads who help out in the middle of the night (but you probably already know this): He’s a keeper!

Sweet Dreams,

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