Sleeping on your back

Sleeping on your side

General guidelines for sleeping:

• Sleep so that your back is in a neutral position. The neutral position keeps the back in its natural three front-to-back curves that give the spine an “S” shape.
• Use a rolled towel to support your lower back or place a pillow under your knees when sleeping on your back.
• Place a pillow between your knees when sleeping on your side.

To rise from bed:

• Roll onto your side and bend both knees.
• Drop your feet over the side of the bed as you push with both arms to sit up.
• Slide to the edge of the bed and position your feet under your buttocks.
• Stand up, keeping your back in the neutral position.

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The spiritual effects of a substance in “sacred mushrooms” can last more than a year, Johns Hopkins researchers claim.

The scientists said their investigations may lead to new ways to help people with conditions such as cancer, depression and drug dependence.

In a previous study, the researchers gave psilocybin to 36 healthy, well-educated volunteers with active spiritual lives. After taking the substance under controlled conditions, 60 percent of the participants reported have a “full mystical experience.”

When the researchers checked with the volunteers 14 months later, the same percentage said taking psilocybin increased their sense of well-being or life satisfaction.

“Most of the volunteers looked back on their experience up to 14 months later and rated it as the most, or one of the five most, personally meaningful and spiritually significant of their lives,” lead investigator Roland Griffiths, a professor in the departments of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and neuroscience, said in a prepared statement.

The study was published in the current issue of the Journal of Psychopharmacology.

“This is truly remarkable finding, “Griffiths said. “Rarely in psychological research do we see such persistently positive reports from a single event in the laboratory. This gives credence to claims that the mystical-type experiences some people have during hallucinogen sessions may help patients suffering from cancer-related anxiety or depression, and may serve as a potential treatment for drug dependence. We’re eager to move ahead with that research.”

He noted that while some of the volunteers “reported strong fear or anxiety for a portion of their day-long psilocybin sessions, none reported any lingering harmful effects, and we didn’t observe any clinical evidence of harm.”

However, if hallucinogens are used in poorly supervised settings, the possible fear or anxiety responses could lead to harmful behaviors, Griffiths warned.

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I recently got poison ivy from doing someone else’s garden so I thought I’d share some prevention methods.

How do you get poison ivy?
From touching it, or touching something that has touched it, like your clothes or your dog. You normally get it from touching the leaves, but yanking the vine out by the roots - even in winter - will give you a wicked rash.

Using a weedeater to remove poison ivy will result in spraying your legs with poison ivy. If you are bare-legged and get scratches while splattered with sap from poison ivy, you may be headed to the emergency room.
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Sleep deprivation can affect your ability to make sense of what you see, a study by neuroscience researchers at the Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School in Singapore shows.

Using MRI to measure blood flow in the brains of volunteers, the researchers found that even after sleep deprivation, participants had periods of near-normal brain function in which they were able to complete tasks quickly. However, periods of slow response and severe declines in visual processing were mixed in with these periods of normalcy.

“Interestingly, the team found that a sleep-deprived brain can normally process simple visuals, like flashing checkerboards. But the ‘higher visual areas’ — those that are responsible for making sense of what we see — didn’t function well. Herein lies the peril of sleep deprivation,” study author Dr. Michael Chee, a professor of the neurobehavioral disorders program at Duke-NUS, said in a prepared statement.

During these slow visual responses, the volunteers showed significant reductions in their higher visual cortex activity. At the same time, their frontal and parietal “control regions” were less able to make their usual connections.

The mixture of sleep deprivation-related cognitive lapses and near normalcy demonstrate the competing effects of trying to remain awake while the brain is trying to power down for sleep, when it ordinarily becomes less responsive to sensory stimuli, Chee said.

The study, published in the May 21 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience, has implications for the many people who work night shifts.

“The periods of apparently normal functioning could give a false sense of competency and security, when in fact, the brain’s inconsistency could have dire consequences,” Chee said.

“The study task appeared simple, but as we showed in previous work, you can’t effectively memorize or process what you see if your brain isn’t capturing that information,” Chee noted. “The next step in our work is to see what we might do to improve things, besides just offering coffee, now that we have a better idea of where the weak links in the system are.”

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For now, men who want to do their part for birth control have meager choices: A vasectomy — meant to be permanent — and condoms.

For years, experts have predicted that male contraception is under development and that more choices will be here soon.

But when? Experts agree it’s still a ways off, but it’s getting closer.

“It has been slow,” said Dr. Ronald Swerdloff, a researcher in the quest to find feasible male contraceptive methods. But there are good reasons for that slow pace, added Swerdloff, an endocrinologist and chief of the division of endocrinology at Harbor-UCLA and professor of medicine at the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles.

Pharmaceutical companies are reluctant to take on a new product quickly because of untested liability issues, he said. And “one of the biggest single issues has to do with the fact that contraception in general is a difficult area it would be used by large numbers of healthy individuals.” The safety threshold, he noted, is high. Still, he added, more options are moving closer.

“If we really focus on studies, with funding, it could be four or five years” before more options might be available, said Elaine Lissner, director of the Male Contraception Information Project, a San Francisco-based organization.

The problem, she added, is that the research has been scattergun. “If we [continue to] do a study here, a study there, as we have for the last 20 years, it could take forever.”

At a “Future of Male Contraception” conference, sponsored by the U.S. National Institutes of Health in Seattle, a variety of methods were reviewed, including:

* Hormonal therapy and testicular warming — Swerdloff and his team found that giving men testosterone and another hormone with testicular warming helped suppress sperm. “The transient testicular warming [like sitting in a spa] causes the suppression to occur much earlier [than the hormones alone],” he said.
* Transdermal gels — In another study by Swerdloff’s team, 140 men applied either a progestin gel called Nestorone or a testosterone gel, or both. The researchers studied various doses and then drew blood samples to measure hormone levels. They reported on the 119 men who complied and finished the study, concluding that the combination worked better to suppress sperm.
* “Intra Vas Device,” or IVD — An alternative to a vasectomy, this method involves inserting silicone plugs into the vas deferens, the tube sperm move through and the same tube cut in a vasectomy. “The sperm can’t get past the plugs,” said Joe Hofmeister, president of Shepherd Medical Company in St. Paul, Minn., the IVD developer. “Preliminary six-month data show that 90 percent of 60 men [tracked to date] have zero motile sperm,” he said. More study is needed to track the IVD for reversibility, Hofmeister said.
* Vitamin A blocker — Columbia University researchers tested a drug abandoned by a pharmaceutical company because it interferes with vitamin A receptors in the testes, lowering fertility. It worked well in animal studies; whether it will do the same in human studies is not yet known.

These approaches, if successful, will take several more years to get market approval, all the researchers agreed.

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 Most are harmless, but occasionally, they’re a signal something’s not right
By Alicia Potter

Your jaw pops like a bowl of Rice Krispies, in meetings, at mealtime, even during candlelight moments. Is it a joint that needs fixing, or just an annoying sound you can live with? Most body noises, although embarrassing, are harmless. Occasionally, they’re a signal that something’s not quite right. Health Magazine decodes what your body is telling you, from top to bottom, and what to do about it.
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Listening to music can reduce chronic pain by up to 21 per cent and depression by up to 25 per cent, according to a paper in the latest UK-based Journal of Advanced Nursing.
It can also make people feel more in control of their pain and less disabled by their condition.

Researchers carried out a controlled clinical trial with sixty people, dividing them into two music groups and a control group.

They found that people who listened to music for an hour every day for a week reported improved physical and psychological symptoms compared to the control group.

The participants, who had an average age of 50, were recruited from pain and chiropractic clinics in Ohio, USA. They had been suffering from a range of painful conditions, including osteoarthritis, disc problems and rheumatoid arthritis, for an average of six and a half years.

90 per cent said the pain affected more than one part of their body and 95 per cent said it was continuous. Before the music study, participants reported that their usual pain averaged just under six on a zero to ten pain scale and their worst pain exceeded nine out of ten.
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Could the key to weight loss for some people be as simple as getting some extra shuteye?

Possibly. New research suggests that people who don’t get enough sleep tend to weigh more — and that sleep can affect levels of the appetite-regulating hormones leptin and ghrelin.

“There is a dynamic balance between proper sleep and proper health. Sleep deprivation affects weight and a lot of other things. If you cheat sleep, there are a number of consequences, including affecting your hormones, appetite and mood,” said Dr. Patrick Strollo, medical director of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center’s Sleep Medicine Center.

Two out of three Americans are overweight, and almost one in five are obese, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And, while most people are aware of the relationship of diet and exercise to excess weight, few realize that the amount of sleep they get each night can also affect their weight.

Researchers at the Sleep Disorders Center at Sentara Norfolk General Hospital in Virginia conducted two studies, each included 1,000 men and women, and they found that those who reported sleeping less tended to weigh more.

Of course, it could be that being overweight might make it harder to get a restful night sleep.

“People who are overweight may have less restful sleep due to heartburn, snoring or more serious sleep disorders like sleep apnea or night eating syndrome,” said Dr. Michelle May, author of “Am I Hungry? What To Do When Diets Don’t Work.”

But, she said, “It works both ways,” and that a lack of sleep can affect your weight. Sleep deprivation affects your body chemistry, appetite and the choices that you make throughout the day, May said.

Another recent study included 12 healthy men in their 20s. Each of the men slept only four hours for two nights. The study found that levels of leptin, a hormone that tells the brain it’s time to stop eating because the stomach is full, decreased by 18 percent during the two-day study period. Levels of another hormone, ghrelin, which turns the hunger mechanism on, increased by 28 percent.

On average, the men reported that their hunger pangs increased by 24 percent.

“Hormones change with sleep loss and deprivation,” said Strollo. “Sleep deprivation can affect appetite and also the type of food that one desires. When you’re sleep-deprived, you generally don’t crave carrot sticks.”

May agreed, adding, “When you’re tired, you’re less resilient to stress and other common emotional triggers for eating. When you eat to help you cope with emotions, you’re more likely to choose comfort foods like chocolate, ice cream or chips. And, since eating only helps temporarily, you may find yourself reaching for food again and again to try to make yourself feel better.

“Getting enough sleep is the best way to prevent sleep deprivation from contributing to weight gain,” May advised. “When you aren’t able to get your Zzzs, pay more attention to how much you eat and how you handle fatigue and stress. A short walk will be a better energy boost than a trip to the candy machine.”

Strollo said that while most people need between seven and eight hours of sleep a night, there are some people who need as many as 10 and others who may do well on just five hours.

The best way to figure out how much sleep you need, he said, is to take a long vacation and after a couple of days of catching up on your sleep debt, see how many hours of sleep you need to wake without an alarm clock. Since many Americans don’t take long vacations, if you feel that you’re not fully functional all day, or that you’re doing things to stay awake, like a double-espresso shot, you’re probably not getting enough sleep, he said.

May added that it’s important to remember that “healthy eating, physical activity and sleep are not luxuries, they are necessities.”

National Sleep Foundation 

One possible treatment option for insomnia seems to be paradox: You should try to restrict you sleeping time! This can help to reduce the time you spend awake in your bed and all the worrying about the problems to fall asleep. Restriction of sleep will cause you to become tired again and to establish new routines to fall asleep.

Usually one starts sleep restriction therapy at first with only a very short period of sleep during the night. Then this time will increase until a normal sleeping time is achieved.

To start this kind of treatment you have to stick to a strict regime and stay awake even if you feel sleepy or have problems to spend the time in the late evening. If you start with a sleeping time of 4 hours you would have to stay up until 2 or 3 am if you decide to go up at 6 or 7 in the morning. And this not only for normal working days but also weekend or public holidays. If you find sleep for this short period you can increase the sleeping time by 15 or 30 min until you finally reach a normal sleeping time according to your personal needs.

* Don’t go to bed until you feel sleepy, even if this is later than your normal bedtime.
* Set your alarm clock to wake you about 6.30 am, even if this means you only get a few hours sleep for the first few nights.
* If you don’t fall asleep within 30 minutes, get up until you feel sleepy again.
* Avoid napping during the day, so that you are very tired at night.
* As your sleep improves gradually go to bed earlier and continue to get up early so you get a full night’s sleep and establish a regular routine.

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Certain variations in a gene that helps regulate stress response offer protection against depression in adults who suffered abuse when they were children, a new study says.

Adults who were abused as children and didn’t have the protective variations of the CRHR1 gene had twice the symptoms of moderate to severe depression, compared to those with the variations.

The researchers interviewed more than 400 adults and tested their DNA. About one-third of them had the protective variations in the gene that produces CRHR1, a receptor for the stress hormone corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH).
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