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March 2009
What about Sleep?
I don't know about you, but I love to sleep, especially if it is that great, deep, uninterrupted dreamless and restful sleep. That is actually the sleep that was meant to be “normal”. The natural sleep cycle is falling asleep easily and sleeping through the night without interruption. If that does not reflect your sleeping pattern, Oriental Medicine may have a remedy for you.
We need the most sleep as babies, and then the need for sleep gradually decreases over the lifetime. There are great charts on-line that suggest an average amount of sleep needed by age. You and your child may fall on the outer edges of the statistical Bell curve. The fact is that everyone can get better, deeper and more restful sleep when the body is in balance.
In the Western hemisphere, stress is a leading factor in sleep disturbance. This applies to both children and adults. In addition to stress, children love the latest technologies, (video games, TV, DVD, cell phones, texting and e-mails/web-surfing), that stimulate their brains into overdrive. And they try to play until the last minute before your, “Stop and sleep” command makes them turn off the techno gear. How can a stimulated brain calm down enough to fall asleep easily? Can your brain stop “on command” when the last thing you did was turn off the 11 o'clock news touting the horrors of failing economy and terror and killings all around the globe? If your sleep is suffering, it’s time to check late night rituals.
Remember when your children were small and you rocked them to sleep? This bonding before sleep actually relaxed both you and your child significantly. Maybe it’s time to return to the simpler family rituals. If your sleep is still disrupted, seek help. You’ll be finding answers for yourself that will automatically get passed on to your little ones.
One of the easiest “remedies” that I have found in my clinic for the patients that wake up in the middle of the night is to ask them to cut out dessert after dinner. I am fascinated how many Americans have a bowl of ice cream before bed. When we eat refined sweets, our blood sugar levels spike, since the body does not have to do much digestive work to break that down to sugars that can be assimilated into the blood stream. Oriental medicine includes sugar-substitutes because the body reacts to sweet tastes, and not only to glycemic indices.
Why do I say that this has an impact on your sleep/makes you wake up? You eat your ice cream, and the brain gets the message of extra sugars being dumped in the blood. The brain tells the pancreas to produce insulin to get the sugar out of the blood and stored in fat cells where it goes. The insulin drops the sugar level significantly and the brain “panics” because it needs the sugar to function. Now, the panicked brain thinks it might be “starving”, and sends out adrenalin, which wakes you up. Sounds familiar? You wake up from a deep sleep, and don't know why. Of course, then our normal stressors we have on our mind kick in and we start thinking, which also fights the return to sleep. Not recognizing that we are hungry, we begin to think it is a normal occurrence for us to stay awake every night from 1-3am or 3-5am.
Well, it is not normal. Try giving up the dessert or ice cream! Eat a balanced meal at night, with a good amount of protein, vegetables and complex carbohydrates. Your blood sugar level will respond by staying level because your digestive system breaks down first easier and then more and more complex chains. Amazingly, you won't wake up, and will feel much more rested in the morning.
If your digestive system is stressed or very weakened form the years of “bad foods” then consider complementary medicine to balance and rebuild your digestive body function.
As for your children, implement rituals of calmer activities before bed time and make sure they really get enough hours of sleep. Leave sodas, coffee and teas (except herbal) out at least from 5pm. Turn off the technology and open a book, which acts as a meditative segue from the busy day to sleep. With good sleep and healthy rituals, family life can be more harmonious. Maybe Norman Rockwell's subjects just knew about healthy nutrition, Oriental Medicine and calming rituals before bed! Sleep well!
