If you've been following my recent blogs, you will know that this is the final edition of my series on the Science of Sleep. In the first and second articles I covered general information on the neurology and physical impacts of sleep, as well as the types of sleep.

This final article will address "sleeping tips” and a special section from Rod Eller a good friend and client. Also, remember to check out the "Two Myths of Sleep" at the end of each article.

 Sleeping Tips

This sleeping tips have been adapted from When You Can't Sleep: The ABCs of ZZZs, by the National Sleep Foundation.

Set a schedule.  Go to bed at a set time each night and get up at the same time each morning. Disrupting this schedule may lead to insomnia. "Sleeping in" on weekends also makes it harder to wake up early on Monday morning because it re-sets your sleep cycles for a later awakening.

Exercise:  Try to exercise 20 to 30 minutes a day. Daily exercise often helps people sleep, although a workout soon before bedtime may interfere with sleep. For maximum benefit, try to get your exercise about 5 to 6 hours before going to bed.

Avoid caffeine, nicotine, and alcohol: Avoid drinks that contain caffeine, which acts as a stimulant and keeps people awake. Sources of caffeine include coffee, chocolate, soft drinks, non-herbal teas, diet drugs, and some pain relievers. Smokers tend to sleep very lightly and often wake up in the early morning due to nicotine withdrawal. Alcohol robs people of deep sleep and REM sleep and keeps them in the lighter stages of sleep.

Relax before bed: A warm bath, reading, or another relaxing routine can make it easier to fall sleep. You can train yourself to associate certain restful activities with sleep and make them part of your bedtime ritual.

Sleep until sunlight:  If possible, wake up with the sun, or use very bright lights in the morning. Sunlight helps the body's internal biological clock reset itself each day. Sleep experts recommend exposure to an hour of morning sunlight for people having problems falling asleep.

Don't lie in bed awake: If you can't get to sleep, don't just lie in bed. Do something else, like reading, watching television, or listening to music, until you feel tired. The anxiety of being unable to fall asleep can actually contribute to insomnia.

Control your room temperature:  Maintain a comfortable temperature in the bedroom. Extreme temperatures may disrupt sleep or prevent you from falling asleep.

See a doctor if your sleeping problem continues: If you have trouble falling asleep night after night, or if you always feel tired the next day, then you may have a sleep disorder and should see a physician. Your primary care physician may be able to help you; if not, you can probably find a sleep specialist at a major hospital near you. Most sleep disorders can be treated effectively, so you can finally get that good night's sleep you need.

Some of you may know Rod Eller, Senior Vice President of Sales at Berkshire Hathaway Home Services Carolinas Realty.   Rod has become a good friend over the years and chimed in via email during this blog series on sleep.  Here are some thoughts from Rod: 

"I’ve been doing a lot of reading about sleep over the last year.  I have never slept much…six hours tops most of my life.  

I have developed new beliefs and I’ve convinced myself that it is a trained habit so I have been in the process of retraining my sleep habits.  When I concentrate on it, I sleep more.   When I allow normal behavior to take over again, I fall back into the 6 hour or less habit.  

Take a look at Tom Rath’s book Eat, Move, Sleep – Tom is a Gallop researcher that did tons of research for his own health reasons.   One of the eye openers for me was the chemical issues on the brain related to sleep and more importantly Ericsson’s 1993 study on sleep and performance.  

While I knew about Ericsson’s research on the 10,000 hours of deliberate practice as it related to greatness, I was not aware that the study also revealed that the best performers slept an average of 8 hours 36 minutes.  What is great about Rath is that he cites scientific data on everything he describes in the book."  

When I asked Rod, how does he “practice better sleep”, he answered:

"The bottom-line is you set goals and measure.   When I was having the most success was when I had rituals,  prepared,  and eliminated stimulus that reportedly makes deep sleep troublesome.   

Rituals:  Shut everything off 1 hour before going to bed – no books, no TV and no electronics (although I do use a bluetooth speaker for playing sleeping noise).    I use that time to stretch and breath for relaxation.   In bed, it must be dark – no light at all – clocks and such with no display.  

Measure:  I measured effective sleep.  I wore a device that measured my sleep and I used that to try to beat my numbers from the previous night.  When I was diligent I added an hour on average to my sleep.  I went from an average of 5.75 hours to 6.75 .  I even recorded some 7.5 hour nights.  The problem is that I had to stay focused on the ritual.  I recently lost the habits on an out of town stay and have fallen back into watching ESPN or reading before bed.   What Rath wrote in his book is that the hour before you go to sleep frames the rest of the night.  He calls it "protecting the final hour."

Thanks to Rod for your insight and personal experience. 

 Here are your final two sleep myths: 

You need prescription drugs if you have insomnia every night.
Sleep meds are designed for short-term sleep problems, caused by stressful events like the loss of a job or taking a transatlantic flight.

People with longer-term problems benefit more from cognitive behavioral therapy — essentially, retraining your perceptions of sleep and learning better sleep habits, such as going to bed at the same time every night, avoiding TVs and computers before bed, staying away from caffeine at least six hours before sleep, and other lifestyle changes.

In fact, in 2005, the National Institutes of Health concluded that this type of therapy is as effective as prescription drugs for short-term treatment of chronic insomnia. In many cases, a sleeping pill may not even solve your sleep problem. "About half the people who think they have insomnia may have anxiety or depression," says Daniel Kripke, M.D., a University of California at San Diego sleep expert.

You can make up for lost sleep on weekends.
 Bingeing on Zs over the weekend and not sleeping during the week — what Harvard sleep expert Robert Stickgold, Ph.D., calls "sleep bulimia" — upsets your circadian rhythms and makes it even harder to get refreshing sleep.

Sleeping until noon on Sunday generally prevents you from hitting the sheets by 10 that night. So instead of correcting your deficit from the week before, you set up a no-sleep cycle for the week to come. "The body loves consistency," says Donna Arand, Ph.D., spokeswoman for the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. Best to rise around the same time every day, even on weekends.

 Sleep myths source: http://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/features/7-myths-about-sleep

Editor's Note: This article was written by Dr. David Mashburn. Dave is a Clinical and Consulting Psychologist, a Partner at Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle. 

At 54 years of age, I have noticed that my sleep patterns are significantly different than they were when I was younger. So I decided to do some research on the latest sleep research and pass on my findings to our readers. There was enough information here to fill 3 editions.

In the first edition I covered general information on sleep and today’s will cover “Why we sleep?” The final article will be on "Sleeping Tips.” Remember to check out the 2 Myths of Sleep at the end of each article.

Why We Sleep? The below excerpt is from NIH (National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke)

Although scientists are still trying to learn exactly why people need sleep, animal studies show that sleep is necessary for survival. For example, while rats normally live for two to three years, those deprived of REM sleep survive only about 5 weeks on average, and rats deprived of all sleep stages live only about 3 weeks. Some studies suggest that sleep deprivation affects the immune system in detrimental ways.

Sleep appears necessary for our nervous systems to work properly. Too little sleep leaves us drowsy and unable to concentrate the next day. It also leads to impaired memory and physical performance and reduced ability to carry out math calculations. If sleep deprivation continues, hallucinations and mood swings may develop. Some experts believe sleep gives neurons used while we are awake a chance to shut down and repair themselves. Without sleep, neurons may become so depleted in energy or so polluted with byproducts of normal cellular activities that they begin to malfunction. Sleep also may give the brain a chance to exercise important neuronal connections that might otherwise deteriorate from lack of activity.

Deep sleep coincides with the release of growth hormone in children and young adults. Many of the body's cells also show increased production and reduced breakdown of proteins during deep sleep. Since proteins are the building blocks needed for cell growth and for repair of damage from factors like stress and ultraviolet rays, deep sleep may truly be "beauty sleep." Activity in parts of the brain that control emotions, decision-making processes, and social interactions is drastically reduced during deep sleep, suggesting that this type of sleep may help people maintain optimal emotional and social functioning while they are awake. A study in rats also showed that certain nerve-signaling patterns which the rats generated during the day were repeated during deep sleep. This pattern repetition may help encode memories and improve learning.

REM Sleep?

We typically spend more than 2 hours each night dreaming. Scientists do not know much about how or why we dream. Sigmund Freud, who greatly influenced the field of psychology, believed dreaming was a "safety valve" for unconscious desires. Only after 1953, when researchers first described REM in sleeping infants, did scientists begin to carefully study sleep and dreaming. They soon realized that the strange, illogical experiences we call dreams almost always occur during REM sleep. While most mammals and birds show signs of REM sleep, reptiles and other cold-blooded animals do not.

REM sleep begins with signals from an area at the base of the brain called the pons. These signals travel to a brain region called the thalamus, which relays them to the cerebral cortex – the outer layer of the brain that is responsible for learning, thinking, and organizing information. The pons also sends signals that shut off neurons in the spinal cord, causing temporary paralysis of the limb muscles. If something interferes with this paralysis, people will begin to physically "act out" their dreams – a rare, dangerous problem called REM sleep behavior disorder. A person dreaming about a ball game, for example, may run headlong into furniture or blindly strike someone sleeping nearby while trying to catch a ball in the dream.

REM sleep stimulates the brain regions used in learning. This may be important for normal brain development during infancy, which would explain why infants spend much more time in REM sleep than adults. Like deep sleep, REM sleep is associated with increased production of proteins. One study found that REM sleep affects learning of certain mental skills. People taught a skill and then deprived of non-REM sleep could recall what they had learned after sleeping, while people deprived of REM sleep could not.

And here are my two promised myths of sleep taken from Seven Myths about sleep:

Some people function perfectly on four hours of sleep.

Legendary short sleepers — including Bill Clinton, Madonna, and Margaret Thatcher — don't necessarily do better on fewer Zs. "They're just not aware of how sleepy they are," says Thomas Roth, Ph.D., sleep researcher at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit. Too little sleep is bad for your health and your image: It can make you ineffective (it impairs performance, judgment, and the ability to pay attention), sick (it weakens your immune system), and overweight. In fact, women who slept five hours or less a night were a third more likely to gain 33 pounds or more over 16 years than women who slept seven hours, according to a Harvard Nurses' Health Study. Oddly, cutting too much sleep and getting less than six hours is associated with the same problems as sleeping too long: a higher risk of heart problems and death. And, of course, cheating on sleep hurts you behind the wheel: "Wakefulness for 18 hours makes you perform almost as though you're legally drunk," says Walsleben.

Waking up during the night means you'll be tired all day.

Au contraire: It might be our natural cycle. Many animals sleep this way, and there are a lot of indications that our ancestors did, too, perhaps stirring nightly to talk or have sex, says Thomas Wehr, M.D., scientist emeritus at the National Institute of Mental Health. When 15 people in one of his studies lived without artificial lights for a few weeks, they wound up sleeping three to five hours, waking up for one or two, then sleeping again for four or more hours — and they said they had never felt so rested.

Until next edition enjoy your dreams and don’t get hung up on waking at 3AM.

Editor's Note: This article was written by Dr. David Mashburn. Dave is a Clinical and Consulting Psychologist, a Partner at Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle. 

At 54 years of age, I have noticed that my sleep patterns are significantly different than when I was younger. So I decided to do some exploration on the latest sleep research and pass on my findings to our readers.

There is so much of interest and value that I am going to share the facts over the next 3 blog editions. There will be a couple of "sleep myths" at the end of each article – just to keep you awake!

Today's topic covers general information on sleep as provided by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke; a branch of the National Institute of Health.

"The amount of sleep each person needs depends on many factors, including age. Infants generally require about 16 hours a day, while teenagers need about 9 hours on average. For most adults, 7 to 8 hours a night appears to be the best amount of sleep, although some people may need as few as 5 hours or as many as 10 hours of sleep each day. Women in the first 3 months of pregnancy often need several more hours of sleep than usual. The amount of sleep a person needs also increases if he or she has been deprived of sleep in previous days. Getting too little sleep creates a "sleep debt," which is much like being overdrawn at a bank. Eventually, your body will demand that the debt be repaid. We don't seem to adapt to getting less sleep than we need; while we may get used to a sleep-depriving schedule, our judgment, reaction time, and other functions are still impaired.

People tend to sleep more lightly and for shorter time spans as they get older, although they generally need about the same amount of sleep as they needed in early adulthood. About half of all people over 65 have frequent sleeping problems, such as insomnia, and deep sleep stages in many elderly people often become very short or stop completely. This change may be a normal part of aging, or it may result from medical problems that are common in elderly people and from the medications and other treatments for those problems.

Experts say that if you feel drowsy during the day, even during boring activities, you haven't had enough sleep. If you routinely fall asleep within 5 minutes of lying down, you probably have severe sleep deprivation, possibly even a sleep disorder. Micro-sleeps, or very brief episodes of sleep in an otherwise awake person, are another mark of sleep deprivation. In many cases, people are not aware that they are experiencing micro-sleeps. The widespread practice of "burning the candle at both ends" in western industrialized societies has created so much sleep deprivation that what is really abnormal sleepiness is now almost the norm.

Many studies make it clear that sleep deprivation is dangerous….Driver fatigue is responsible for an estimated 100,000 motor vehicle accidents and 1500 deaths each year, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Since drowsiness is the brain's last step before falling asleep, driving while drowsy can – and often does – lead to disaster. The National Sleep Foundation says that if you have trouble keeping your eyes focused, if you can't stop yawning, or if you can't remember driving the last few miles, you are probably too drowsy to drive safely."

As promised, to end this edition, I have included 2 Myths about sleep from WedMD:

1. To function best, you need to get eight hours. 
There's nothing magic about that number. Everyone has different sleep needs, and you'll know you're getting enough when you don't feel like nodding off in a boring situation in the afternoon, says New York University psychologist Joyce Walsleben, Ph.D., co-author of A Woman's Guide to Sleep .

2. If you can get it, more sleep is always healthier. 
You wish. Some studies have found that people who slept more than eight hours a night died younger than people who got between six and eight hours. What scientists don't know yet: Whether sleeping longer causes poor health or is a symptom of it, says Najib Ayas, M.D., MPH, assistant professor of medicine at the University of British Columbia. Long sleepers may suffer from problems such as sleep apnea, depression, or uncontrolled diabetes that make them spend more time in bed.

Editor's Note: This article was written by Dr. David Mashburn. Dave is a Clinical and Consulting Psychologist, a Partner at Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle.