Stress Affects Sleep

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As we know, healthy sleep is means obtaining adequate amount of quality sleep. It should be a complete process of sleep cycles throughout the night.

Getting healthy sleep is important as getting balanced diet and regular exercise. It can't be denied that sleep deprivation affects your physical and emotional health. That's the core reason to make healthy sleep a main component to living a healthy lifestyle.

Stress can cause our muscles to tense, prevent us from being in relaxed state. Therefore, stress affects our sleep.

Stress hormone, Cortisol is secreted into the bloodstream during our body's response to stress. When we feeling stressed, the higher and prolonged cortisol levels in the bloodstream could cause negative effects such as imbalance of blood sugar (hyperglycemia), higher blood pressure, suppressed thyroid function, and decreased in bone density and muscle tissue as well as insomnia.

It is always recommended to manage our stress well and have better quality of sleep.

Get better sleep ...

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Good Night's Sleep

Everyone needs sleep. Our brain is more responsive to internal stimuli than the external one during sleep. External stimuli like sound and light cause no effect to our responsive system at this moment.

There are two types of sleep :

1) Non-rapid eye movement (NREM)
- deeper stages of sleep
- hard to awakening
2) Rapid eye movement (REM)
- "dream sleep"
- easier to awake

As we know, infants sleep the most. A new born can sleeps between 14 to 16 hours per day. When the baby grows older, eventually the sleeping time reduces. At the age of about 6 months, there will only be an overnight sleep with a nap during the day.

Seniors take longer time to fall asleep and awake more during the night. This could be a cause to insomnia which happened more in this age group of people.

A good sleep is important in order to be alert throughout the day. A person would feel refreshed and able to catch up important things much faster than those without a good sleep during the night.

Long term sleep deprivation will trigger health alarm as it could decreases the quality of life and leads to morbidity and mortality. Common effects are on cardiovascular, respiratory and endocrine function.

Ways to have a good night's sleep

• Establish a consistent, calming bedtime routine. Going to bed and getting up at about same time each day
• Don't take nap during the day. Afternoon nap may keeps you awake at night
• Early dinner helps. Get a light dinner before 7pm
• Don't take coffee or caffeine products after lunch. Caffeine keeps you awake
  
• Have a more comfort and quiet room to sleep in
• Avoid alcohol as its breakdown produces chemicals that stimulate the individual. Snoring may increases as it relaxes the muscles. You only could have a lighter sleep then
• Dark room helps our body in producing melatonin, the hormone that helps us sleep. Avoid sleep with light on
• Don't put mobile phone or electronics gadgets nearby your bed as the electromagnetic fields affect our health and cause sleeping disorder

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Female Health after Menopause

Menopause is the permanent cessation of reproductive fertility for a woman. The sudden decline in estrogen from menopause can cause various health concerns to women.

The consequence health risks following the lack of estrogen are :

1) Osteoporosis - The ability of the body to build new bone cells after menopause is reduced while the body still discarding the old bone tissues. This will cause the existing bones lose their density and becoming porous and brittle.

2) Heart disease and stroke - Heart disease is the number one killer among American women above 50 years. This shown that women become more at risk of heart attacks and stroke after menopause.

3) Dry skin - Estrogen is responsible for the level of collagen and moisture content in the skin. During menopause, the reduced estrogen levels can cause skin starts to age and it becomes dry and listless. On the other hand, lack of collagen will cause wrinkles to appear especially around the eyes, lips and chin.

4) Weight gain - "Female hormone" as the name of it, we called estrogen. It gives female the curves. Generally, women shape is like an hourglass. However, this shape changes after menopause. Healthy lifestyle is important in order to maintain the shapely body.

5) Disruption in cognitive function - When ovaries stop functioning, it brings effects to the major hormones in the body, eg. Estrogen, progesterone and testosterone. It is clear to us that why menopausal women may feel excessively tired, depressed and anxious. Short-term memory loss is one of the effect too. Some of them need menopause therapy.

6) Female cancers - The increased risks of endometrial and breast cancer may occur after menopause. That is why experts advice menopausal women adopting a healthy and active lifestyle. Practicing good habits such as having low fat balanced diet, regular exercise and positive outlook can help.

7) Urinary tract changes - Urinary problems arise following menopause. Like the vaginal walls, the urethra also undergoes changes and resulted urinary problems, such as frequent urges to urinate and incontinence. The advice for menopausal women is to avoid overfilling the bladder and reduce the intake of diuretics such as coffee and tea.

8) Facial hair growth or hair loss - Some menopausal women may find coarser hair growth on their faces. Hair loss from the scalp may appears in the early stages of menopause as the body adapts to the changes caused by menopause.




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Heart Disease and Overweight

Do you know that anyone with more than 20% or 30% above the proper body weight for their age, height and sex, is 2 to 3 times more prone to heart disease than the normal person? Obesity is now the major factor for coronary heart disease and this can lead to heart attack.

Being in unhealthy weight range, even your cholesterol is under control and your blood pressure is normal, you too have a high risk in getting heart disease. And, the fact is that heart disease is number one killer among women in America.

Two measurements can be used to determine if your weight is linked to the risk of heart disease, they are Body Mass Index (BMI) and waist circumference. From BMI indicator, it will tells you exactly if you are overweight or obese. On the other hand, a waist measurement of over 40 inches in men and over 35 inches in women can increase the heart disease risk significantly.

Decreasing in weight can go a long way to decrease your heart disease risk. Exercise can help in control the heart disease risk by reducing excess fat in the body. So, you should work out consistently if you want to have a healthy heart.

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