Résumé du livre

Informationen zum Autor Dianne Hales Klappentext EVERY DAY STARTS WITH A GOOD NIGHT'S SLEEP Did you just suppress a yawn? Are you one of the walking weary-the 100 million Americans who suffer from occasional or chronic sleep problems? If so! you know how serious the problem can be: troubled sleepers can lead troubled lives. On an average! we spend one third of our lives sleeping-and how we sleep can make the difference between feeling tired all of the time and facing each day with a fresh! energetic attitude. This practical guide to healthy sleep by sleep expert Dianne Hales can help you get the rest you need to get the most out of life. It covers the latest discoveries of "sleep scientists"-whose probing of the mysteries of sleep has led to breakthroughs in treating sleep problems-and includes: 101 mental maneuvers for putting yourself to sleep New treatments for age-old complaints like snoring and sleepwalking Effective methods for overcoming sleep rhythm disorders caused by jet lag or shift changes New insights into how dreams can help you solve daytime problems Simple self-tests to determine if you need professional help-and where to turn if you do Your sleep problem is not insurmountable. You! too! can sleep like a baby and wake up ready for a healthy! active life. CHAPTER 1   A Bedtime Story: What Goes On When the Lights Go Out   Its time for bed. Your eyelids droop. Your limbs grow heavy. Stretching and sighing, you climb between the sheets and turn out the light. But you cant turn off your racing mind or restless body. You toss. You turn. You yawn. You yearn. In the blackness of the night, you worry: You arent going to be able to sleepnot now when youre drowsy, not later when youre desperate, maybe not ever again.   Youre hardly alone in your midnight misery. Researchers estimate that 100 million Americans have occasional or chronic problems sleeping. As one wit observed, If sleep knits up the raveled sleeve of care, a sizable segment of the population is coming a bit unwound. Sleep disorders may plague more men and women than the all-too-common cold.   But while you have to suffer through a cold, you dont have to resign yourself to nights without rest and days without zest. You can sleep better by night and feel better by day. Without pills. Without expensive and extensive tests. Without treatments that make you more miserable than insomnia ever did. In fact, you can do more to improve your sleep than anyone or anything else. This book will show you how. But before you begin sleeping better, you have to understand more about sleep itself.   NIGHT LIFE   Although you may not realize it, you live two livesone in the waking world and one behind closed lids. In all, you spend a third of your life asleep, or more than 220,000 hours over the course of seventy years. You may think that during this time your sleeping body is like a car parked for the night: motionless, engine off, headlights dimmed. It is anything but.   During sleep, muscles tense and relax. Pulse, temperature, and blood pressure rise and fall. Chemicals crucial for well-being course through the bloodstream. The brain, like a Hollywood producer, conjures up fantastic stories, complete with cliffhanger plots and dazzling special effects. In fact, so much happens during sleep that its astounding that we manage to sleep at all.   To understand the process of sleep, imagine yourself descending a staircase. As you close your eyes and drift off, you take a small step down into the first stage of what is called quiet sleep. Stage 1 is a sort of twilight zone between waking and sleep. If roused, youd probably jerk awake quickly and deny that youd slept at all. If you were hooked up to an EEG (electroencephalogram), your brain would produce irregular, rapid electrical waves. Your muscle tension decr...