So what are the solutions? Since we cannot stem the tide of our 24-hour culture, there are some important standards that should be adhered to by employers and employees:

Employers need to keep a uniform work schedule for each employee, and avoid jumping from working day and night shifts across weeks.

Employees need to make a decision about their schedule and stick to it. That means keeping a reliable schedule on and off work. They must avoid extended work hours, including overtime. Shift workers have a hard enough time staying awake through a single shift. Think of the consequences of longer periods at the helm. We should never work more than four night shifts in a row and have at least 48 hours of recovery between shifts.

Finally, nap before every night shift. Studies have shown that prophylactic napping helps people perform better and for longer duration than napping during work hours, or worst of all, at the end of a shift, when mistakes already have been made.

You know the key to health: Eat right, get some exercise and get some rest. As a nation, we are overweight, out of shape and tired. We must include sleep health in our overall approach to well-being at home and in the workplace.

Sara Mednick  - Assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego.

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“If you nap every game day, all those hours add up and it allows you to get through the season better,” Nash said. “I want to improve at that, so by the end of the year, I feel better.”

Nash is among a great majority of N.B.A. players who swear by their pregame nap. They set aside 20 minutes as a part of their pregame ritual. Most are interested in its restorative benefits, although a few may just be trying to counter boredom. Whatever the reason, balls stop bouncing and shoes stop screeching every afternoon.

“Everyone in the league office knows not to call players at 3 p.m.,” said Adam Silver, the league’s deputy commissioner. “It’s the player nap.”

In the United States, napping is often stigmatized, seen as evidence of laziness or a lack of purpose. But in the world of sports, and certainly in the N.B.A., the attitude is entirely different.

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What is amazing from the study is that they show how in just 17 minutes the person had reached stage 2 which is ideal for a power nap. This was with a person who is listening to Speed Sleep for the very first time with wires hooked to their head!

Speed Sleep is designed to take you down quicker and deeper with repeated uses. So the results shown will only improve. Also they used the “Nap Track” which is intended to awaken you to an alert and motivated state (which you see happen in the study). There is a “Nightly Sleep Track” on the cd which they did not use that allows you to continue deeper to sleep and awaken naturally in the morning.

A great study showing that speed sleep works!

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A good night’s rest has clear restorative benefits, but evidence of the actual biological processes that occur during sleep has been elusive.  Studies now show that brain energy levels are key to nightly restoration.

The findings support in biology the basic understanding of the function of sleep. It is somewhat surprising that until now there have been no modern-era studies of brain energy using todays most sensitive measurements.

The studies conclude that sleep is necessary for this energy surge, as keeping awake prevented the surge. The energy increase may then power restorative processes absent during wakefulness, because brain cells consume large amounts of energy just performing daily waking functions.

“This research provides intriguing evidence that a sleep-dependent energy surge is needed to facilitate the restorative biosynthetic processes,” said Robert Greene, MD, PhD, of the University of Texas Southwestern, a sleep expert who was unaffiliated with the study.

This research is aligned with theresults seen from the use of Speed Sleep.  Speed Sleep was specifically designed to deepen sleep and allow access to this research proven restorative process.

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People who sleep after processing and storing a memory carry out their intentions much better than people who try to execute their plan before getting to sleep. The key finding is that researchers have shown how sleep enhances our ability to remember to do something in the future, a skill known as prospective memory.

Researchers that are studying the relationship between memory and sleep say that our ability to carry out our intentions is not so much a function of how firmly that intention has been embedded in our memories. Rather, the trigger that helps carry out our intentions is usually a place, situation or circumstance - some context encountered the next day - that sparks the recall of an intended action.

Prospective memory includes such things as remembering to take a medication, buying a Mother’s Day card or bringing home the ice cream for a birthday party. While the vast majority of sleep literature in psychology is devoted to retrospective memory, this study is the first foray into the relationship between sleep and prospective memory, the kind of memory we put to work every day. The findings, researchers say, offer important contributions to the understanding of the role sleep plays in cognition as well as memory.

Let’s say that you intend to give a friend a message tomorrow, McDaniel explains. Seeing the friend the next day will be a strong cue for remembering to give the message. But, during the time your brain encoded the intention, you’re also vaguely thinking of a place the two of you will meet the next afternoon. The context of the place is weakly associated with your intention to give the message even though you haven’t really thought explicitly about associating the place with the message.

“We found that sleep benefits prospective memory by strengthening the weak associations in the brain, and that hasn’t been shown before,” Scullin says.

“One of the more provocative findings we have is that sleep didn’t strengthen the link between the explicit cue, which is the person, and the intention, rather it strengthened the weak association and the intention,” McDaniel says.

The researchers believe that the prospective memory process occurs during slow wave sleep - an early pattern in the sleep cycle - involving communication between the hippocampus and cortical regions. The hippocampus is very important in memory formation and reactivation and the cortical regions are keys to storing memories.

“We think that during slow wave sleep the hippocampus is reactivating these recently learned memories, taking them up and placing them in long-term storage regions in the brain,” Scullin says. “The physiology of slow wave sleep seems very conducive to this kind of memory strengthening.”

Source:
Gerry Everding
Washington University in St. Louis

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Having diabetes means having your pancreas affected by Type 2 diabetes. Our blood stream contains glucose, which is converted sugar from what we eat. As soon as it’s in our blood cells, the insulin secreted by the pancreas makes it a sort-of fuel which our body utilizes. If you have Type 2 diabetes, it will be difficult for you to produce and use this insulin. Your body’s cells have a hard time looking for this glucose even if it’s all over your body.

An organization known as the American Diabetes Association is tasked with gathering information about this critical medical condition. America, with its 23.6 million people suffering from diabetes, is a very unhealthy country. Around ninety percent of all its diabetics have the Type 2 condition. A lot of diabetics are overweight, and it is not surprising to note that they also have relatives who are like this. The internal organs (and one’s entire nervous system, too) could end up with critical and lasting damage if you have an excess of glucose in you.

The Life of a Diabetic

If you have Type 2 diabetes, you need to live in a healthy manner. Living healthy and engaging in healthy practices will affect you tremendously. Two common examples of healthy routines include exercising and consuming healthy foods. Making sure that your glucose levels stay in the recommended range translates into being able to avoid complications in your health. A finger prick test is a common and reliable way to monitor your body’s blood glucose levels.

This test, according to physicians, is sufficient enough for glucose monitoring like the HbA1c test. The amount of glycated hemoglobin in your blood is determined by this HbA1c test, aside from it alerting you if you reach a high glucose level. Results of these A1c tests show that people with diabetes are at a seven percent level. The CDC reports that if one maintains their a1c levels at seven percent, they could reduce the possibility of risks as high up as forty percent.

Over-Controlled Levels

When your a1c levels dip below 7% you might experience adverse effects, according to recent medical studies. A study conducted by a medical center in Seattle (Lancet and Swedish), indicates that people who keep their median a1c levels and/or use insulin will be at a higher death risk. Then again, many tests indicate that a seven percent maintaining level of a1c is still healthy. Maintaining a seven percent level of a1c is still good, according to the endocrinologist Matt Davies for as long as physicians are well-aware of the medical history of their patients before any treatment is prescribed.

About the Guest Author - Kristina V. Ridley writes on <a href=”http://www.diabetesmeters.org/”>glucose meter readings</a> , her personal hobby blog focused on helping people get free information to prevent diabetes and test blood glucose at home.

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When traveling to a new time zone, our circadian rhythms are slow to adjust and remain on their original biological schedule for several days. This results in our bodies telling us it is time to sleep, when it’s actually the middle of the afternoon, or it makes us want to stay awake when it is late at night. This experience is known as jet lag.

Some simple behavioral adjustments before, during and after arrival at your destination can help minimize some of the side effects of jet lag.

• Select a flight that allows early evening arrival and stay up until 10 p.m. local time. (If you must sleep during the day, take a short nap in the early afternoon, but no longer than 30 minutes. Set an alarm to be sure not to over sleep.)
• Anticipate the time change for trips by getting up and going to bed earlier several days prior to an eastward trip and later for a westward trip.
• Upon boarding the plane, change your watch to the destination time zone.
• Avoid alcohol or caffeine at least three to four hours before bedtime. Both act as “stimulants” and prevent sleep.
• Upon arrival at a destination, avoid heavy meals (a snack—not chocolate—is okay).
• Avoid any heavy exercise close to bedtime. (Light exercise earlier in the day is fine.)
• Bring earplugs and blindfolds to help dampen noise and block out unwanted light while sleeping.
• Try to get outside in the sunlight whenever possible. Daylight is a powerful stimulant for regulating the biological clock. (Staying indoors worsens jet lag.)
• Contrary to popular belief, the type of foods we eat have no effect on minimizing jet lag.

According to experts, stress or the potential for stress is another problem that can lead to sleeplessness. Two common travel related stress conditions are the “First Night Effect” and the “On-Call Effect.” The first condition occurs when trying to sleep in a new or unfamiliar environment. The second is caused by the nagging worry that something just might wake you up, such as the possibility of a phone ringing, hallway noise or another disruption.

Try these tips on you next trip to help avoid travel-related stress and subsequent sleeplessness.

• Check with the hotel to see if voice mail services are available to guests. Then, whenever possible, have your calls handled by the service.
• Check your room for potential sleep disturbances that may be avoided; e.g., light shining through the drapes, unwanted in-room noise, etc.
• Utilize music, ambient noise machines, or even better “Sleep Recordings” in the hotel room to create a familiar pattern for sleep.
• Request two wake-up calls in case you miss the first one.

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Zen and the Art of Sleep offers a surprising discovery for insomniacs. The problem isn’t sleep. The problem is trying to capture and control sleep. Readers new to Zen Buddhism are gently guided down this reflective path. Along the way, emotional baggage and misguided endeavors that feed insomnia fade away. Zen Practice exercises reveal awake and asleep to be part of the same moving stream. Unblocking that flow allows the inevitable bedtime moment of drowsiness, a moment not so different from any other, to proceed naturally and without effort.

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Speed Sleep® CD

	Review Summary
What is the most appropriate, the safest and most effective solution when we cannot fall asleep? Should we drink warm milk, take an herbal supplement or get a prescription for something stronger? Prescription pills can be dangerous and herbs are often unregulated. Guided meditation or soothing sounds may induce relaxation and facilitate sleep. Speed Sleep® is a 25-minute guided visualization using both voice and background music specifically designed to condition the response of deep sleep. It may be an ideal choice for someone experiencing mild to moderate insomnia.
	Concept at a Glance
As mentioned above, Speed Sleep® is a guided visualization using both voice and background music specifically designed to condition the response of deep sleep. Track one includes The Daily Speed Sleep® Nap, designed for “power naps”. Track two consists of The Nightly Speed Sleep® Accelerator, which includes soothing sounds that are meant to be used at bedtime, when an individual can achieve a full night’s sleep. According to the retailer, “Speed Sleep® contains certain language patterns or triggers called “anchors” that, with repeated “listenings”, can be used at any time …to trigger a state of deep sleep.”
	Concept in Focus
The principle behind Speed Sleep® is a proven scientific method of patterning or conditioned response first posited by 20th century Nobel Prize winning physiologist, Dr. Ivan Pavlov. According to Frank Prince, an engineer with a focus in the field of creativity, as well as the developer of this CD system, “Over time, due to lots of circumstances such as jet lag, stress, lack of consistent sleep patterns, health conditions or the effects of aging, we begin to lose our unconditioned response to simply lying down and achieving deep sleep like we had when we were babies or small children.” What he fails to mention is that as we age, we produce less Glutathione and Melatonin, which regulate sleeping patterns and induce sleep in myriad ways.
	Lifestyle
This product is said to re-train your mind to be a sound sleeper, as well as find in yourself new sources of physical energy and mental sharpness.
	Positives
• An alternative to invasive drugs and other harmful therapies • The retailer offers a money back guarantee • Fairly inexpensive
	Negatives
• Lack of sleep can cause us to fall ill • Those predisposed to mania and other mental health conditions may be made worse if they cannot achieve quality sleep • This product does not make use of some of the other supplements that are effective and safe sleep-inducing elements found on the market
	Final Thoughts
Speed Sleep® should be considered by those persons who prefer not to take pills for insomnia and other ailments. It is suggested as a tool for consumers who experience very infrequent insomnia. A good night rest is vital to our overall health and sense of happiness and well-being. Frequent inability to sleep soundly may indicate an imbalance, a mood or anxiety disorder. How does one choose the product that is right for you? A supplement made with one key ingredient and supported by two or three other natural high quality ingredients is a good place to start. An individual should look for a product that promises it will work swiftly and consistently and delivers. A sleep aid that will not cause a next day hangover effect that are often worse than insomnia itself is what a consumer needs. Cysteine Milk Peptide® is clinically proven to break down natural stimulants, like caffeine, which can interrupt one’s sleep cycles. We believe individuals should look for a supplement also made with Melatonin for best results.

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http://www.trendhunter.com/trends/speed-sleep-sleeping-your-way-to-success

Sleeping your way to success is now possible, thanks to Speed Sleep (no, not that kind of success - get your mind out of the gutter!).  Speed Sleep is an audio track that uses guided visualization to teach listeners to fall asleep quickly and deeply, as well as to nap effectively.  Besides being a great alternative to prescription drugs or OTC sleep aids, the kind of regular high quality sleep that Speed Sleep promotes helps reduce stress and boosts creativity and productivity.

Considering that we have coaches or optimization for virtually everything else these days, from fitness regimes to personal finances, it was only a matter of time before people started to optimize their sleep. It is an excellent idea, however, since we spend approximately one third of our lives sleeping, we should make the most of it!

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