ANCSLEEP BLOG

Three and four teenagers, and 96% of teens between the ages of 15 and 17 bring technology into the bedroom. This can lead to the average adolescent getting up to nine hours of screen time per day. The growing use of electronics between school, home and extracurriculars has its benefits. But it also has its drawbacks.

The effect of blue light can severely interrupt the flow of melatonin from the brain as its controlled by light. Melatonin is required to help the body prepare for bed. Blue light emitted from cell phones is very strong due to how small the screens are. Almost 67% of teenagers have a regular sleep schedule less than the recommended amount of time for their age group.  Continue reading to learn more about how screen time can impact the development of insomnia in teens.

Although it's still a month away, Daylight saving time is around the corner. Once again, it's time to get ready for shorter days, longer nights, and a major shift to your sleeping pattern. Just because the time difference is only an hour, doesn't mean that it doesn't still have a significant impact on your ability to get a good night's rest for the first few weeks.

Normally in the spring, you "spring forward" and in the fall, you "fall back". This means that you'll either move your clock ahead one hour and wind it back an hour, respectively. This abrupt change can cause major sleep dysfunction within your household if you don't properly prepare for it. 

The change in the spring is subjectively harder than the change in the fall because you can have reduced sleep quantity and quality. However, in the fall, there is an overestimation of how much the extra hour can make up for lost sleep time when really long-term adjustment is needed to make up a sleep debt.    

There has been research that shows the association between daylight saving time and short-term health risks, like heart attacks, strokes, traffic accidents, emergency room visits, and mood disturbances. Part of this is due to the shift in your circadian rhythm, because of the change in light exposure. The circadian rhythm has profound effects on your overall well-being. 

The switch between daylight saving time and back should not be taken lightly. Here are a few tips for how to prepare for the change. 

Have you ever woken up in the morning to find tears in your eyes? While crying in your sleep is actually not as abnormal as you may think that it is. There are many different types of situations in which crying in your sleep does happen. This can be upsetting to wake up with tears in your eyes, however knowing what the causes are may help you feel a little bit better whenever it happens again in the future. Continue reading to learn why people cry in their sleep and what you can do about it.

Anxiety is a common mental health disorder that many Americans struggle with period one of the symptoms of anxiety are racing thoughts. Racing thoughts are when your mind feels like it just cannot slow down. They also feel hard to control, intrusive, and they make it impossible to get a good night's rest. Racing thoughts are often caused by stress, anxiety, medications, and excessive caffeine consumption, to name a few.

It starts when you lie down to go to bed, and it's so quiet that your mind simply just cannot turn off. you may be thinking about the things that you need to do and the following day, or you may be thinking about something that happened that day, whatever the thoughts are, they are often negative, and very anxiety provoking. Instead of being able to relax, like you're supposed to do at night, you actually end up spending the whole night worrying. If you constantly struggle with racing thoughts, then this puts you at risk for sleep deprivation.

Sleep deprivation makes it even harder to cope with stressors the following day, so it's important that you find ways to cope with racing thoughts so you can get goodnight rose. Continue reading to learn positive ways of coping and getting a good night's rest when your mind doesn't want to go to sleep.

Without a doubt, you will encounter someone who only gets five hours of sleep and says that they function great! You may be wondering if something is wrong with you because you can barely function on less than seven hours of sleep after just one day. But, it is very rare that someone can truly be functioning at their optimal peak while consistently sleeping five hours of day.

The number of recommended sleep varies by age. However, not achieving that bottom number on a consistent basis will lead to an increasing sleep debt. Sleep debts are the accumulation of lost hours of sleep that can eventually have significant physical and mental outcomes.

Therefore, consistently sleeping only 5 hours of night can lead to a continuous accumulation of 3 hours a night. That is 21 hours a week. Overtime, that number becomes harder and harder to reduce. Continue reading to learn more about the effects of only receiving 5 hours of sleep a night.  

Depression is a common mental health disorder that many Americans struggle with on a daily basis. Depression can have many symptoms that interrupt the day. One part of the day that depression can severely interfere with is sleep. Sleep and depression have a bidirectional relationship where they both affect the other period for example the more severe one suppression is, the more severe their sleep related issues are. And vice versa. The more sleep problems one has, the worse their depression seems to be.

Some people have depression all day every day. However others only have depressions in certain parts of the year, or even certain parts of the day. For those who only have depression at certain parts of the day, either at night or in the morning, this is called diurnal mood variation. If you find yourself only getting depressed late at night whenever you're getting ready to go to bed, but feel great in the morning, you may be one of these people. Continue reading to learn more and see what you can do to help yourself get a good night's rest.

An 8-hour work day can be absolutely exhausting. Do you ever feel like when you get home from work you are just so exhausted that you can't do anything else? Although being a little fatigued at the end of the day is normal, when it becomes so profound that you literally can't do anything else but just go straight to sleep, then it can start to ruin your quality of life. If your job is leaving you absolutely drained it may be because of the job, or it may be due to something else. Continue reading this article to figure out what may be the reason that you are so tired after work, and if there is anything that you need to do to try and increase your energy levels.

Trauma is an experience that one has in their life that leaves them with negative effects to their well-being and ability to function. One traumatic event can lead to psychological trauma, and it can build up over time so it is ongoing background stress. 

Most people experience trauma, with 90% of people exposed to at least one potentially traumatic event in their lives. Experiencing trauma can lead to increased risk of mental and physical health issues, including suicide. Continue reading to learn the effect of trauma on the body and sleep.

Getting sleep as an essential part of life. However sometimes their interruptions that cause us to wake up in the middle of the night. This is known as wake after sleep onset, or WASO.  Sleep quality is as important as sleep quantity.  If you are waking up repeatedly throughout the middle of the night and you are not going to get the good sleep that you need. It is recommended that adults receive 7 to 8 hours of sleep period this does not just count as time in the bed but it also counts as actual time sleeping. So if you're in the bed for eight hours, but you wake up repeatedly throughout the middle of the night calm and then you are actually only getting maybe 6 to 7 hours of sleep. This can be detrimental over the long term as it can lead to mental health disturbances, mood disturbances, excessive daytime sleepiness, among other symptoms of sleep deprivation.

Therefore if you do wake up in the middle of the night, whether that's due to a baby crying or some other interruption, it's important that you learn how to fall back asleep. Here are 8 tips for how to fall back asleep after you wake up in the middle of the night.

Quitting smoking is the best thing you can do for your health. But, the side effects of it can be unbearable. That's why so many smokers fail to quit smoking. One of those horrible side effects is insomnia. Around 2% of people who quit smoking struggle with insomnia and 80% of preexisting sleep disturbances worsened during abstinence. A lack of sleep negatively impacts so many areas of one's life, including their mood, productivity and attention. Due to these side effects, the rate of successful smoking cessation goes down. 

However, if you could find ways to overcome this insomnia, then your chances of quitting smoking could hopefully increase. Insomnia is a very common symptom, but there are ways to overcome it that don't involve starting over on all the hard work you've done. Here are tips for overcoming insomnia while giving up smoking!