ANCSLEEP BLOG

Getting a good night's sleep does more than just help you not be cranky the next day. It is actually vital for your health and provides you with innumerable benefits. It's just as important as other health advice such as exercising and eating right. 

The average number of hours of sleep required for each individual is anywhere from 7-9 hours. However, over a third of the adults in the United States are not getting enough sleep. Sleep deprivation can put you at high risk mentally, physically and emotionally. Here are 9 benefits of getting more sleep! 

Pregnancy can drastically change the body. There are many new conditions that can appear when someone does become pregnant. These include conditions such as indigestion, heartburn, to extreme fatigue and trouble sleeping. For some, about 14% to 53%, pregnancy can also come with snoring. This snoring can become more frequent as the pregnancy progresses and the woman becomes bigger. You may be wondering why snoring increases over pregnancy and when snoring may actually be indicative of an underlying issue. Continue reading to learn some of the answers to these questions about snoring, like what causes snoring and when to be concerned.

Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA) is a sleep disorder that affects many people. It is characterized by many pauses in breathing throughout the night that cause your body to wake up to begin breathing again. These cessations are caused by a blockage to your airway, most likely by a large tongue that has slid to the back of your mouth, or by the relaxation of the muscles in the back of your throat. 

This narrowing of space makes it hard for you to breathe and can lead to snoring, excessive daytime sleepiness, and feeling like you did not get enough rest. OSA can also lead to hypertension, obesity, heart disease, and many other diseases. It is more common in men, those with larger neck circumferences, overweight/obese individuals, and those who smoke. 

The current standard treatment for OSA is a continuous positive airway pressure, or a CPAP machine. It blows air to stop the muscles in the back of your throat from collapsing so that way you continue breathing throughout the night. Even though it can provide immense relief, it still comes with its fair share of side effects. Continue reading to learn about what to expect with a CPAP. 

The gold standard treatment for a diagnosis of obstructive sleep apnea is a continuous positive airway pressure machine, or CPAP. CPAPs are great machines for a variety of reasons, most importantly they reduce the amount of times that you stop breathing throughout the night. If you are given a CPAP or considering CPAP usage, you may be curious about how your body is going to change once you start using it on a regular basis. CPAP therapy is considered very safe and has many benefits after consistent and correct use, including reduced snoring, less daytime fatigue, and decreased blood pressure. Continue reading to learn more about how using a CPAP machine positively impacts your body and your ability to get a good night's rest.

Grief is an inevitable part of life. It is the sad feelings that overwhelm you when something sad happens, such as the loss of a loved one. Grief is a natural part of the healing process as you are learning to accept that your loved one is gone, and figuring out how to live life without them. 

Grief manifests itself differently in everyone, but one common finding is sleep disturbance. Those who are grieving may find themselves sleeping more or less than before, but either way, it's abnormal compared to their normal patterns of sleep. Continue reading to find out how grief can impact your sleep. 

The use of melatonin as a sleep aid has increased substantially, especially during the pandemic. With people's daily schedules being thrown off, or thrown out completely, their sleep took a toll. Our bodies are creatures of habit. They like predictable schedules. They thrive on them. When we go to sleep a wildly varying times everyday and wake up whenever, then we actually are throwing off our body's ability to create a consistent schedule to help us get good sleep. 

While the rising use of melatonin is certainly unsettling, the most unsettling thing is the fact that we may be using melatonin all wrong. Melatonin is not a little tablet that serves as a fix for everything. It may be an adjunct to an already established sleep schedule. Continue reading to find out some concerns about using melatonin and important considerations. 

Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) affects nearly a billion people in the world. It is a sleep disorder that involves cessations of breathing throughout the night. These pauses can significantly disrupt sleep, leading to excessive daytime sleepiness, high blood pressure, and other health issues. 

The mainstay treatment for OSA is continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) which is a large mask that fits over the nose and mouth and provides enough pressure to keep the airway from collapsing. Due to the size of the CPAP machine, and the tubes and discomfort, many individuals may choose to not use a CPAP, which can worsen and prolong their disease. 

However, new technology may offer something a little more comfortable: Micro CPAP. We are going to review what they are and how they work so you can talk with your doctor to see if it's the best option for you. 

The thyroid is an organ in your neck that is responsible for producing thyroid hormone. Thyroid hormones are responsible for many functions in the body, and require iodine in order to be created. Too much or too little of this hormone can be very problematic for the individual because of the vast amount or organs that thyroid hormone affects. 

Graves disease is an autoimmune disease that causes too much thyroid hormone to be produced. It is problematic because it leads to a hypermetabolic state in the body that produces many other issues and can lead to a very serious complications called thyroid storm. Continue reading to find out more about Graves disease and how it can negatively impact your sleep. 

Continuous Positive Airway Pressure (CPAP) is a machine used for those with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). OSA is a sleep disorder that is characterized by multiple cessations in breathing throughout the night. OSA can have negative consequences like excessive daytime sleepiness, weight gain, high blood pressure, heart disease, etc. It's important to be properly diagnosed using a sleep study, or a polysomnography, and then treated with a CPAP. 

CPAP therapy provides significant relief to those with OSA. Untreated individuals often gasp and choke while trying to breathe. CPAP delivers enough pressurized air to help sleepers breathing passages remain open. THis can significantly reduce sleep apnea symptoms, but can cause some side effects like dry mouth.

Humidifiers for your CPAP can reduce some of these negative issues. Some models even have built-in humidifiers to make it easier. It's important to take care of your CPAP by using the proper water. Is that tap, or is distilled the best? Continue reading for more information about why distilled is the best water to use in your humidifier. 

Getting good sleep shouldn't be a luxury, but more of a requirement for a good life. Sleep deprivation can exacerbate existing health issues, decrease memory, attention, and mood regulation, and also increase risk for cardiovascular disease and other chronic conditions, such as diabetes. Therefore, missing out on a sleep is not just an inconsequential action. There are serious health implications with missing out on sleep. 

If you are looking to improve your sleep, however, it is. aprocess. You cannot have practiced bad sleep your entire life and expect to sleep like a baby tonight after reading this article. Good habits lead to good sleep, and habits take some time to develop. Honestly, they take so long, that it may be easy to give up on them before you're even able to see the results. 

In order to see the benefits of sleep, you must change your mindset regarding sleep. It's almost like a diet. With crash diets that are painful and miserable, the failure rate is very high. However, when changing your mindset regarding food and activity, you are creating better food habits which are sustainable and easier to adhere to. 

Same with sleep. Having a different attitude towards sleep and looking at building lifelong long healthy habits will help to turn your sleep around for good. Here are ways to change your mindset regarding sleep.