Thomson Healthcare, Inc.
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 Insomnia
5-HTP has been shown to be beneficial in treating insomnia, especially in improving sleep quality by increasing rem sleep. Eight normal subjects were monitored to determine the effect of 5-HTP on rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. A total of 600 mg 5-HTP was administered to the subjects in the following manner: 200 mg at 9:15 pm, followed by 400 mg at 11:15 pm. A significant increase in the amount of rem sleep was observed while the subjects were taking 5-HTP (118+ 14 min vs. 98 ±11 min, p<0.005). |
Sue Palmer
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 To be effective, the rem sleep must occur within at least 24 hours of the learning - otherwise it doesn't improve performance at all. Young children do a great deal of this sort of practical learning, so it's not surprising that the younger the child the longer it spends in rem sleep, and likewise, the older we grow, the more our REM sleeping time reduces. Not surprisingly, babies and toddlers need lots of little naps to consolidate all their learning. |
Mehmet C. Oz., M.D. and Michael F. Roizen, M.D.
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 But the important part is that you have to get to rem sleep to feel rested. People who have sleep problems often don't make it to rem sleep because it takes up to sixty minutes to make it to REM. If you're having frequent awakenings before you make it to REM, then you're never getting that restorative, healthy sleep.
Now, complex changes occur in your body and mind as you awaken. Your melatonin levels have peaked, the stress hormone Cortisol is on the rise, your body temperature has bottomed out, and your psyche is immersed in your dreams. |
Tom Bohager
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 One of the key symptoms of fibromyalgia is an altered sleep pattern with reduced rem sleep and increased non-REM sleep. Other symptoms include six or more typical, reproducible tender points in the body; joint swelling; generalized stiffness or aches of at least three anatomical sites for at least three months; sleep disturbances; generalized fatigue; numbness or tingling; irritable bowel syndrome; chronic headaches; and neurological and psychological complaints. While the severity of symptoms fluctuates from person to person, fibromyalgia may resemble a post-viral state. |
Textbook of Natural Medicine 2nd Edition Volume 2Michael T. Murray, ND
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| Each night most adults experience five or more sleep cycles. rem sleep periods grow progressively longer as sleep continues; the last sleep cycle may produce a rem sleep period that can last about an hour. Non-REM sleep lasts approximately 50% of this 90 minute sleep cycle in infants and about 80% in adults. As people age, in addition to less rem sleep, they tend to awaken at the transition from non-REM to rem sleep.
The importance of adequate sleep
Adequate sleep is absolutely necessary for long-term health and regeneration. |
Thomson Healthcare, Inc.
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| A significant increase in the amount of rem sleep was observed while the subjects were taking 5-HTP (118+ 14 min vs. 98 ±11 min, p<0.005). A smaller dose of 200 mg also showed increases in rem sleep, but to a lesser degree (Wyatt, 1971).
Chronic Headache
In a large study of 124 subjects, the ability of 5-HTP to prevent migraines was compared to methysergide, one of the most commonly used migraine drugs. At a dosage of 600 mg daily for six months, 5-HTP totally prevented or substantially decreased the number of migraine attacks in 75 percent of the subjects. |
Sue Palmer
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| During the course of the night, sleepers move through four or five sleep cycles - dropping down into deep slow-wave sleep and drifting up into rem sleep. They spend longer in slow-wave sleep during the first half of the night, but in the second half of the night they get more rem sleep. Not unnaturally, people are much more likely to wake during a period of shallower rem sleep, and, if so, they may well remember fragments of their dreams.
Learn while you sleep?
So why is sleep so important in terms of children's learning? The most obvious reason is its effects on mood and behaviour. |
| Young children do a great deal of this sort of practical learning, so it's not surprising that the younger the child the longer it spends in rem sleep, and likewise, the older we grow, the more our REM sleeping time reduces. Not surprisingly, babies and toddlers need lots of little naps to consolidate all their learning.
Slow-wave sleep, on the other hand, seems to be important for academic tasks involving concentration and conscious awareness of what's being learned - the sort of factual learning older children do at school. |
Herbert Ross, DC with Keri Brenner, L.Ac.
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 Rebound insomnia may also disrupt rem sleep, triggering nightmares.
More recently, benzodiazepine receptor agonists (BZRAs) have been promoted as sleep aids. These hypnotic drugs are advertised to be longer lasting and less addictive. But as is the case with all medications, they may cause side effects, including dizziness and headaches. Another issue to be aware of is the wide range in duration of effect. The half-life of a drug refers to how long it typically takes the body to clear half of the substance. In BZRAs, the half-life can range from 30 minutes to two and a half days. |
Textbook of Natural Medicine 2nd Edition Volume 2Michael T. Murray, ND
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| During rem sleep the eyes move rapidly and dreaming takes place. When people are awakened during non-REM sleep, they will report that they were thinking about everyday matters but rarely report dreams.
Non-REM is divided into four stages graded 1-4 based upon level of EEG activity and ease of arousal. As sleep progresses there is a deepening of sleep and slower brain wave activity until rem sleep when suddenly the brain becomes much more active. In adults, the first rem sleep cycle is usually triggered 90 minutes after going to sleep and lasts about 5-10 minutes. |
Herbert Ross, DC with Keri Brenner, L.Ac.
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| After two or three sleep cycles, this stage may disappear and you may go directly from stage 2 to rem sleep.
Stage 4: This is the deepest stage of sleep. Delta waves become larger and much slower than in stage 3, and breathing, heart rate, metabolism, and temperature reach their lowest levels. Muscles continue to be inactive
In Dreams: Memory and Forgetting
Most scientists believe that dreams are the result of brain nerve cells transmitting electrical impulses into the brain's long-term memory bank, at which time electrons are released that trigger hallucinations in the cortex. |
| According to this theory, rem sleep allows the brain to transfer new material into the memory, specifically by increasing the efficiency of the left brain hemisphere, which during waking hours is active in collecting new language skills and other information.20 Research continues into precise mechanisms of this memory consolidation process, and interesting new findings are often reported. One study links REM-induced blood flow through a part of the brain called the amygdaloid complexes to the processing of some types of memory. |
| In one study, scientists introduced test subjects to basic visual discrimination tasks and then allowed some of them to sleep normally overnight, while the rest were permitted to sleep during all stages of sleep except for rem sleep. The subjects who had dreamed performed significantly better on the new tasks than those who didn't dream.23 Another study found that subjects taking a French language course reported better learning retention if their dreams contained references to the French class. |
| Stage 5: This is rem sleep, the dreaming phase, marked by small, rapid alpha waves that resemble those indicating wakefulness and sensory awareness of external stimuli. However, in this stage the brain is reacting to internally generated stimuli from dreams. Most muscles seize up to prevent the person from reacting to the action in the dreams, but the sleeper may experience some slight twitching in the face, fingers, and toes. Men experience penile erections. Breathing and heart rate speed up and slow down in reaction to dream content. |
Thomson Healthcare, Inc.
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| Sleep Quality
Hypericum extract increased slow-wave sleep but had no effect on rem sleep in a double-blinded, placebo-controlled, randomized, crossover study of 12 healthy female volunteers (mean age 59.8 years). Subjects received Hypericum extract LI 160 (Jarsin®) 300 mg 3 times daily for 4 weeks. Sleep onset and total sleep time did not change following supplementation. There was a slight drop in the total sleep amount and a corresponding increase in waking period occurred. Slow-wave sleep (sleep stages 3 and 4) increased from 1.5% to 6.0%. |
| The investigators hypothesized that a resynchronization of circadian rhythms enhanced rem sleep and produced the observed effects (Kunz & Bes, 2001).
Improved sleep parameters were seen when melatonin was given to schizophrenic patients with insomnia in a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover study! Nineteen subjects were given either controlled-release melatonin 2 mg or placebo 2 hours before bedtime for 3 weeks, with a 1 week washout between the treatments. Wrist actigraphs were used to assess sleep quality for 3 nights during the last week of each treatment period. |
Benjamin H. Natelson, M.D.
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 Sleep study is diagnostic in that patients with narcolepsy fall quickly into rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, an occurrence not seen for an hour or two in people whose sleep is normal. rem sleep never occurs during the daytime in most people but does occur suddenly in people with narcolepsy and explains the daytime sleep attacks that occur. Another diagnostic test for narcolepsy is to determine the time to nap during daytime. Very often, the sleep latency is in the order of a few minutes, well below the cutoff of 8 minutes. |
Bottom Line Health
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| You don't want to deprive people of rem sleep, which is an important stage in our sleep cycle. If you're a parent and just can't stand to see your child upset during a nightmare, it's okay to wake him gently.
•Why do some dreams recur? Is there any way to stop a recurring dream? The content of recurring dreams frequently seems to be related to issues in our lives that lack closure or resolution. |
Mehmet C. Oz., M.D. and Michael F. Roizen, M.D.
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| These stages are both restorative. Both rem sleep and sleep stages 3 and 4 are homeostatically driven—that is, if a human is selectively deprived of one of these, it rebounds once the person is allowed to sleep. This suggests that both are essential in the sleep process and its many functions.
REM (rapid eye movement): the deepest sleep. Your eyes are moving fast, but the rest of your body is paralyzed. It's the stage where some sleep-related disorders take place, like sleepwalking.
Each one of these cycles lasts about ninety minutes, and you go through four to six of them a night. |
| People who have sleep problems often don't make it to rem sleep because it takes up to sixty minutes to make it to REM. If you're having frequent awakenings before you make it to REM, then you're never getting that restorative, healthy sleep.
Now, complex changes occur in your body and mind as you awaken. Your melatonin levels have peaked, the stress hormone Cortisol is on the rise, your body temperature has bottomed out, and your psyche is immersed in your dreams. |
KC Craichy
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 This can be catastrophic in the extreme, because it represents the accumulation of weeks and months of psychological stressors that would have otherwise been dissipated during rem sleep. However, if you deprive yourself of rem sleep on a routine basis, say through the routine use of alcohol, there will eventually come a day when all of these accumulated psychological stressors will break though into consciousness, with the ttagic result that you can become mentally ill. This REM rebound effect has been known to cause visual and auditory hallucinations, extreme anxiety, and panic attacks. |
| The autonomic nervous system is active in rem sleep, causing rapid breathing and increased stomach acid secretion. Stage 2 is the period when we dream. During deep sleep (stages 3 and 4), no dreaming occurs. In a normal sleep period, a person cycles from stage 1 to stage 4 in about 90 minutes."4
One of the most critical parts of the sleeping process is the rem sleep. This is the stage of sleep in which people dream, and when they dream, their eyes dart about underneath their eyelids, as though they are watching the events of a dream. |
| This is when all the rem sleep that one has been deprived of accumulates together and breaks through into one's conscious mind while one is awake!
This can be catastrophic in the extreme, because it represents the accumulation of weeks and months of psychological stressors that would have otherwise been dissipated during rem sleep. |
Thomson Healthcare, Inc.
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| A smaller dose of 200 mg also showed increases in rem sleep, but to a lesser degree (Wyatt, 1971).
Chronic Headache
In a large study of 124 subjects, the ability of 5-HTP to prevent migraines was compared to methysergide, one of the most commonly used migraine drugs. At a dosage of 600 mg daily for six months, 5-HTP totally prevented or substantially decreased the number of migraine attacks in 75 percent of the subjects. However, this difference was not determined to be statistically significant. In a study of 48 elementary and junior high school students, 5-HTP (4. |
Sue Palmer
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| They spend longer in slow-wave sleep during the first half of the night, but in the second half of the night they get more rem sleep. Not unnaturally, people are much more likely to wake during a period of shallower rem sleep, and, if so, they may well remember fragments of their dreams.
Learn while you sleep?
So why is sleep so important in terms of children's learning? The most obvious reason is its effects on mood and behaviour. Every parent knows from bitter experience that over-tired children are cranky and unpleasant. |
Herbert Ross, DC with Keri Brenner, L.Ac.
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| This report suggests that magnet therapy promoted melatonin secretion, since rem sleep disorders such as sleep paralysis have been linked to melatonin deficiency.54
In treating sleep disorders, magnets are used in various placements: on the abdomen (some amount of melatonin is secreted by the intestines), on the eyes, and in specially designed mattress pads. Commercially available, negative-polarity mattress pads are the easiest way to use magnet therapy for sleep disorders. You simply place the pad on top of the mattress (for maximum strength) or between the mattress and box spring. |
Win Wenger, Ph.D. and Richard Poe
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 As far as the neurons are concerned," says neuroscien-tist Allan Hobson, "the brain is both seeing and moving in rem sleep."16
To keep us from harming ourselves and others, a safety switch deep in our brain stem largely shuts off our muscular system during rem sleep, effectively paralyzing us. That safety mechanism broke down in the case of the man described above.17
POLE-BRIDGING
Just as in a dream, the imaginary sights, sounds, and sensations of Image Streaming activate the appropriate brain centers in a near-perfect simulation of reality. |
| Often it requires equipment that can cost from $275 to $1,000, such as the NovaDreamer, a device that cues the user with lights or sounds at the moment he enters rem sleep, the stage of Rapid Eye Movement when dreaming typically commences.
Even if these difficulties could be surmounted, it has been my experience that dream imagery is irrelevant and misleading as often as it is useful. The profound trance of rem sleep opens the mind to deep-rooted thoughts and emotions so far removed from our everyday concerns that they are often impenetrable. |
| Some experts, such as neuroscientist Allan Hobson, maintain that when our brains enter rem sleep they stop emitting the neurotransmitter chemicals necessary for memory. It thus becomes physiologically impossible for us to remember most of our dreams, Hobson says.11 Yet you can easily demonstrate to yourself the fallacy in this theory.
Try a simple experiment. Ask yourself "What were the plots of my first three dreams last night?" If you're like most people, you will not be able to recall a single dream from last night, much less three of them in a row. |
Simon Mills and Kerry Bone
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 Results indicated that valerian had selective effects on non-REM sleep (particularly an increase in slow-wave sleep (SWS)), while rem sleep was unaltered. Despite various shortcomings in the trial design, the authors were confident of the consolidation of non-REM sleep under the acute and repeated administration of the valerian preparation. Valerian seems to induce an increase of SWS in those who have low baseline values and reduced stage 1 sleep. The increase in SWS indicates a different mode of action between valerian and benzodiazepine-type hypnotics. |
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