10 Ways To Get More Sleep

Well, we all know everyone can use this advice! -- Dr. Dale

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/25/get-more-sleep_n_5526580.html?utm_hp_ref=healthy-living

By Rebecca Scritchfield for U.S. News Health

It's 1 a.m. on a Tuesday, and you're awake, sluggishly trying to finish every last item on your jam-packed to-do list. Sound familiar? You're not alone. Sixty-three percent of adults report that getting enough sleep is extremely or very important to them, but only 30 percent say they are doing a very good job achieving this goal,according to an American Psychological Association survey. In fact, and on average, American adults get only 6.7 hours of sleep per night.

These statistics are exactly why I created a 30-Day Sleep Challenge for the month of June. I'm challenging you to improve the quantity and quality of your rest, so you can be your best, healthiest self.

Sleep is often neglected in favor of getting more done, which almost always backfires. When you're sleep-deprived, you're less productive, more irritable and you often have too little energy for healthy eating and exercise that day.

If you habitually get too little sleep, your health could be in real trouble. Sleep is the time when your body recuperates and rebuilds from the day's stress. Imagine how much happier and healthier you could be with an additional 60 to 90 minutes of sleep each night.

What's keeping so many people up at night? Stress. It's the No. 1 reason people don't get enough sleep, according to the APA survey. Forty-three percent of people report lying awake at night because they feel stressed. We have too much to do and not enough time to do it, and instead of respecting the boundaries of our rest time, we take precious minutes (and even hours) from our sleep to worry about what didn't get done.

If you're stuck counting sheep, unable to fall asleep, try these healthy remedies: Make a list. If your mind is racing with all the things you have to do the next day, get them down on paper. This can help you move on and get your much-needed rest.

Drink a cup of warm milk, chamomile tea or tart cherry juice -– each can positively influence your sleep patterns.

Eat magnesium-rich foods like almonds, and calcium-rich foods such as cheese and crackers, which help your body use tryptophan and serotonin to get sleepy. You can also learn more about sleep producing foods by visiting my blog.

Leave your phone and other screens turned off. The glow can interfere with your body's production of melatonin, which is a hormone that makes us feel sleepy.

Don't lie awake staring at the ceiling for too long. If you’ve been awake for more than 30 minutes, get up and either get a glass of water, walk around the room or gently stretch. Doing so can help interrupt the "I can't sleep" pattern.

Hide your clock. The last thing you need to do is count every passing minute that you're awake. If you need an alarm clock to get up in the morning, just turn it around so you can't see the clock face at night.

One of the best things you can do for your health is create a better sleep routine. These are tips to help establish a healthy, long-term sleep pattern: Set sleep boundaries and stick to them. Allot at least eight hours for sleep every night. Don't stay up late or set your alarm extra early just to knock out a few extra to-do items. The more rest you get, the more productive you'll be during waking hours.

Give yourself a bedtime, and go to bed at that time every night. Our bodies become accustomed to the routine, and eventually you'll fall asleep faster.

Don’t work, watch TV, email, text or look at social media from bed. Your bed should be for two things only: sleep and sex.

Keep screens out of the bedroom, or at least away from the bed.

For my #30daysleepchallenge, I encourage you to improve your sleep habits so you can be ready for whatever life throws at you on a daily basis –- physically, mentally and emotionally. I'm posting tons of tips and information on my blog, Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest to help you get better sleep. We've already been going for a while, but you can join in at any time! Be sure to share your thoughts, and I'll be responding to your questions every day.

5 Health Mistakes You're Making Before 10 a.m.

LOVING THIS! -- Dr. Dale

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-------------- http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/09/health-mistakes-you-make-in-the-morning_n_5434091.html

By Corrie Pikul

• Mistake 1: You hit the ground running. You jump out of bed ready to face the day head-on. The problem is that you may be demanding too much from your back muscles, which are often stiff from a long night of resting in one place, says Robert Oexman, a sleep and chiropractic expert and director of the Sleep to Live Institute. Move too quickly and your muscles may spasm and put you at risk for lower back pain or even a slipped or ruptured disk. Another reason to get up slowly: When we stand after lying down for hours, the blood rushes to the legs, and this can cause a lightheaded feeling that puts us at risk for a stumble. This effect, called orthostatic hypotension, is especially common in women, says Alan Hilibrand, MD, a surgeon and spokesperson for the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons.

• Try this: Before jumping into the shower, Oexman recommends hugging the knees to the chest (one at a time, then together). This will not only help warm up the muscles, but it will also get your blood flowing throughout the body so you'll feel more stable when you rise and shine.

• Mistake 2: You keep the window shades down while you get ready for work. Blackout shades turn your room into a dark, cozy cave that can help you fall sleep. But their benefits last only until it's time to get up. To help you start your day with a positive mood and to set your internal clock (so that you can wind down later at night), you need sunlight. Letting in those a.m. rays may also help you regulate your weight, found researchers at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.

• Try this: The more light the better, so open the shades all the way as soon as you get out of bed (or, um, as soon as you put on a bathrobe).

• Mistake 3: You save your treat until the afternoon.

• Most of us work hard, then take a break for personal time at lunch—or more likely around 3 p.m., when we begin to fade. But in a recent study from the University of Minnesota, when employees started the workday in a positive frame of mind, their mood got a bigger boost by pleasant events than if they started out glum and grumpy. They were also less impacted by negative interactions with coworkers, found the researchers.

• Try this: Splurge on that latte on your way into the office, or take a few minutes to call your sister or maybe even do a few sun salutations, if you're into that kind of thing—anything to perk up before the day really gets going.

• Mistake 4: You set your alarm for 6:47 a.m.  You've figured out the snooze math: hitting that button equals 10 minutes of extra sleep plus three more minutes to untangle the sheets and get out of bed. But sleeping in and dozing intermittently throws your body off schedule and will make it harder to fall asleep at night. This is why sleep experts curse the invention of that particular bell-and-whistle on most alarm clocks and and beg you not to use it.

• Try this: Get up when your alarm goes off, not 10–20 minutes later.

• Mistake 5: The first thing you do after waking up is exercise. You know you're supposed to eat breakfast within 30 minutes of getting up in order to jumpstart your metabolism, but that doesn't seem realistic when you're rushing to make an early-morning Spin class. Skipping the meal, though is a problem. You've been fasting all night and need some carbohydrates to top off your depleted energy stores—especially if you're about to deplete them further at the gym.

• Try this: We're not saying you need a bowl of oatmeal with all the fixings. A handful of dry cereal or half a banana on your way to out the door is just fine (and a glass of water, of course, since that last time you drank anything was probably seven hours ago).

How Bad Sitting Posture at Work Leads to Bad Standing Posture All the Time

Amen to this!!!  I recommend something like this for your desk: click here - Dr. Dale

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http://online.wsj.com/articles/how-bad-sitting-posture-at-work-leads-to-bad-standing-posture-all-the-time-1403564767

By: JEANNE WHALEN

Looks like your mother was right when she told you to sit up straight.

There's growing evidence that good posture contributes to a range of health benefits, from reducing back and joint pain to boosting mood. Health-care practitioners from physical therapists to surgeons to psychologists increasingly take posture into account when evaluating patients, and offer tips and tools for improvement.

Good posture doesn't just mean standing with the shoulders thrown back. More important is maintaining good alignment, with ears over the shoulders, shoulders over hips, and hips over the knees and ankles. Body weight should be distributed evenly between the feet.

View Graphics

Seated posture, especially while using a computer, is critically important and deserves more attention, experts say, in part because it can affect a person's posture while standing and walking. Experts say it is essential to think about posture while walking, getting up out of a chair or using a cellphone or tablet.

The hunched-over position of the typical electronic-device user is of particular concern, and is sparking new back- and neck-pain problems in teenagers. A study of 6,000 Finnish adolescents found frequent use of computers, mobile phones, videogame players and television was associated with greater rates of neck and lower-back pain, according to a 2006 paper in the European Journal of Public Health.

Posture is "probably the 800-pound gorilla when it comes to health and wellness," says Allston Stubbs, an orthopedic surgeon at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, in Winston-Salem, N.C., who treats patients with back or joint pain. "We see the spine and overall skeletal structure being critical to a patient's functionality and their satisfaction with their life and health care."

Evan Johnson, of the New York Presbyterian-Columbia University Medical Center Spine Center, helps a patient, Josh Gordon, work on alignment. Cassandra Giraldo for The Wall Street Journal

Because poor posture can often be caused by obesity or weak muscle tone, correcting it isn't a quick fix for many patients. Even for people in good shape, bad posture habits can be so ingrained that it takes constant vigilance to improve them.

Evan Johnson, head of physical therapy at the Spine Center, a back-pain treatment facility at New York-Presbyterian Hospital and Columbia University Medical Center, starts scrutinizing patients' posture as soon as they walk through the door. "I will go get the patient from the waiting room and escort them back. As they're walking, you're evaluating," he says.

On a recent morning Dr. Johnson sat his patient on a bench. "Roll your chest up and forward. Sit tall through the top of the head," he said, gently pulling the patient's hair upward. "Bring your navel in." The patient, a man recovering from back-pain surgery who declined to be named, slowly straightened up.

Dr. Johnson then put a wooden stick down the back of the patient's shirt and asked him to stand. The stick was meant to remind him to keep his spine straight and bend at the hips as he got up. "Many patients, when they go from sitting to standing, they lose their posture. They slouch," Dr. Johnson said.

Dr. Johnson shows how an annotated map, right, can help locate the neutral spine position. Cassandra Giraldo for The Wall Street Journal

He peppered the patient with questions. "Remind me again, do you commute to work? Do you have a bucket seat in the car?" Dr. Johnson asked. "When you have a bucket seat, your butt is way down," which can cause back pain, he said. He brandished a wedge-shaped cushion and asked the patient to sit on it, with the thick edge in back. "It takes the bucket out," Dr. Johnson said, so that "your behind is above your knees."

One of the most common posture problems, called kyphosis, is a direct result of spending too much time in front of a computer, experts say. The shoulders hunch forward, the pectoral muscles in the chest tighten, the neck and head extend toward the computer screen, and the spine is no longer vertically aligned.

Many deskbound office workers have started standing and walking in this position, too, says Andrea Cheville, a rehabilitation physician at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.

To counteract kyphosis, it is important to stretch the pectoral muscles and strengthen the trapezius muscles in the upper back, which hold the shoulder blades back, Dr. Cheville said. Remembering to keep the ears and head over the shoulders, and not jutting forward, is also important.

Another common problem is lordosis, or swayback, where the lower spine curves inward, toward the front of the body, and the butt is thrust backward. Overweight people often display this posture, as do women wearing high heels, Dr. Cheville said. Losing weight, strengthening the so-called core muscles around the trunk and pelvis and wearing flat shoes can help reverse it.

New research is also demonstrating links between body position and mood. It has long been known that depression can lead to a slumped posture. But new evidence suggests the reverse is also true—that slouching can spark negative emotions and thoughts.

In one recent study, 30 people receiving inpatient treatment for major depression disorder in Germany were divided into two groups, and asked to sit in either a slumped or upright position. Participants were shown 16 positive words, such as "beauty" and "enjoyable," on a computer screen, and then 16 negative words, such as "exhaustion" and "dejected."

After each word, they were asked to imagine themselves in a scene connected with the word, such as a time when they'd felt depressed or beautiful.

The participants were then distracted with other tasks for five minutes, and afterward asked to recall as many of the words as they could. Patients in the slumped position recalled more negative than positive words, while those in the upright position showed more balanced recall, according to the study results, which were published this year in the journal Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy.

The study's main author, Johannes Michalak, a clinical psychologist at Germany's University of Hildesheim, said he became interested in the link between posture and mood after practicing qigong, a traditional Chinese movement exercise that he says helped boost his sense of well-being.

In a study published in the journal Biofeedback in 2012, researchers in California and Taiwan asked 110 university students to rate their energy levels, then walk in either a slouched position or in a skipping pattern. The students reported a decrease in energy levels after the slouched walk and an increase after skipping, the researchers reported.