The Best: Back position

Good for: Preventing neck and back pain, reducing acid reflux, minimizing wrinkles, maintaining perky breasts.

Bad for: Snoring

The scoop: Sleeping on your back makes it easy for your head, neck, and spine to maintain a neutral position. You're not forcing any extra curves into your back, says Steven Diamant, a chiropractor in New York City. It's also ideal for fighting acid reflux, says Eric Olson, M.D., co-director of the Mayo Clinic Center for Sleep Medicine in Rochester, Minnesota: "If the head is elevated, your stomach will be below your esophagus so acid or food can't come back up."

Back-sleeping also helps prevent wrinkles, because nothing is pushing against your face, notes Dee Anna Glaser, M.D., a professor of dermatology at Saint Louis University. And the weight of your breasts is fully supported, reducing sagginess.

Consider this: "Snoring is usually most frequent and severe when sleeping on the back," Olson says.

Perfect pillow: One puffy one. The goal is to keep your head and neck supported without propping your head up too much.

Sleepwalking is far more common than previously thought, affecting nearly one-third of adults at some point in their lives, according to the first major study to assess the disorder's prevalence in the U.S. in more than three decades.

The research also suggests this group might experience less pain overall.

"We have found that people who ruminate about their pain and have more negative thoughts about their pain don't sleep as well, and the result is they feel more pain," study co-author Luis F. Buenaver, Ph.D., an assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, said in a statement.

He added that if cognitive behavioral therapy can help people who suffer from chronic pain to change how they think about it, they could end what he called a "vicious cycle," allowing people to feel and sleep better sans medication.

In the new study, published online in the journal Pain, researchers looked at more than 200 women with chronic jaw and face pain. Participants filled out questionnaires about their sleep patterns and pain levels, as well as their feelings about that pain. So-called "pain catastrophizing" was tied with greater sleep disturbances, the authors write.

This isn't the first time researchers have looked at how reactions to pain affect pain levels.

Researchers published a study in the journal Neurology involving more than 19,000 American adults, and found that nearly 30% had sleepwalked at some point in their lives. Far fewer said they experienced sleepwalking within the last year – only about 4% did. One percent had two or more episodes per month.

Dr. Maurice Ohayon of Stanford University and lead author of the study says sleepwalking can be risky business; some people can harm themselves or others while wandering about.

Sleepwalking is far more likely to occur in childhood than adulthood; previous research suggests that as many as 30% of children have been affected.

Prior to this study, there was no good estimate of how many Americans sleepwalk generally, the researchers wrote. A study 10 years ago in Europe found a prevalence of 2%. And 30 years ago, a study in Los Angeles found about 2.5% of about 1,000 people experienced sleepwalking.

There wasn't a significant difference in sleepwalking in men vs. women, but the behavior did decrease with age, with the exception of those who reported it more than once per week.

Family history and genetics may play a role: 11.4% of people who reported sleepwalking said at least one sibling had episodes, compared to 7.8% of the rest of the participants. Individuals who said they sleepwalked in the previous year were more likely than others to have had a family history of sleepwalking.

The study authors also took into account participants' usage of medications for sleep, anxiety, depression and other purposes. They found that people who take a kind of antidepressant for anxiety called SSRI (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor) had a higher likelihood of sleepwalking at least once per year. Those who took over-the-counter sleeping pills and tricyclic antidepressants were more likely to experience sleepwalking at least twice per month.

If you're like most new parents, a good night's sleep shimmers in your weary mind like a mirage in the desert. We all know that when our kids are up all night… we're up all night, and it's nowhere near as fun as the all-nighters we used to have. Before long, life starts to crumble and we morph into cranky, bug-eyed, sleep-deprived zombies. But a good night's rest doesn't have to be an illusion. Whether you've got crying newborns or crazed toddlers, finding effective techniques to help you, your partner and your kids sleep longer each night will have a huge effect on the quality of your life.

So, with Mother's Day rapidly approaching, consider giving the moms you know a deeply treasured gift: SLEEP

Sleep struggles are the number one behavioral grumble of parents. The effects of sleep deprivation are no mere sitcom storyline; they are profound… with real mind and body consequences that touch every aspect of our lives. Many parents are shocked (and relieved) to learn that sleep deprivation is so powerfully debilitating that it's used to train our special forces, like the Navy SEALs, to endure torture. No wonder so many new parents feel pushed to the breaking point.

People who care for new babies (parents and increasingly grandparents) lose on average 200-300 hours of sleep in the first year. And for many, there's not much respite after that first year, either. Half of all toddlers (and a third of all preschoolers) still wake through the night, leaving parents questioning if there's ever a rest stop at the end of the tunnel.

U.S. workers are not getting nearly enough sleep.

Fully 30% of U.S. adults — or 40.6 million workers — sleep six or fewer hours a day, a new CDC report shows.

The National Sleep Foundation recommends we get seven to nine hours of sleep each day. Most at risk, according to the report, are people who work the night shift, especially those in the transportation, warehouse, and health care industries.

And sleep deprivation has consequences. "If a person doesn't get the recommended amount of sleep, they are at increased risk of injuries that could affect them or the general public if they are a commercial driver," says researcher Sara Luckhaupt, MD, MPH. She is a medical officer in the division of surveillance, hazard evaluations, and field studies at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health in Washington, D.C.

Illuminating Luckhaupt's point: Drowsy drivers play a role in up to 20% of car crashes.

Lack of sleep on a chronic basis also increases risk for other health conditions such as obesity, depression, heart disease, and diabetes.

According to the new report, 44% of people who worked the night shift were short-sleepers, compared with 28.8% of those who worked during the day. People aged 30 to 44 made up the age group most likely to be sleep deprived.

But, what about Earth Night?

Compelling evidence suggests that indoor pollution may actually be more toxic than outdoor pollution. More specifically, it appears that the bedroom, the place most of us spend the bulk of our at home time, may be the most polluted room in the house. Nowhere does the growing toxic burden of our environment get more up close and personal than when we get into in bed with it at night.

The more frequently people snort, gasp, or stop breathing for short periods of time while asleep, the more likely they are to have symptoms of depression, according to a government study of nearly 10,000 adults released today.

Snoring, however, was not linked to depression symptoms in the study, which appears in the April edition of the journal Sleep.

"Sleep is essential, and healthy sleep should be as important as healthy nutrition, physical activity, and smoking cessation in promoting overall health," the researchers write.
Sleep and Depression

"Sleep-disordered breathing" — the snorts, gasps, and short pauses in breathing that characterize obstructive sleep apnea — has been linked with depression in previous research.

But those studies typically were much smaller and focused on patients who had come into sleep labs and been diagnosed with sleep apnea, says Anne Wheaton, PhD, an epidemiologist at the CDC's National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion.

You know that sleep and weight gain may be linked, but why is that? Here's what the earth-shattering new research has revealed, and why lack of sleep could be stalling your ability to lose weight and keep it off:

Sleep Less, Burn Less

In a study at the department of neuroendocrinology at the University of Lübeck, Germany, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, researchers had a group of men sleep for 12 hours a night but didn't allow them to sleep the next night, and then had them eat an opulent buffet the following morning. Then the researchers measured the subjects' energy expenditure—the calories you burn just by being. When the men were sleep-deprived, their general energy expenditure was 5 percent less than it was when they got a good night's sleep, and their post-meal energy expenditure was 20 percent less.

“I had very little faith that exercise would help,” said Mr. Cook, now 61. “But we needed desperately to do something different.”
Under a supervised program at the university’s Center for Physical Activity and Aging, Mr. Cook at first couldn’t walk for 10 minutes without his back pain flaring up. Now, 13 months later, he strides briskly and confidently for 50 minutes at a time, covering about two miles around the center’s one-eighth-mile indoor track.
His back feels better, his posture is better, he is off pain medication, and he has discarded his cane. But he also accrued another, unexpected benefit: “I fall asleep quickly and sleep through the night,” Mr. Cook said. “Which is unusual for me.”
Parents since time immemorial have known that children allowed to run around all day will usually conk out at night. But only recently have researchers begun to look at the effects of physical activity on sleep for a group that seems to have the most difficulty with it.
 

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Seriously though, one of the best things you can do for yourself is to get more sleep. It’s “common sense,” but look at all those caffeine-addicted sleep-deprived people out there (me included!). We all know that we operate better (and have better long-term health) when we get adequate sleep (~8 hours a night). But, how many can truly say they’ve reached the mythological 8 hour mark on a consistent basis?

If you’re having trouble sleeping, try running or exercising in the late afternoon or early evening. Don’t exercise too late, otherwise it may make it hard to fall asleep at night!

About the caffeine thing, I’ll admit I still need my morning coffee for that morning energy boost. However, in terms of fighting fatigue, one of the most important things I do (and that I recommend to my patients) is drink enough water. How much is enough?

That's a very important question. Since I've started my Happiness Project, I've become more and more convinced that sleep is vital to happiness and energy. (Here are 14 tips on getting more sleep.)

If you want to get more sleep, but have a hard time getting yourself to turn out the light, try these strategies:

1. First things first: Give yourself a specific bedtime. Most adults need 7-9 hours of sleep every night, so take a look at your wake-up time and do the math. Even if you don't regularly go to bed at your bedtime, knowing, "Well, it's midnight, so I'm two hours past my bedtime" might help prod you to bed.

While most love stories end with the 'happily ever after' of blissful cohabitation, the reality is that compatible sleeping is often an impossible dream: many otherwise made-for-each-other lovers have basic incompatibilities when it comes to sleep styles. In fact, according to one survey, more than a quarter of cohabitating adults in the U.S. report that their partner's sleep problems — everything from sleep talking to late night TV watching — negatively affect the quality of their shut-eye.

Sleep-deprived couples often end up crankier, more reactive and even unhealthier than their well-rested counterparts — not exactly the makings of relationship harmony. "So much of our sleep is just never discussed," says Phillip Gehrman, PhD, CBSM, clinical director of the Behavioral Sleep Medicine Program at the University of Pennsylvania. "A lot of times just getting it out in the open and talking about it can make a huge difference."

So what can you do to fight obesity, diabetes, heart disease and the other risks of sitting too much? At the most simple level, stand more. A team of researchers from the University of Minnesota and the Mayo Clinic are set to study 30 employees of Caldrea, an eco-friendly cleaning supply company in Minneapolis, whose desks have been replaced with workstations that make it possible to sit or stand while working, according to the Star Tribune.

I've noticed something, however. I noticed this in myself, before I became such a sleep nut, and I see it in the people around me: Most adults don't give themselves a bedtime.

Children have a fixed bedtime; we know they need their allotment of sleep, and we pack them off to bed when it's time. But many adults just go to bed whenever they feel like it.

The problem with this approach is that it's far too easy to stay up too late. The TV, the Internet, your email, your book… these distractions keep you alert past the point at which you should head to bed. Many of us know we ought to go to sleep sooner, but we just can't manage to pull it off.

Some say it goes back to the Bible, in Ephesians 4:26. “Let not the sun go down upon your wrath.” Regardless of its origins, the adage has been scarcely researched. But in a recent study in The Journal of Neuroscience, scientists found there might be a nugget of truth to it: Going to sleep after experiencing negative emotions appears to reinforce or “preserve” them.

In the study, scientists recruited 106 men and women and exposed them to images that elicited various emotions. In some cases the emotions were negative — for instance, after seeing an unsettling image of an accident or traumatic scene. In other cases, the images produced positive or neutral emotions.

While you’re fast asleep, your body is hard at work making repairs like construction workers on the nightshift. For example, when you’re in deep sleep, human growth hormone production increases. Your normal release of this hormone plays a key role in healing cells and tissues throughout your body, including your skin.

Not getting enough sleep (and according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an estimated 50-70 million U.S. adults have a sleep or wakefulness disorder) cuts that crucial repair time short, which can wreak havoc on your skin. Fine lines become more prominent, dark circles crop up and your complexion turns pale, dull and droopy.

The average American works more than nine hours every day, plus an additional four hours of work from home during the week, according to the National Sleep Foundation. In its 2008 Sleep in America Poll, the NSF found that 29 percent of these tired Americans have fallen asleep or at least became very sleepy at work.

“We’re a sleep-deprived nation, a workforce full of walking zombies, because we’re asking people to do the work of fewer people,” says James Maas, Ph.D., former fellow, professor and chairman of psychology at Cornell University, who coined the term “power nap” in his 1998 book “Power Sleep”. “If we operated a machine like we operate the body, we’d be accused of reckless endangerment.”

Now imagine a world in which napping on the job wouldn’t only be a thing of sleep-deprived daydreams. While more and more bosses are coming around to the idea of some afternoon shuteye, it’s still not exactly widespread, says Lawrence Epstein, M.D., chief medical offer of Sleep HealthCenters and co-author of “The Harvard Medical School’s Guide to a Good Night’s Sleep.” Instead, “the misguided opinion that [sleepiness] is a sign of laziness rather than a physiologic reaction” persists, says Dr. Epstein.

They’re all linked to sleep paralysis, a little-known sleep disorder that’s like being trapped in real-life horror movie. The terrifying symptoms include hallucinating that there’s an intruder in your bedroom, pressure on the chest that may feel like a physical or sexual assault, and sensations of levitation or out-of-body experiences.

About eight percent of the general population, 28 percent of students, and 32 percent of psychiatric patients have had at least one episode of sleep paralysis, while an unfortunate few experience this waking nightmare on a nightly basis, Pennsylvania State University psychologists report, based on a review of 35 earlier studies of the disorder.

Snoring isn’t the only difficulty. He likes the room warm, you like it cool. He likes lots of blankets, you like only a sheet. He gets up to pee seven times a night. You toss and turn. He hogs the pillows. You hog the sheets. He likes to go to bed early. You like to read until the wee hours. You like to wake up to the news on the radio. He can only wake with that annoying buzzer…

Still, conventional thinking deems it important to share a bed despite all your differences because there is intimacy in sleeping together. Not sleeping together either implies trouble in paradise, or will lead to it. Sleeping together in a double bed is a cultural indicator that you’re in love.

Cook: This may be a stupid question, but how do you define an introvert? How can somebody tell whether they are truly introverted or extroverted?

Cain: Not a stupid question at all! Introverts prefer quiet, minimally stimulating environments, while extroverts need higher levels of stimulation to feel their best. Stimulation comes in all forms – social stimulation, but also lights, noise, and so on. Introverts even salivate more than extroverts do if you place a drop of lemon juice on their tongues! So an introvert is more likely to enjoy a quiet glass of wine with a close friend than a loud, raucous party full of strangers.

So are you spending enough quality time between the sheets asleep? See how many of the signs below describe you. Then decide if a sleep deficit is holding you back.

1. You're not hungry for lunch. A lack of sleep can make you constantly want to eat more, or persistently feel like you're not hungry. It throws off your internal clock resulting in abnormal feelings, which is why so many people lose or gain weight during periods of sleeplessness.