Are You Sleeping Well?

April 15, 2011

Interview with Dr. Barry Krakow, author of the book Sound Sleep, Sound Mind: 7 Keys to Sleeping Through the Night

________________

Mike Carruthers:
More than sixty percent of adults have trouble sleeping well and people who don't sleep well suffer from problems above and beyond just being sleepy during the day.

Dr. Barry Krakow:
Many people who have sleep problems are very prone to injury and accidents because they make mistakes all the time - they lose physical coordination.
 

Dr. Barry Krakow, author of the book Sound Sleep, Sound Mind, says it isn't just about getting enough hours of sleep, it's about getting quality sleep and there's a long list of sleep-breathing problems that can cause poor sleep.

The common denominator is that these breathing problems cause awakenings and arousals of the brain while you're trying to sleep; so that you're actually waking up three hundred times in a night and yet you may remember one awakening and naturally of course if you do wake up three hundred times you should be pretty tired the next day.

If you do have sleep-breathing problems…

You can start with simple things like treating conditions such as allergies using nasal sprays for example nasal steroids, using nasal strips - doing things to make your nose work better clearly improves the way you breathe at night.

And here is how you tell if you're a good sleeper…

A good sleeper is somebody who gets into bed and goes to sleep - they sleep all night long and in the morning they feel great, they've got plenty of energy all day long, they don't take naps.