sleep disorders

Behavioral rules for a healthy, restful sleep

21. August 2015 von Schlafexperte Prof. Dr. med. h.c. Günther W. Amann-Jennson Leave a Comment

1^st: Healthy, recreational sleep needs rhythm
Ideal case is to keep everyday a regular routine with a variable fall asleep- and wake-up-time from 1.5 hours maximum. Keep the rhythm of strain and recreation (consider BRAC-rhythm) during the day is as important.

2^nd: Healthy, recreational sleep needs harmony
That means that you should succeed in regulating your emotions and getting them under control. This at the same time makes sleep-healthy-coaching to a better-living-coaching. Use the forces of your emotional intelligence and deal with this topic. Bring yourself into a good mood with positive emotions and don’t forget to laugh!

3^rd: Overcome negative emotions
Negative emotions like anxiety, sorrows, envy, anger and hate belong to the biggest rhythm-disturber and “sleep thieves”. Especially avoid them right before going to bed.

4^th: Keep calm
In case you are already suffering under sleep disturbances it also might happen on your way to a better sleep that you wake up in the night and are not able to fall asleep right away. Now it is important, that you don’t panic but that you keep calm.

One possibility is the observation of your thoughts and emotions.

5^th: Proper waking-up is decisive
Most people who wish to improve their sleep mainly focus on falling asleep and sleeping through. Because, when all is said and done — for waking-up we are having our alarm clock. Normally, the necessity of this waking-up-instrument is a clear hint of too less sleep (lack of sleep).

Ideal situation is reached when we spontaneously wake up at the desired or -– even better -– used time. You will reach this state as soon as you your living and sleeping in your natural wake-sleep-dream-rhythm. This is a further valuable benefit of bioenergetic sleep^®.

Five rules for a healthy and restful sleep

6. August 2015 von Schlafexperte Prof. Dr. med. h.c. Günther W. Amann-Jennson Leave a Comment

A healthy and restful sleep has the following characteristics:

•   Good sleep distinguishes itself by a short sleep onset (10 to 15 minutes).
•   Good sleep efficiency due to no nightly or too early waking-up.
•   Optimal sleep has sufficient REM-sleep-phases (25 – 30 % of the total sleeping time) and sufficient deep-sleep resp. delta-sleep (15 – 20 % of the total sleeping time).
•   Rhythmic flow of the single sleeping phases resp. sleeping stages (90-minutes-rhythm).
•   Few body movements resp. shifting during sleep.

That means, healthy sleep requires five important rules:
1. Nightly regeneration needs rhythm: Every day, you should have (about) the same routine (fall asleep- and wake-up-time should not differ more than 1.5 hours from the usual ones). The relation between strain and recreation during the day should be balanced. In case, stress is taking over – by all means indulge in a break to approach the challenges in job and private life with verve.

2. Nightly recreation needs harmony: Try to steer your emotions. Create a good mood and don’t forget to laugh! Especially laughing is releasing “happy-hormones” that are positively affecting our general mood and further our recreation.

3. Overcome negative emotions: fear, sorrows, envy, anger, hate and dissatisfaction are sleep disturbance causing factors which have a negative influence on healthy sleep. Since they are not beneficial for getting your head free, they especially should be avoided directly before going to bed.

4. Keep calm and serenity: Don’t panic, if you already suffer under sleep disturbances. Calmness and serenity as well as special fall-asleep-rituals (breathing exercises) support you in improving your sleeping quality. This particularly includes yoga and autogenous training. They help you to breathe calm and regular.

5. Waking up perfect is decisive: Not only concentrate on falling asleep and sleeping through. Waking up is important, too. The ideal condition is only achieved when you are waking up at the desired –- or even better at the usual –- time. Then, you are in the perfect awake-sleep-dream-awake-balance you can perfect with the special Bioenergetic Sleep^® after Guenther W. Amann-Jennson.

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Lifestyle

9. July 2015 von Schlafexperte Prof. Dr. med. h.c. Günther W. Amann-Jennson Leave a Comment

Who doesn’t yearn for it? A happy, healthy, long and successful life. But, meanwhile when living and working and above all sleeping in the western society this turns out to be difficult. The chronological life time is continuously rising but the health disturbances from middle age as well. Current science reveal that our health is depending from a great many and complex factors. Still, the sum of the positive influencing factors of your personal way of living, your lifestyle is decisive.

Due to the modern way of living most of us lost the rhythm of life and no longer are in balancing connection with the natural rhythms. This leads to a series of disturbances that are able to unbalance our health and our evenness and by that our sleep lasting. Here, healthy nutrition and movement are important rhythm-generators, but the most important rhythm-generator for the daytime are the phases of alertness and sleep. They oscillate in a rhythm of about two to one. Meaning, about two thirds alertness, one third sleep.

Bad, non-recreational and disturbed sleep taken in isolation are no illness – because for more than 90 per cent the reasons are non-organic. In fact, the disturbance is a regulatory one. The reasons are stress-related for the biggest part and lead psycho-physiological to a bad and disturbed sleep. This in turn has a lot to do with our own thinking, acting as well as primarily with our outer and inner sleep circumstances and our living and sleeping habits.

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Symptomes and causes of sleep disturbances

22. June 2015 von Schlafexperte Prof. Dr. med. h.c. Günther W. Amann-Jennson Leave a Comment

There are several so-called parameter you can evaluate sleep with especially in the course of polysomnographies. From sleep latency, total sleep duration, course of the sleeping phases (light sleep, deep sleep, REM sleep), the percentage of the single sleeping phases up to sleep efficiency get evaluated with brain waves. In addition, body movements, blood pressure, snoring noises, oxygen saturation of the blood and so an are recorded and analyzed. 6.5 to nine hours of sleep is a common sleeping duration of a grown up, for example. You only talk about sleep disturbances, when the disturbance lasts more than a couple of weeks or a month and is accompanied by tiredness during the day, irritability, depression, anxiety states, inattentiveness, or other symptoms.

In 1828 the German family doctor and later on professor for psychiatry Heinroth, Leipzig, wrote: “Normally, the origin of sleeplessness is psychosomatic, but every phase of life may completely contain the reason for that by itself.”

The possible reasons for sleep disturbances constantly changed during time. Prehistoric men had other sleep disturbing factors than modern civilization nowadays. What stayed the same, are the psycho-biologic mechanisms and prerequisites, especially the harmony of mind and soul. This is an important factor to not let sleep disturbances arise at first place.

More and more, the interdisciplinary conviction emerges, that a direct fight of sleep disturbances by chemical-synthetical substances are missing the real cause of the problem. Only when we accept that sleep disturbances often arise due to daily strain of body, mind and soul and due to adverse general conditions we will be able to steer in a different direction.

So, sleep disturbances may be the consequence of stress and disharmony of body and soul. But, not only our sleep is suffering under stress but the whole human being, too. Meaning, our body, our soul and our mind – our entire condition, our relationships, our performance and above all our attitude towards life.

Sleep disturbances are a serious warning sign; the wisdom of our body tells us more or less distinct that something is wrong in our interconnected body-mind-soul grid.

Basically, sleep disturbances can be split into two causes: the inner and outer causes. Therefore, the remedy of sleep disturbances has to take place via both directions, because only than you can expect to have recreational sleep that regenerates body, mind and soul.

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Burnout: healthy sleep for prevention and therapy

5. June 2015 von Schlafexperte Prof. Dr. med. h.c. Günther W. Amann-Jennson Leave a Comment

More and more people are affected by burnout. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has predicted stress to be the biggest health-hazard in the 21st century. Next to nutrition and exercise, the WHO is counting sleep as the third most important pillar for prevention of stress-caused illness. The sleep psychologist Dr. med. h.c. Guenther W. Amann-Jennson explains, why healthy sleep is helping to find a way out of the vicious circle “burnout”.

Again and again he is checking the watch, time pressure is breathing down his neck. The list of pending tasks seems to be getting longer constantly even the romantic dinner with his wife is becoming a stress-factor. Finally he is falling into bed dead tired -– but, he is not able to even think about sleep, he is tossing and turning. His thoughts are circling around: “What is due tomorrow? I have to get enough sleep, or I am not able to deliver a good performance tomorrow.” After sleeping fitfully he is waking up way to early, completely soaked. The next pointless day is starting.

When the fuel is empty
Such scenes are happening in the lives of many people. Until the day, where the body and the psych of person affected is burnt out in a way, that he has to withdraw from everyday life. Diagnosis: Burnout. The psycho-analytics have taken over this term from engineers and have taken them as a metaphor for a state of exhaustion. Originally, the term described the state of capability depleted fuel rods or rockets without fuel.

Restful breaks are also necessary during the daytime
“Burnout is the result of a vicious circle”, explains sleep psychologist Dr. med. h.c. Guenther W. Amann-Jennson. Under stress, a high amount of corticotropin-releasing hormones (CRH) are released in the brain. This prolongs the REM-phases and the sleeping quality worsens. Unlike the deeply relaxing deep sleep phases with frequent breathing rhythm and heartbeat, the REM-phases are more restless. This leads to a disturbed balance of activation- and deactivation-phases during day time. The recreational effect constantly diminishes, the organism is reaching his limit of performance and regeneration of body, mind and soul – step by step. *1

Actual cause: disturbed sleep!
A more previous study of the Karolinska-Institutet, Sweden, supports this finding. In this study, the sleeping pattern of 35 patients got studied. For at least three months, these persons have not been able to work, due to the burnout-syndrome. As comparison, people with a low risk of burnout were called in. The result showed, that the influence of stress still is existent, but the real cause of burnout is due to disturbed, no more recreational sleep. Besides a cognitive behavioral therapy, the people affected got treated with strict sleeping hygiene. After six to twelve months, significant improvements of the sleeping duration were made and 60 percent of the patients were able to be integrated into the working process again.

Hints for prevention
Mostly, stress is leading to sleep disturbances. As a consequence, body and mind no longer are able to recreate and you are reaching your performance- and regeneration-limit. Optimization of sleeping quality and sleeping duration has proven to be very positive, for prevention as well as in therapy. But, to let healthy sleep happen, it needs a basis that only a holistic, nature-oriented sleeping system is able to fulfil.

Following some hints of the sleeping expert Dr. med. h.c. Amann-Jennson:

• A rhythmic balance between activity and relaxation during daytime prophylactically is very important and is supporting healthy sleep. Ideal is a change of about 70 to 90 minutes lasting activity followed by a deactivation of about 20 minutes. This improves performance- and recreation-ability. *²

• Avoid rhythm-predators*³. These include persistent activation without relaxation like too long meetings, longtime working on computers, exhausting car rides, overstimulation due to nonstop watching TV, irregular working-, sleeping- and eating-times, winter-/summertime changeover, jet lag or technically initiated disturbance zone (TV-set, mobile phones, radio alarm clock) close to the bed.

• Promote rhythm-enhancer on the other hand. The organism is not differing between positive or negative stress but only, are we activated, are we balanced, are we regenerating. Out of this reason, we should emphasize short recreational breaks by letting go, relaxing, contemplation, day dreaming; breath-awareness and –exercises; regular, sufficient sleep.

• Only the combination of “hardware” (sleeping place, bedding system) and “software” (stress-factors, breaks, sunlight/artificial light, habits) meaning a holistically oriented sleep-healthy-concept leads to a biologically high-quality sleep. Thereby, the sleeping underlay is having the biggest “leverage effect” in optimizing sleeping quality and sleep efficiency.

*1: Out of: Max-Planck-Institut für Psychiatrie, Munich (2009). M. Kimura, P. Müller-Preuss, A. Lu, E. Wiesner, C. Flachskamm, W. Wurst: Conditional corticotropin-releasing hormone overexpression in the mouse forebrain enhances rapid eye movement sleep. Molecular Psychiatry, 1–11, Online-prepublication May 20th, 2009.

*2: Out of: Ornstein Robert, The Right Mind, Publ. Harcourt-Brace & Co (1997) / Springer Sally P., Deutsch Georg: Left Brain, Right Brain. Publ. W. H.

*3: Out of: Hecht Karl: Das geomagnetische Feld als biologischer Regulator und dessen Sensibilität gegenüber elektromagnetischen Frequenzen. Journal of preventive medicine, Themenheft „Schlaf und Schlafstörungen“, Issue July 2011.

More sleep for the staff

2. June 2015 von Schlafexperte Prof. Dr. med. h.c. Günther W. Amann-Jennson Leave a Comment

About three Quarters of the population in the US are having problems with their sleep. More and more, employed persons are complaining about “non-recreational sleep”. Altogether, there is a need for action for CEO’s, too. Because, it is proven that managers and employees with good sleep are working more efficiently and are making better decisions for their companies. Hence, information and assistance are more than profitable. Out of this reason it would be very useful to think about appropriate internal guide-lines that care for a sufficient amount of sleep for the staff – for one’s own end!

Above all, the following powerful reasons suggest a rethinking:

• The one who is sleeping bad or too less is making more mistakes:
Tired managers and people with responsibility are acting like being drunk. But obviously, this connection has not reached all managements yet. Scientific studies and inquiries show that managers are often making important decisions late in the evening, at times, where the day-to-day-business is done. Consequences: Bad sleepers are making more often wrong decisions.

• The one who is sleeping healthy is protecting his health:
A healthy, sufficient and pollution-free sleep is the most important key factor for our health. Our immune system gets strengthened, the organism recovers and the mental battery gets recharged. Furthermore, the body’s detoxification gets optimized during sleep. More and more companies and managers and CEOs are discovering and promoting the necessity of sleep optimization, since health and the fitness of body and mind are the most important basis for occupational development and advancement.

• The one who is sleeping good is working more efficiently:
Long since, businessmen, managers and executives have learned from competitive sports that the performance is depending on inner, biological rhythms. Depending on our inner clock, we are able to a better mental performance and power output at certain times.

Most people are having their peak performance between 10.00 a.m. and 12.00 a.m. At this time they are working concentrated and thinking creative. Around lunchtime, the performance curve is declining up until about 3.00 p.m. before a next peak between 4.00 p.m. and 8.00 p.m. is reached. But, this is strongly depending on our own chronobiology (owl = evening person, lark = morning person) and our actual sleeping behavior. That means, we are not only having sleep-cycles but also wake-cycles, controlled by our inner clock. If you want to further withstand the intense pressure in business life you will need to get to know your personal rhythms and learn to comply with them. The one who sleeps and works in rhythm and is caring for regular recreation is more productive and more efficient in any case.