sleep easya special advertising section of the bermuda sun n OctOber 19, 2012 n page 31

How sleep disorders can impact on your healthby AmAndA dAleadale@bermudasun.bm

Most of us have had times in our life when, for some reason, you just can’t sleep.

Sleep deprivation and disorders are more common than we realize and are triggered by a vari-ety of physical, mental and emotional factors.

One of the most impor-tant things you can do to prevent such disorders is to make sure you go to bed at a similar time each night, and wake up at a regular time in the morning.

Determine how many hours of sleep you need each night, as everyone is different.

Also avoid stimulants such as caffeine, alcohol or exercise close to bedtime and make sure your envi-ronment is conducive to sleep — away from light and noise, for example.

CycleDr Keith Chiappa, chief

of medicine and a neurolo-gist at Bermuda Hospitals Board, said: “It’s important to realize that everyone has an amount of sleep time they need in order to be at their best performance during the day.

“It’s not the same for everyone and usually varies between six and eight hours. Some people can do well on six hours while others need eight hours.

“The important thing about sleep is to try to keep it on as regular a cycle as possible. Everyone does better if they go to sleep at a similar time each night and then get up at the same time in the morning.

“It may be best for you to go to bed at 11pm and get up at 5am, but if you don’t feel at your best then maybe that’s not enough, so try getting up later such as at 6am or 6:30am. Learn what works for you and try to stick with it.”

Dr Chiappa said: “Sleep deprivation is a very general term and has many

different causes. For some reason a person doesn’t get enough sleep, or they go to sleep at the wrong time and then can’t sleep.

“You might not sleep for a variety of reasons. It could be the environment, your partner may snore, or you may have a sleep disorder.

“You may have factors in your life which keep you up at night, such as a new baby or an elderly parent you are looking after. There are lots of different reasons from medical to social, why people are sleep deprived.

“There are many differ-ent causes of insomnia. You may have things happen-ing in your life which you think about and which keep you awake, or you could be in physical pain from a disease or injury.

“Sometimes people take

caffeine or alcohol at the end of the day, and they can interfere with your sleep.

“Or people may get over-stimulated too close to going to bed, for example, by exercising late.

“Eating a heavy meal late at night can also keep you awake, or perhaps it’s too

noisy or there’s too much light in the room.

“Certainly, any emotional or other stress can keep you awake, as your mind thinks about different things.”

Dr Chiappa researched the human sleep cycle for his 1987 book The Eeg (electroencephalo-gram) of Drowsiness.

He said: “Falling asleep is a complicated process as there is a centre in the brain stem which has access to all the thinking areas. Not far from the centre, which keeps us awake, is the part which

controls our circadian (biological) rhythms.

“For example, if you put people in a cave with no clues to the passage of time in the outside world, then people will go into a 24-hour cycle of being active and asleep.

“So there’s a timekeeper in our bodies. When it becomes time to sleep, it shuts down the part of our brain that keeps us awake and ramps up the centre that controls sleep.

“In between we are drowsy. All of these phases can be accurately recorded with brainwave record-ings.”

Anyone who has trouble sleeping should see a doctor before it becomes a more serious medical problem.

“Sleep deprivation is connected to chronic health problems such as hyper-tension, kidney and heart disease, and depression,” said Dr Chiappa.

“Prolonged excessive blood pressure (hyper-tension) can damage the kidneys, heart and brain. It can be a major contribu-tor to heart attacks and strokes.

“Chronic sleep deficiency is also related to obesity, depression and diabetes.

“In the short-term, sleep deprivation affects mood, performance and concen-tration, increases irritabil-ity and anxiety.

“Neurologists are often the first person a patient will see with a sleep disor-der. They can examine the patient and send them on.

“At BHB right now we have no sleep disorder specialists, so if a physician identifies a person as need-ing further investigation for a sleep disorder, we will refer them overseas.

“But first of all, if some-one complains of problems sleeping or excessive daytime sleepiness, we will probe a little further

with questions, looking for contributing factors.

“Depending on the results we may then refer the patient on for further evaluation.

“If someone was over-weight with a history of excessive snoring then they may have disruptive sleep apnea.

“Breathing problems during sleep can lead to high blood pressure, heart disease, depression and diabetes, so the primary care physician should always be aware of the role which sleep disorders can play in these diseases.

“If a patient already has a problem with hyperten-sion, sleep apnea will only make this worse and hard-er to treat.”

Dr Chiappa said the scale of the problem of sleeping disorders in Bermuda was contingent on other health problems.

Obesity“At the first level it’s

probably average but at the second level, Bermuda has an obesity epidemic which leads to diabetes and hyper-tension,” he said.

“Diabetes is one of the major causes of disruptive sleep apnea. This condi-tion is caused because the muscles at the back of the throat relax as your sleep. The tissue at the back of the mouth then falls into the breathing passages.

“It’s that obstruction to breathing that we hear as snoring. So someone who is overweight is more likely to have this problem.

“There are two ENT (Ear, Nose and Throat) surgeons on the island who can help with sleep disorders such as this — Dr Robert Vallis and Dr Wesley Miller.

“Sleep apnea is first assessed by CPAP (Continuous Positive Airway Pressure). This involves wearing a tight-fitting mask while you are asleep. A machine by the bed raises the air pressure

n istock photo

can’t sleep: How many of us have had sleepless nights due to bouts of insomnia, sleep apnea or other problems?

See sleeping, page 35

chiappa

32 n OctOber 19, 2012 sleep easy: a special advertising section tHe berMUDA SUN

tHe berMUDA SUN sleep easy: a special advertising section OctOber 19, 2012 n 33

Get a better night’s sleep with Simmonssupplied by better renOvAtiOns

Take a minute to think about all the mattresses you have slept on over the years; your family’s hand-me-down, the college lumpster or the motley of all futons.

Isn’t it time you expe-rienced the kind of sleep you’ve always wanted to enjoy?

A Simmons Beautyrest mattress is your entry into the Simmons world of better sleep.

Put your money into a mattress that’s made to last, offering comfort, support and durability for years to come.

Motion separationThe average person

spends about a third of their life in bed. Whether that time is spent blissfully slumbering or has you in a serious fight of tossing and turning, this will depend a lot on your mattress.

A mattress can have a major impact on your qual-ity of sleep. It is connected to the network of fine blood vessels, called capillaries, underneath your skin.

When you lie on any part of your body for an extended period of time, the weight of it reduces the flow of blood through these blood vessels, which deprives the skin of oxygen and nutrients.

This causes nerve cells and pain sensors in your skin to send a message to your brain for you to roll over.

Rolling over restores

blood flow to the area, but it also briefly interrupts your sleep.

Ideally, a mattress that reduces the pressure points on your body should give you a better night’s sleep, and the Simmons Beautyr-est does just that, giving you a better night’s sleep by reducing pressure points.

The Simmons patented Beautyrest Pocketed Coil mattress and the NXG Memory Foam and Comfort Layers offer the best of both worlds — supe-rior support, conformabil-ity and comfort.

For more than 130 years, Simmons has been the market leader in luxury mattresses.

With its flagship Beautyr-

est brand, Simmons has created a mattress like no other.

Enjoy peaceful, undis-turbed sleep on the patent-ed pocket coils.

Simmons sets the stan-dard in high quality sleep products by being one of the oldest and most recog-nized mattress companies in the world.

Simmons invented the ‘Pocketed Coil’ system in 1925.

You and your partner toss and turn some 40-50 times a night. So you can see why motion separa-tion is the key to a peaceful undisturbed sleep.

Here’s where Pocketed Coil springs really deliver motion separation.

Unlike springs in ordi-

nary open coil mattresses, they are tied together at the side of each fabric pocket.

So when you move or roll, the Pocketed Coil springs don’t bounce with you.

They instantly respond and envelop you, assuring an undisturbed night’s sleep.

The ‘Do not disturb’ comfort of a Beautyrest mattress is due to the indi-vidual coils that prevent motion transfer.

Each class of Beautyrest is evaluated for motion separation, using the Motion Separation Index (MSI).

The indexes increase as you move up the line (good/better/best), but even Beautyrest Studio

models offer exceptional performance.

Beautyrest Black offers the highest degree of motion separation.

Look for the MSI (Motion Separation Index) number to determine the level of motion separation for each Beautyrest mattress.

Get pampered all night long with Pocketed Coil springs and latex or memo-ry foam, providing unsur-passed motion separation and relieving pressure.

When you get of bed in the morning you will feel refreshed and ready to take on the day.

The Simmons Beautyr-est mattress collection was once only found in Bermuda at Trimingham’s on Front Street.

Back in BermudaSimmons is now back

and available in Bermuda at Better Renovations in Southampton.

If you’re having trouble sleeping, or require a mattress with the correct support that will conform to your body, visit us today to experience the luxurious feel of the Simmons Beau-tyrest, including the Cadil-lac of all mattresses — the Beautyrest Black. n

For more inFormation on Simmons see www.CanAmericaDirect.com, www.MuchMoreFurniture.com or www.BetterRenovations.com.Better Renovations, 215 Middle Road, Southampton. Call 238-0198.

n photo supplied

comfort: the Pocketed coil system of a Simmons mattress prevents motion transfer.

How to beat insomniaby mOnicA dObbie

Sleep is nourishing and restorative.

Lack of sleep therefore can lead to many physi-cal, mental and emotional health problems.

According to statistics, insomnia affects about 20 per cent of the population in the US.

The main causes are anxiety, stress and worry. If you’re worried about your kids, the mortgage or a big project at work, you are likely to have stress and trouble sleeping.

Another common cause of insomnia is the way people respond to their inability to sleep.

After not sleeping well for several days, you may become even more worried, frustrated or depressed. You then place added pres-sure on yourself to sleep.

This leads to increased anxiety at bedtime, which further interferes with sleep. In no time at all, a vicious cycle of ‘failure-worry-more failure-more-worry’ develops.

Are you one of those people tossing and turning in your bed at night?

Lying awake worrying that you can’t get to sleep and how you’ll be too tired in the morning to do all the things you have to do — you have programmed your mind into lying awake and insomnia has become a habit.

Changing habits through

See insOmniA, page 34

34 n OctOber 19, 2012 sleep easy: a special advertising section tHe berMUDA SUN

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by AmAndA dAleadale@bermudasun.bm

Everyone needs a good night’s sleep, but if you’re tired and achy in the morn-ings you need to look at your mattress.

We spend a third of our lives in bed so comfort should be our number one priority.

If you are tossing and turning in the middle of the night, it may be time to replace the mattress.

At Big Savings Zone in St David’s, the only brand the company stocks is Serta, which claims to make ‘the world’s best mattress’.

Products by this North American manufacturer have a 10-year warranty against defects.

Coil countWhen it comes to choos-

ing a mattress, customers should always consider how they feel when lying down on a mattress.

Support comes from the spring, with the mattress’s filling determining its hardness or softness.

The two main types of mattress are spring or memory foam. Spring can be either open sprung or pocket sprung, and memo-ry foam can be either visco-foam or latex foam.

There are also differences in firmness and plushness. Or, pick a hybrid product, such as a spring mattress with latex foam pillowtop layers.

Coil count, or the number of turns the steel makes, determines the strength and support of a spring mattress.

Alan Mayne, Big Savings Zone owner, said: “Serta uses the continuous coil. If you stretch it out, it’s three football fields in length.”

The material is high tensile steel re-fired for strength and resiliency. The coils resist the body’s downward motion with a counteractive upward or supportive motion.

In an open-sprung mattress the continuous coils are open all the way around, while in a pocket-sprung mattress, indi-vidual coils are secreted in individual pockets or bags.

A pocket-sprung mattress is not recommended for heavier people, said Mr Mayne.

“The individual coils can’t handle excessive weight. The springs tend to stay down. They don’t spring back again for the support, and the little bags that the individual coils are in have a tendency to tear.”

The springs part as the bags tear, causing a dip in the mattress and lumpi-ness. Mr Mayne said Big Savings Zone doesn’t offer pocket sprung systems for this reason.

Serta’s open sprung (continuous coil) mattress-es are available in various styles and sizes.

Memory foam is current-ly the second-most sought-after category of mattress.

Mr Mayne said: “We have customers that come in and all they want is a memory foam bed… They just have to have it. They don’t even want to look at a sprung bed.”

Some memory foam mattresses on the market

can retain body heat. Other complaints are that the depth of impression makes it hard to turn over, but Serta has a trademark system to prevent this.

Mr Mayne said: “Serta has developed a gel capsule system whereby the capsules are injected into the foam.

“They pull body heat away from the body and disperse it through and out of the mattress, and these capsules also add to the support system. This helps the mattress to breathe better, too.”

Memory foam comes in viscofoam, a petroleum product, or latex foam, a natural rubber product.

Big Savings Zone has the

Serta iComfort Memory Foam gel mattress in four various levels of firm-ness. The iComfort is a viscofoam, with the queen size selling for $2,995 for mattress and boxspring.

The Stewart Ridge is a hybrid and is known as a Perfect Sleeper. Its top-of-the-line coil mattress comes with or without a latex memory foam pillow-top. A queen size sells for $2,355 for the mattress and boxspring.

While boxsprings are the normal support for coil mattresses, memory foam mattresses usually need a firmer foundation. Such a foundation for a queen size mattress costs about $400 at Big Savings Zone.

The store stocks all three Serta levels of hardness/softness — Firm, Pillow Soft and Super Pillowtop.

Mr Mayne said: “We back Serta 100 per cent. If you buy a mattress from us and then get it home and find it uncomfortable to sleep on, we’ll change it and find the comfort level you need.”

Robert Vosper, floor manager, said: “Serta has become the number one manufacturer for bedding in North America. It sells more mattresses in America than either Sealy or Simmons, so we are proud of the fact that the mattresses we sell are number one.

“We have two top-of-the-line Perfect Sleepers. They are very comfortable, with a double-spring system. One is very firm like a plush mattress and the other has a pillowtop.

“And we have our two memory foam iComfort mattresses, which have a cool gel system between the layers. They’re expensive but last a long time. They conform to your body.

“Then we have our more affordable types. The other Serta mattresses we have are Firm and Plush.

“At Big Savings Zone we are the number one furniture store in Bermuda — we won the 2012 Best of Bermuda Award for Best Furniture Store, so come and visit us.” n

Big SavingS Zone, 16 Waller’s Point Road, Southside, St David’s. See www.bigsavingszone.com or call 297-4440.

n photo supplied

quality: the Serta Perfect Sleeper, at big Savings Zone.

willpower alone can be difficult because habits become an automatic reac-tion and are locked into the subconscious mind.

That’s why the methods used by a trained hypnotist work so well. A hypnotist has the ability, resources and know-how to help reverse negative sleep patterns to healthy restful-ness, simply by commu-nicating directly with the client’s subconscious mind.

Just relaxing into a pleasant state of hypnosis can help to reduce stress, increase self-esteem and overall health and will aid better sleep.

When your sleep becomes disturbed, your goal should be to restore your previous sleep pattern as quickly as possible.

InterventionSwift intervention can

cure most types of sleeping problems and prevent them from becoming chronic.

n A regular sleep sched-ule is useful. Go to bed at the same time each night, even on weekends, and wake without an alarm clock, if you can.

Encourage your body and brain to adopt a consis-tent sleep-wake cycle; after a while, this conditioned pattern will take over natu-rally, on its own.

n Deal with worries several hours before bedtime. Make a list of all your immediate problems and concerns and then write down one or two actions you could take the next day to help resolve them.

n Develop a sleep ritual.

InsOMnIaContinued from page 33

See insOmniA, page 35

tHe berMUDA SUN sleep easy: a special advertising section OctOber 19, 2012 n 35

Why buying a good quality mattress is worth the money

in the mouth, helping to keep the airways open. It’s a non-invasive treatment which works well.

“Sometimes a simple procedure like people learning to sleep on their side can also be helpful.

“If none of these work then surgery then may be considered, to remove tissue from the back of the throat.”

Dr Chiappa said: “At BHB we’ve been trying to set up a sleep clinic but there’s been some start-up problems which we haven’t been able to solve yet, so we are presently referring people overseas. The clinic is a work in progress.

“I don’t have any specific natural remedies I can recommend for sleep disor-ders.

“Drugs, such as sleep-ing pills, may be used as a short-term solution with insomnia as they may work

for a short period of time, but eventually they lose their effectiveness.

“So it is always best to diagnose the cause of insomnia and to treat the cause.

“Sleep disorders need to be diagnosed and then followed up with the appro-priate treatment.

“For example, if someone is over-stimulating them-selves with caffeine or alco-hol at night then it doesn’t make sense to treat that with a sleeping pill.” n

a bed with a soft top.“The Advanced Coil

Technology is a two-coil system with 660 coils. There are the coils at the head and foot of the bed

but in the middle they use more coils to provide extra support, for the heaviest part of your body.

“The more coils there are, the firmer the bed.”

She added: “All of the Englander beds are environmentally-friendly. They are made of natural fibres and have an anti-bacterial film (surface) in the mattress. This prevents dust mites from living in them.”

Furniture Walk stocks two kinds of Sealy Posture-pedic mattresses — the Plush and the Firm.

“Sealy is probably one of the best-known brands in the world,” said Mrs Bean.

“The beds have a twist coil system. The Sealy Plush has the same coils as the Firm but the difference is in the topping, as the Firm has less foam.

“Sealy beds have a pillowtop encased in the mattress. They use a high-density foam which contours to your body size, so if it’s a double bed you

both get the same support.”The Paget store also

stocks Luxury Firm and Luxury Plush mattresses by Stearns & Foster.

“Stearns & Foster started out in 1846 and have always had a desire to use good quality materials and metals,” said Mrs Bean.

“These are elegant beds and Stearns & Foster use a coil-within-a-coil system, so they are well built.

“They use good qual-ity foam and cashmere so the bed ages well, and it contours to you.”

Furniture Walk also stocks day and trundle beds, bedroom furniture and furnishings.

“Anything to do with beds, we carry it,” said Mrs Bean.

“At Furniture Walk we enjoy helping people to make good choices and decisions. Customer service is our forte.” n

Furniture Walk, 12 Harvey Road, Paget. Contact 292-5209.

sleepIngContinued from page 31

by AmAndA dAleadale@bermudasun.bm

If you are looking for a new bed, quality should be your number one concern, according to the manager of Furniture Walk in Paget.

Henrietta Bean has more than 25 years’ experience in advising people on beds and mattresses.

“When clients come in we try our best to find out who the bed is for, for example, whether it is for a child or for the master bedroom,” she said.

luxury“It is so important that

people don’t buy beds on price but on quality. Some people won’t buy a decent bed for themselves but when you think about all the times you work so hard, and, let’s face it, most jobs are stressful, it is so important to get a good quality bed.

“That is what we stress to everyone coming in here looking for a bed.

“We also encourage clients to turn their mattresses around clock-wise or anti-clockwise and to flip them over at regular

intervals,” she added.Furniture Walk carries

three quality brands of beds — Englander, Sealy and Stearns & Foster.

Mrs Bean said the store stocks eight different mattress styles by England-er and there are two differ-ent types of coil systems to

choose from. “The Tension Ease has a basic metal coil, with a count of 390 coils. You can have different toppers on the mattress, to give you various levels of comfort.

“For example, some people prefer a bed with a hardboard and some prefer

n photo by amanda dale

elegant: Stearns & Foster are renowned for sourcing good quality materials.

Doing the same things each night just before bed signals your body to settle down for the night.

n Avoid over-stimulus before going to bed. Read a book rather than watching the news, action movies or anything with violence or upsetting content.

Lower the brightness of lights in the bathroom or bedroom if possible with dimmers.

n Keep a pad and pencil by your bed. If you wake

in the night with a criti-cal thought, jot it down, thereby transferring your thoughts from your brain to the paper and avoiding worry that you will forget it by morning.

n One of the best things you can do to prevent or eliminate insomnia is to learn how to deal with stress more effectively.

When stress is removed, normal sleep patterns are usually quickly restored.

A hypnotherapist can help you to change your ‘bad’ sleep habits so that you have a good night’s sleep.

You can accomplish more and feel less stressed with the wonders of a relaxed and rested mind, clear to take on the day’s chal-lenges and create a healthy, happy and productive life. n

monica DoBBie is a licensed hypnotherapist and is an expert in the field of sleep issues. She has also given international presen-tations on this subject. Call 505-7531 or e-mail change@hypnosisbermuda.com. Website www.hypnosisber-muda.com

InsOMnIaContinued from page 34