Sleep and Health

Poor sleep quality can be related to many common health problems:

• Daytime sleepiness
• High blood pressure
• Diabetes
• Obesity
• Impaired decision making
• Lowered immune system
• Poor concentration
• Lower stress tolerance
• Decreased libido
• Increased irritability
• Increased pain sensitivity
• Poor school performance
• Strain on relationships

DR ALEX BARTLE and his team of health professionals at the SLEEP WELL CLINIC
provide comprehensive assessment and treatment services
throughout New Zealand for children and adults suffering sleep disorders
such as SNORING, SLEEP APNOEA, INSOMNIA, and PARASOMNIAS.

Whangarei | Auckland | Tauranga | Wellington | Nelson | Christchurch

Snoring Snoring can be always be treated, but different people are more suited to particular treatments. The Sleep Well Clinic will take a comprehensive history and use a home sleep study to find the right snoring treatment for you. More-on-Snoring...		Sleep Apnoea Obstructive sleep apnoea occurs when snoring has become bad enough that the airway is sucked shut for up to a minute at a time, repeatedly throughout the night. The Sleep Well Clinic will test for and treat sleep apnoea. More-on-Apnoea...		Insomnia Insomnia includes all forms of difficulty getting to or staying asleep. Insomnia can affect anyone at different times and includes shift workers and sufferers from jet lag. The Sleep Well Clinic will help you control your insomnia. More-on-Insomnia...

Sleeping in the aftermath of the Canterbury Earthquakes.

• Write your fears and concerns down in a notebook before going to bed. This helps define the things on your mind and lets you "lay them to rest" for the night through the action of writing, rather than leaving them to play over and over in your mind as you try to sleep. Have a checklist of things you want to have to hand such as a water bottle, your transister radio, a torch, and know where you will shelter in the event of a large aftershock.
  
• If you have water and power still on have a hot shower right before going to bed. This raises your body temperature so that when you are in bed it is beginning to fall. A falling body temperature helps initiate sleep physiologically.
  
• Avoid clock-watching through the night. Looking at the clock will link the wake episodes together in your mind by "time-stamping" them, which has the perceptual effect of running the wake periods together in your mind so it seems as if you have been awake for hours.
  
• Keep some quiet background sound or quiet music playing, especially for children.
  
• Keep a dim light going - everything is more frightening or disturbing in the dark.

If you or your loved ones persist in having problems getting to sleep or staying asleep it might be worth a visit with the doctors at the Sleep Well Clinic to help prevent a long-lasting pattern of poor sleep being established particularly in the weeks and months to come once the aftershocks have stopped.