Tag Archives: Sleep Cycle

Medicine, Rx, SLEEP

Supplements: Melatonin For Sleep Is Non-Addictive

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“Melatonin is a hormone that is naturally made by your brain in response to darkness,” says sleep specialist Marri Horvat, MD. “When someone takes melatonin, they are either trying to increase the amount of this hormone overall or increase the amount they have in their body at a certain time to help them fall asleep.”

While there are some possible setbacks to taking melatonin (depending on how your body reacts), it isn’t addictive. Turns out, even if you depend on melatonin to make you fall asleep, it won’t cause your body to become dependent on it.

“As we age, we have a natural decrease in the amount of melatonin we produce, so supplementation can often be helpful,” Dr. Horvat explains.

Read more at Cleveland Clinic

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DR. C’S JOURNAL: SIGNS & SYMPTOMS OF NARCOLEPSY

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Narcolepsy is a sleep disorder with daytime drowsiness, sudden episodes of falling asleep, sometimes sudden loss of muscle control, and occasionally hallucinations.

If this sounds like the bad, overbearing, uncontrolled brother of REM sleep, that is because it is. The features of REM sleep are there; sleepiness, muscle paralysis(cataplexy) and Hallucinations(dreams). This combination of symptoms can often disrupt jobs, and can be dangerous, leading to accidents.

The cause of narcolepsy is unknown, but there is an association with decreased blood levels of the neurochemical hypocretin. The disease starts in youth, and sometimes occurs and families. The patients are often overweight, and can have sleep apnea in addition.

The Diagnosis is usually made in specialist sleep centers, which find an unusually rapid entrance  into sleep, beginning in the REM stage. Normally REM sleep occurs later in the 90-minute sleep cycle.

There are a lot of different stimulants and some sleep-restoring and paralysis-reducing medications used to treat narcolepsy. This and other information may be found on the accompanying Mayo clinic article.

—Dr. C.

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