Couples Sleeping Apart To Prevent Heart Disease and Other Disorders?

Sleep plays an important role in our health. If one could not have a good night sleep, many health hazards might just occur. Evidences have already shown that poor sleep was linked to depression, heart disease, lung disorder, traffic and industrial accidents, as well as divorce. Nevertheless, people do not seem to pay much attention to the quality of their sleep.

Of course, poor sleep can be due to many causes. For instance, family or work pressure, frequent passing of urine during the night, snoring from the partner sharing the same bed, and so on and so forth.

An interesting finding, revealed on September 10, 2009 at the British Science Festival, indicated that couples actually sleep better when they sleep separately. This seems to be opposite to what people generally feel: they tend to sleep better when a partner accompanies them.

In order to compare how well couples slept when they shared a bed versus slept separately, the researchers from the University of Surrey studied the sleep patterns of 40 couples. They found that when couples slept together in the same bed and if one of them moved in his or her sleep, there was a 50 percent chance that their partners on the same bed would badly be disturbed.

They also revealed that even with the evidence they gathered, couples are reluctant to sleep apart. There is only 8 percent of those couples who are in their 40s and 50s are sleeping in separate rooms. Perhaps, the thinking that couples do not sleep in the same bed only when they have problem in their relationship still firmly instilled in the mind of most people.

One sleep specialist, who sleeps separately with his wife, argues that people were never meant to share their beds.

Why?

According to his explanation, the concept of modern martial bed only started with the industrial revolution. This is because people were moving to overcrowded towns and cities where living space was scarce. He further pointed out that married couples sleeping apart were rather common before the Victoria era.

So what should the couples sharing the same bed do now?

The advice from the experts is that if couples sleeping together can sleep perfectly well, then they should stick to it, otherwise they should not be afraid to do something different.

Let Your Baby Sleep Enough To Avoid Overweight!

Childhood overweight or obesity has been a hot topic among people. This is because the extra weight accumulated in the body of these youngsters may greatly increase their risk of become victims of heart disease, diabetes, hypertension (high blood pressure), stroke, and even cancer in their life later.

Many causes, for example, over-eating and physical inactivity, can actually help a person gain weight or become obese. Nevertheless, a recent study revealed that babies with insufficient sleep could become overweight too!

Published in the “Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine”, the findings from the so-called “Project Viva” study indicated that infants who sleep an average of less than 12 hours per day have doubled their risk of being overweight by the age of 3, compared to babies who get at least 12 hours of sleep per day

The adverse effect of shorter sleep duration was especially obvious among children who also watched at least 2 hours of television per day.

Previous research has already linked short sleep duration to obesity in older children, adolescents and adults, but the current study examined the relationship between the hours of sleep during infancy and weight in childhood.

The mothers of 915 infants who were involved in the study were asked at 6 months, 1 year, and 2 years how many hours their child slept in a 24-hour period, including naps. At the age of 3, 9 percent of children were overweight, which was defined as having a body mass index (BMI) for age and sex in the 95th percentile or greater.

After removing the influence of other variables like demographics, maternal characteristics, breast-feeding duration, and birth weight, the researchers found that infants who slept an average of less than 12 hours per day were almost twice as likely to be overweight.

Moreover, a much higher association between sleep duration of less than 12 hours per day and television viewing of more than 2 hours per day was also noted. Such combination significantly raises the chances of becoming overweight by nearly 6 times.

Based on the findings, the researchers suggested that childhood overweight prevention should target not only on the reduction in television viewing but also on making sure adequate sleep duration.