For most people, the screen of a cell phone is the first thing they see in the morning and the last thing they see before going to bed. Nobody can deny the fact that living without a cell phone today is extremely difficult but must we be so glued to them? Staring into a phone or tablet screen, before going to sleep affects your sleep as well as impacts your health. Here's how:

It is harder to fall asleep

We feel sleepy when the brain releases a hormone called melatonin. This release is determined by the body's circadian rhythm which is controlled by light exposure. The blue light of a cell phone screen interferes with this rhythm and tells the brain not to secrete melatonin. This makes it harder to fall asleep even after you have switched off your phone.

It hampers the quality of your sleep

A direct effect of sleeping late is a reduced amount of sleep. On top, that, using a cell phone before going to bed also hampers the quality of your sleep. When an office email or a text message is the last thing you see before going to sleep, your brain cannot completely shut off. This makes you tense even in your sleep.

It lowers your attention span

When you wake up from a restless night's sleep, your productivity suffers. Not getting enough sleep is known to hamper your decision-making skills, impairs both long term and short term memory and make you distracted. This leads to unnecessary stress and anxiety.

It increases the risk of weight gain

The body is more likely to feel hungry when you don't have enough sleep. This is because sleep-deprived people have a lower metabolism. Thus using a cell phone before sleeping also increases your chances of snacking on something unhealthy to get through the day and in turn you put on weight.

It weakens your immune system

The body's immune system produces antibodies that fight infections while we are asleep. Depriving the body of the sleep it needs weakens the immune system by not giving it enough time to build its forces. Not only does this increase the risk of falling ill it also slows down recovery from illnesses.

It damages your skin

Sleeping late at night and not getting enough sleep can cause dark circles, puffy eyes and fine lines across the face. The blue light of a cell phone screen also tells the body to secrete cortisol which makes the skin less elastic and smooth.

Thus, even if you look at a phone screen for just five minutes every night before going to bed, the side effects last much longer and affect your mental and physical health as well as your looks.

Browsing on the Phone Before Sleep: Effects on Health

Everyone knows that drinking a cup of coffee before bed can leave you tossing and turning for hours. Eating the right food not only gives the body the right kind of nutrition, it also affects the quality of your sleep. While some foods are sleep deprivers, others are sleep enhancers. Here are a few such types of food that you can include in your diet to improve your sleep.

Cherries: Cherries are rich sources of melatonin. This is the chemical responsible for controlling the body s internal clock. A serving of tart cherries in their raw, whole form or a glass of cherry juice(without added sugars) can improve sleep quality and help treat chronic insomnia. It can also be used to fight jet lag.
Walnuts: These nuts are rich sources of an amino acid known as trytophan. Trytophan boosts serotonin and melatonin production thus regulating the body s sleep-wake cycle. This can help you fall asleep faster and avoid tossing and turning.
Milk: A glass of warm milk is a well known home remedy for insomnia. Milk or any form of dairy is rich in tryptophan. As mentioned above, this helps people fall asleep faster by regularizing their circadian rhythm. Additionally, calcium also helps regulate muscle movements and calms the body by fighting stress and stabilizing nerve fibers. If you don t like the thought of plain milk, you could try other forms of dairy like cheese and yogurt.
Rice: Jasmine rice and other forms of white rice have a high glycemic index. This means that the body digests rice slowly and hence releases glucose produced during digestion very gradually into the body. This helps cut down the time it takes to fall asleep. A gradual absorption of glucose in the body also prevents a  sugar high  and its accompanying crash. This helps prevent waking up in the middle of the night and ensures that you sleep through the night comfortably.
Bananas: Bananas are great not only for your overall health but also for your sleep cycle. Bananas are rich sources of magnesium and potassium. These are natural muscle relaxants that promote sleep. They also help fight sleep disorders such as restless leg syndrome and muscle cramps to give you a more restful sleep. Bananas are also rich in carbohydrates that are slow to digest and hence make people fall asleep faster. Combining bananas and milk is a sure shot way of falling asleep faster.

5 Foods For a Good Night Sleep

Sleep apnea is a potentially dangerous sleep disorder in which you stop and start breathing frequently while you are sleeping. Symptoms of sleep apnea often include loud snoring and fatigue even if you sleep uninterrupted through the night. Obesity and age are the common risk factors of sleep apnea.

The most common type of sleep apnea is obstructive sleep apnea, in which the throat muscles contract and relax while you are asleep. The other type of sleep apnea, called central sleep apnea, usually occurs in people who have been diagnosed with brain tumors, infections or heart failure, or have had a stroke.

Treatment of sleep apnea includes:

CPAP: The Continuous Positive Airway Pressure (CPAP) device is generally recommended in the treatment of sleep apnea. CPAP is a breathing machine that stops your airways from getting blocked when you are sleeping. The CPAP device is normally the size of a tissue box. It comes with a mask that you put over your mouth and nose. The machine attached to the mask pumps a continuous flow of air that keeps your airways clear as you sleep.
BPAP: The Bilevel Positive Airway Pressure (BPAP) device is used as an alternative to the CPAP device, if you find it hard to adjust to the CPAP. If you have a weak pattern of breathing, the BPAP can be helpful.
ASV: The Adaptive Servo-ventilation (ASV) device is used to treat both central and obstructive sleep apnea.
Treatment for other medical conditions: Sometimes sleep apnea can be caused by underlying health conditions. Problems such as rhinitis (nasal passage inflammation) and hypothyroidism (underactive thyroid gland) can cause sleep apnea. In such cases, your doctor needs to diagnose these conditions first before treating your sleep apnea.
Lifestyle changes: Excessive weight sometimes can cause sleep apnea; so losing excessive weight should be a priority. Also, alcohol and tobacco can contribute to your symptoms, so try avoiding those.
Medication: Usually, doctors do not prescribe any medicine, since sedatives and sleeping pills actually worsen sleep apnea. But, in case of sleep apnea in children, doctors typically suggest intra nasal corticosteroid medicine to treat the symptoms.
Surgery: Surgeries to increase the size of your airway or to remove your adenoids, tonsils or extra tissues in the rear of your throat or your nose can prove helpful.

Sleep Apnea - 7 Ways it Can Be Treated!

Six hours of sleep daily is as important as the food you consume and the amount of exercise you do, in a day. Poor sleep can lead to reduced concentration the next day coupled with low productivity. Thus, it is necessary to get at least 6 to 8 hours of sleep daily.


Here are few benefits of getting the required amount of sleep every night:
Sleeping improves memory: Lack of sleep has negative effect on your brain, which affects your memory and retention. If you sleep more, you are more likely to retain things because in your sleep, your mind goes over everything you ve read when you were awake. This process is called consolidation. Thus, an optimum amount of sleep helps you retain whatever you have learnt during the day better.
Stimulates creativity: Getting sleep for the required number of hours is a necessity as your creativity levels are bound to soar after some good rest. Working relentlessly without a break in between can lead to saturation in your creativity levels. Thus, rest is a requisite for a spur of creativity.
Reduces stress levels: Not sleeping enough adds even more strain on your brain. Sleep deprivation increases stress, which adds to the blood pressure level and cholesterol in the blood, putting you at risks of suffering from coronary diseases. Thus, to keep your heart health intact, it is important to sleep for at least six hours, which is a minimum requirement for your body to rest.
Leads to weight loss: Sleep deprivation can lead to an alteration in your hormone levels, which activates the cortisol (a fat producing hormone), thereby, leading to obesity. It also leads to negative modifications in your diet and a lethargic approach to your regular exercise routine. Thus, the easiest hack to lose weight is to get adequate sleep at night.


Because the benefits you gain out of sleeping for a minimum of six hours are invaluable, you should aspire to give your body the rest it deserves.

Why You Should Sleep for 6 Hours Everyday?

If there is anything other than food and a healthy living that sustains us, it is sleep. Sleep is the basic necessity of our lives. It is the battery that keeps our body clock working. Nowadays our lives are fast-paced with competitions to meet and targets to reach where stress takes a toll on our body. A good night s sleep would be enough to feel rejuvenated, you think? Well, you think it right but what if it is the sleep that causes the problem? What if your sleep is imbalanced?

According to Ayurveda, there are 3 different types of sleep imbalance, arising from Vata, pitta and Kapha dosha.
Vata: Sleep becomes imbalanced when your mind stays awake despite you being tired. Your mind is occupied with thoughts and worries which do not let you fall asleep.
Pitta: It is the dosha which is one of the most common disorder found in the elderly people where you have a perfect sleep but wake up in the dawn or wee hours and are unable to go back to sleep resulting in the tossing and turning in the bed and ultimately giving up.
Kapha: When you sleep well for a long time but yet you wake up feeling tired and fatigued instead of being fresh, is when Kapha dosha occurs.

Ayurvedic tips for a good sleep
There are many people around us who go through at least one of these three imbalances in sleep. Ayurveda has come up with several easy and natural tips to have a good sleep. There 4 great tips among many, following which you will get a quick result.

Oil Massage: Oil is said to soothe our nerves if massaged properly. Warm oil works best on the scalp and on the soles of our feet. Any oil, from jojoba to jasmine, almond to coconut with a few drops of lavender oil could be used for massage. Applying this daily will soothe one's nerves and induce a good sleep.
Warm milk: Drinking a glassful of warm milk 10 minutes before going to sleep will help in having an uninterrupted sleep.
Routine bedtime: Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise . Note the use of the word  healthy  in this nursery rhyme. We have been taught this since our childhood days, only if we could follow. Sleeping on time plays an important role here because inadequate sleep due to long working hours often cause sleeping disorders.
Morning Exercise: After waking up early in the morning, Ayurveda suggests exercising as early morning exercise will help you fall asleep at night easily. You must not indulge in an exercise later in the day because it would make you more active instead of inducing sleep.
Leading a healthy lifestyle is what we all look forward to and that is why sleeping on time and doing the right things like following these simple tips from Ayurveda will lead us to a healthier living.

4 Great Ayurvedic Tips That Promote Good Sleep!

Sleep disorder is a medical and physiological condition that can come with a number of symptoms and pain points, including insomnia or problems in getting proper sleep, constant waking up at night on a rather frequent basis, difficulty in remaining asleep for long periods of time, waking up tired due to lack of restorative sleep where the brain does not go to sleep properly, waking up at a particular time early every morning and not being able to go back to sleep and a host of related problems.

There are many methods of dealing with the same including medication and sleep therapy. When we speak of medication, homeopathy is one such field of medicine that is known for its lasting efficacy. This form of medicine has emanated after centuries of research and has been in practice for over 200 years now. The medication prescribed by a homeopath doctor will usually have a small dose of naturally found elements so as to trigger the intrinsic healing prowess and system of the body into action. Few medicines with symptoms of sleeping disorder mentioned below-

Coffee Cruda: This homeopathic medicine is one of the most widely prescribed ones when it comes to issues that have to do with sleeplessness. It is best suited for patients who are facing a constant flow of random and often, worrying, thoughts in their mind, when they should actually be sleeping. This triggers insomnia and makes it difficult to maintain proper sleep, even when the patient finally manages to get some shuteye.
Kali Phos: This is also a well-known homeopathic cure for sleep disorders. This is ideally suited for patients of sleeplessness and especially those who are facing nagging worries, which have culminated into a state of stress. This kind of stress can have to do with one s studies, marriage, career, children and much more. It is also prescribed for patients who are having trouble when it comes to getting over some form of adversity in their lives like the loss of a loved one.
Natrum Mur: This is a homeopathic medicine that doctors usually prescribe for individuals who have been facing some chronic form of grief due to some incident or a series of such incidents in their life. Emotional disturbances can cause a repetition of thoughts and worry in their minds, which keeps them from getting any rest.
Nux Vomica: This medicine is ideal for those patients who have no trouble when it comes to falling off to sleep. But once they sleep, they find that they wake up frequently and cannot go back to sleep again. They may also have disturbing dreams, which can make their brain wake up and become too restless to go back to sleep in a hurry.
All homeopathic medicines although, do not have any side effects, but in order to make sure that they work effectively on a person they must be taken strictly under the supervision of a homeopathic physician as all times. 

Different Sleep Disorders & Homeopathic Remedies For Them!

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