General Medical And Health Lab

Posts Tagged ‘insomnia’

The low dopamine levels caused by Parkinson’s disease interfere with regular sleep patterns. People with PD often have trouble fall­ing asleep, waking frequently during the night, and staying up for hours in the middle of the night. This condition is known as sleep fragmentation. Just as people with Parkinson’s have good days and bad, we also have good nights and bad.

“Rest is a problem,” said James, 51. “I suffer from insomnia. I get about two to three hours of sleep a night; sometimes I’m up for two or three days at a time. I’ve gotten used to it. If I get more than four hours of sleep, I feel stiff, almost frozen. It takes two doses of medication before I’m up and able to move enough to do anything. About a month ago, I slept 12 hours, and it took almost 24 hours to get over that.” Read the rest of this entry »

Before the 1960s, most scientists believed that such things as heart rate, blood pressure, digestion, and muscle behavior could not be controlled by an individual without the help of drugs, claims to the contrary by yoga adepts notwithstanding.

Now biofeedback used in conjunction with techniques such as meditation, progressive relax­ation, and guided imagery, is widely accepted by most of the medi­cal community.

Basically, biofeedback is a setup for “teaching” your body how to control its responses. The “feedback” is information on the how the body is currently responding, which is then fed back to the individual via a simple signal, usually a sound or a flashing light.

So, for example, if your aim is to lower your blood pressure by self-induced relaxation, the feedback device will tell you when your blood pressure starts to drop. Read the rest of this entry »