Back to Garden/Back to Bed Room

Monday June 04 03:23 PM EDT

Stress Hurts: Sleep

By Joyce Walsleben Special to ABCNEWS.com

Stress can disrupt your ability to get a good night's sleep, but you can make some changes. Follow these Healthy Woman tips and get the quality sleep you need to recharge. ? AIDS Drugs Help, But Not Enough ? Kidneys 101 ? Stress and Infertility ? More Living News ? Add ABCNEWS Health News to My Yahoo! Stress frequently disrupts sleep in many women. This is because stress can affect the arousal/wake system, the neuronal centers in our brain that control whether we are awake or asleep. Stress can be external, for instance, like the stress that follows a bad day, or internal, as with physical illness or psychological/psychiatric disorders. There are many ways to combat stress and thereby improve sleep. The first and most important is to recognize the presence of stress. Frequently, stress sufferers are the last to know. If you have to use every minute of the day and can't slow down, you are stressed ? even if you feel fine. Sleep is a process that takes time and can't be rushed. It happens after the wake system slows down. If you are sad, dull and sluggish, you may have an underlying level of depression. This can be viewed as a stress also, because depression and many other psychiatric disorders use the same brain chemicals as sleep. If the chemicals are out of sync, sleep and wake will be too.

Joyce Walsleben is director of the Sleep Disorders Center at the New York University School of Medicine.

Sleep Tips For external stresses:

Separate sleep activity from the day. Find a secure sleep environment that is quiet, dark and comfortable. It should be separate from your wake area, even if it is with a screen or curtain.

Figure out your body's sleep cycle. First, select a waking time and keep it constant, seven days a week. Then allow your body to tell you when it is time to go to bed. To hear your body's message, spend some time settling down in the evening. Turn off the TV, computer and phone. Listen to some music or talk with a partner. Take a long hot bath, read a boring book. Watch for yawning, blinking eyes, deep breathing. Those are your cues that it's time for your body to sleep.

Spend part of the day "worrying well." If you start to think once you're in bed, switch that activity to the daytime when you are alert and can do a better job. Use a notebook to write your concerns in. On the left side of the page, write down what is going on in your head at night, on the right side, write some forward motion from it. Do this consistently for 30 minutes every afternoon. Refuse to go there at night! You will do it tomorrow. Mentally take yourself somewhere else.

For internal stresses:

For those with internal stress such as a chemical imbalance like depression, or an illness, correction of the causative problem is the key. This will probably require a visit with a professional, who may prescribe medication to correct the original problem. This is true even if the problem is psychological. If you cannot solve your sleep issue yourself, take it to your physician. Talk about what is happening, what makes it better or worse. You may ultimately need to visit a sleep center. Frequently, solving the underlying issue works wonders for sleep.