Couple return to their farmhouse to find two tawny owls huddled up in their OVEN

Couple return to their farmhouse to find two tawny owls huddled up in their OVEN - They say owls are smart – but this one appears to have been at the back of the queue when they were dishing out wisdom.

He and his mate decided to shelter from the freezing weather by popping down the flue of a wood-burning stove. Fortunately for the pair of tawny owls, the fire was unlit at the time.

They were found cosied up in the grate by Kenneth and Beverley Parker when they returned to their Suffolk farmhouse near Stowmarket after a trip away.

Beverley and Kenneth Parker came in from the cold on Friday afternoon to discover two tawny owls in their wood burning stove

The couple released the birds back outside after closing the curtains in their room to encourage them out of the stove.

Mrs Parker, 54, said: ‘Luckily we had been out and the burner wasn’t on but if they had fallen down the other chimney, it is always lit so it wouldn’t have been such a happy ending.’

The RSPB is urging people to help birds during the cold winter months by providing food, including high calorie food like sunflower hearts, suet pellets and kitchen scraps, as well as water and shelter for birds.

The Parkers once found a live pigeon in the wood burner in Suffolk

RSPB wildlife advisor Val Osborne said: 'This "blow-in" is a great reminder that birds need our help during cold weather, though perhaps these tawny owls were a bit too keen!

'The ups and downs in temperatures are confusing for wildlife and though it is getting milder this week, we might not be through the worst of it yet.

'With the breeding season just around the corner, it is important for birds to be on top form to breed.'

Mrs Parker added: 'Luckily we had been away as the burner wasn’t on but if they had fallen down the other chimney, it is always lit so it wouldn’t be such a happy ending.' ( dailymail.co.uk )

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Sleep well to wake up healthy

Sleep well to wake up healthy - Have you ever felt sleepy during the day or have you found it difficult to wake up after the weekend? If so, then you know the irresistible grasp that sleep can hold.

In a fast-paced world where go-getters rush to achieve their targets, the biological clock is often ignored. Sleep — an essential factor for human beings and one falling in the same category as food or water — is often one of the casualties of this mad rush.

Sleep is not a dormant state, but is a heightened state of brain activity where rejuvenation, recuperation and the development of immunity take place. Balancing the sleep/wake state is up to each individual, but ignoring one for the other is similar to entering a blind alley.

Sleep is not a dormant state, but is a heightened state of brain activity where rejuvenation, recuperation and the development of immunity take place.

How important is sleep?

Sleep is vital for our nervous systems to work properly. Sleep deprivation leaves a normal person drowsy and unable to concentrate. It also leads to impaired memory and physical performance and the reduced ability to carry out mathematical calculations. If sleep deprivation continues, hallucinations and mood swings may develop.

Without sleep, neurons may become so depleted in energy or so polluted with by-products of normal cellular activities that they begin to malfunction. Sleep gives neurons normally used while we are awake the opportunity to shut down and repair themselves. Sleep also may give the brain a chance to exercise important neuronal connections that might otherwise deteriorate from lack of activity. Deep sleep also coincides with the release of growth hormones in children and young adults.

Different Stages

Sleep is not a completely inactive state. During sleep, brain activity changes in characteristic ways and the patterns are: rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep and non-rapid-eye-movement (NREM) sleep. NREM sleep is broken down into three distinct stages: N1, N2, and N3. These stages are characterised by increasingly larger and slower brain waves. N1 sleep is very light sleep; N2 is slightly deeper sleep; and N3, also called slow-wave sleep, is the deepest NREM sleep stage.

REM sleep, which is often associated with dreaming, is thought to assist in brain development, especially early in life. Not surprisingly, newborns and infants typically spend about twice as much time as adults in REM sleep.

Sleep cycles, composed of REM and NREM sleep, last for about 50 minutes in children and 90 minutes in adults. Infants' and children's cycles contain a relatively large amount of slow-wave (N3) sleep — the non-dreaming, restorative kind that is also known as deep sleep. In early adulthood the amount of slow-wave sleep begins to decline. Elderly people have relatively short periods of slow-wave sleep.

The right dose

The amount of sleep each person needs depends on many factors and these include age. Infants generally require about 16 hours of sleep each day, while teenagers need about nine hours on average. For most adults, seven to eight each night appears to be the best amount of sleep, although some people may need as few as five hours or as many as 10 hours of sleep each day.

Women in the first three months of pregnancy often need several more hours of sleep than usual. The amount of sleep a person needs also increases if he or she has been deprived of sleep for certain periods of time.

Identifying disorders

You may have a sleep disorder if you spend a great deal of time lying awake in bed at night or find yourself frequently nodding off during the day. Similar symptoms can be seen in a variety of sleep disorders such as excessive daytime sleepiness. If you suspect you have a sleep disorder, it is important to seek professional help.

Ignoring lack of sleep or disorders can lead to many mental and physical problems and may negatively impact motivation, relationships, and job performance.

Insomnia
Insomniacs wake up early and will not be able to get back to sleep. Difficulty falling asleep and staying asleep are symptoms of insomnia. People with insomnia are likely to become clinically depressed, suffer from poor concentration, and have accidents.

Treatment
Resolving underlying health issues or changing external factors may be the best approach and also behavioural techniques, like improved sleep habits. Hypnotics are the most common and effective drugs for treating sleep problems.

Excessive Daytime Sleepiness (EDS) is a symptom that can be seen in several sleep disorders, including obstructive sleep apnea, narcolepsy, and periodic limb movement disorder.

Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA) is an extreme form of snoring in which an individual's airway becomes partially or completely blocked many times during a night of sleep, leading to several instances where they are forced to wake up. One of the biggest risk factors for OSA is obesity. This may be because excessive weight increases the amount of tissue in the throat and thus makes airway obstruction more likely.

Treatment
Weight loss is one of the most strongly recommended preventive therapies for weight-related OSA. Continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) is the first line of treatment for moderate to severe cases of OSA.

Narcolepsy is best known as an uncontrollable need to fall asleep at various times throughout the daytime. Narcolepsy is a central nervous system disorder in which the brain cannot properly regulate cycles of sleep and being awake.

Treatment
The diagnosis of narcolepsy requires daytime sleep testing and overnight sleep study. Narcolepsy can be treated with stimulants to reduce daytime sleepiness, antidepressants and other medications.

Periodic Limb Movements of Sleep (PLMS) is a condition that causes involuntary kicking and jerking movements of the legs and arms, often repeated hundreds of times during the night. In extreme cases, the brief periods in which one is awake following such movements disturb sleep so much that they cause excessive daytime sleepiness. This is called periodic limb movement disorder (PLMD).

Treatment
PLMD is treated using medications and in some cases sleeping pills may be used to prevent limb movements waking up a person.

Parasomnias are sleep disorders that range from the mundane to the horrifying. The three most common types of parasomnia are:

Sleepwalking: Sleepwalking actually takes place during deep sleep. Sleepwalkers often perform routine activities such as dressing and cleaning.

Night Terrors: These severe attacks cause people, usually children, to appear to wake up and scream in fear or panic. They tend to have no recollection of the event the following day.

Sleep-Eating Disorders: These episodes, like sleepwalking, occur when one partially awakens from deep sleep and cause individuals to eat without any knowledge of what they are doing, or any memory of what they have done.

Treatment
Sleepwalking and sleep-eating disorders can be treated using relaxation techniques. Night terrors can be treated with sleep medication, antidepressants, or relaxation techniques.

Sleep Bruxism is a stereotyped movement disorder characterised by the grinding or clenching of the teeth during sleep.

Fibromyalgia is a disorder involving chronic pain in your muscles, ligaments and tendons. Fibromyalgia is also known as fibromyositsis, rheumatic pain modulation disorder or the fibrositis syndrome, which in turn disturbs sleep.

Treatment
Exercise and relaxation techniques are suggested.

Sleep laboratory

A sleep laboratory is designed to study sleep disorders. Since such studies require getting people to go to sleep, a sleep clinic is designed to be a comfortable place to sleep. Depending on what is being studied, a patient may wear various monitors as he or she sleeps. These analyse things like brain activity, heart activity and changes in blood pressure. Technicians can collect data on the patient's sleep patterns to look into problems as varied as sleep apnea and snoring.

What's in a nap?
In many parts of the world, napping continues to be a normal part of daily life for both the young and old. This siesta, as Spanish-speaking countries call it, tends to be more common in the tropics than in more temperate latitudes. Naps in these cultures typically take place in mid-afternoon and coincide with the hottest time of day, as well as a lull in the brain's alert signal that works to counteract the drive to sleep.

As a consequence of these regular daytime naps, night-time sleep is often shifted to a later hour than it is for societies or individuals that don't nap during the day.

The synchronisation of the sleep-wake schedule and the internal clock is essential to an individual's ability to keep awake and sleep when so desired.

Biological clock

Sleep and awake are regulated by the synchronised interaction of two internal systems: the sleep/wake homeostat, which monitors our need for sleep based on how long we have been awake; and the circadian system, which regulates the cycling of numerous functions, including when we sleep and wake up, every 24 hours.

Human beings' state of alertness is due to the circadian alert system, a function of our internal biological clock. The clock, which is responsible for regulating a vast number of daily cycles, is found in a relatively small collection of neurons deep within the brain.

Under normal conditions, the clock is highly synchronised to our sleep/wake cycle. The clock's alert signal increases with every hour one is awake, opposing the sleep drive that is building at the same time. Only when the internal clock's alert signal drops off does sleep load overcome this opposing force and allow for the onset of sleep.

A peep into animal world

The sleep patterns of animals — whether furry, feathery or scaly — are similar to that of human beings. But do animals dream? Scientists believe they do. Dogs, it is believed, dream about hunting. However, when it comes to sleeping, they all have strange habits.

Dolphins
Dolphins keep one eye open and one half of the brain awake at all times to maintain some amount of consciousness to breathe and to keep a watch out for possible threats. Dolphins sleep about eight hours a day in this fashion.
Dolphins are particularly unusual in their lack of need for sleep; a calf and its mother will have zero sleep for the first few months of the baby's life.

Bats
Bats sleep upside down so that they can launch into a flight easily; their wings are not strong enough to launch them into the air from the ground. The brown bat, which can live up to 33 years, usually sleeps for at least 19 hours a day.

Elephants
Elephants don't sleep well. They sleep for about 30 minutes at a stretch and then get up for something to eat and then lie back down. They repeat this until they get about four hours of sleep in a 24-hour cycle.
Since elephants are quite heavy they put all their weight on their bones when they lie down, making it very uncomfortable for them to lie down for long.

Alarm clock

It is widely believed that Levi Hutchins of New Hampshire, the United States, invented the modern alarm clock in 1787. According to legend, the 26-year-old clock-maker believed in getting to work on time. It was his firm rule to wake up at 4am everyday, whatever the season or day.

In an attempt to get up well before sunrise, he built a pine cabinet and transferred the inner mechanism of one of his large brass clocks into it and inserted a pinion or gear. When the minute hand of the clock reached the desired time, it tripped the pinion and sett the bell in motion. This made enough noise to wake up Hutchins.
He never bothered to patent or mass-produce his alarm clock; all that he was interested in was not oversleeping.

Tips for a good night's sleep

Don't lie in bed awake:
If you can't get to sleep, don't just lie in bed. Do something else. The anxiety of being unable to fall asleep can actually contribute to insomnia.

Exercise:
Exercise at least 20 to 30 minutes a day. Try to exercise well before bedtime as a workout just before bedtime may interfere with sleep patterns.

Sleep until sunlight:
If possible, wake up with the sun, or use very bright lights in the morning. Sunlight helps the body's internal biological clock reset itself each day. Sleep experts recommend exposure to an hour of morning sunlight for people having problems falling asleep.

Avoid caffeine, nicotine and alcohol:
Avoid drinks that contain caffeine, which acts as a stimulant and keeps people awake. Smokers tend to sleep very lightly and often wake up in the early morning due to nicotine withdrawal. Alcohol robs people of deep sleep and REM sleep and keeps them in the lighter

Relax before bed:
A warm bath, reading, or another relaxing routine can make it easier to fall sleep. Train yourself to associate certain restful activities with sleep and make them part of your bedtime ritual.

Room temperature:
Maintain a comfortable temperature in the bedroom. Extreme temperatures may disrupt sleep or prevent you from falling asleep.

Set a schedule:
Go to bed at a set time each night and get up at the same time each morning. ( gulfnews.com )

How many hours do you sleep everyday? Have you faced any sleep disorders? Have you tried finding a solution to the problem? What happened?

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Dreaming about a good night's sleep?

Dreaming about a good night's sleep? - Not getting enough quality sleep because you snore? You could be suffering from Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA) - Depending on who you talk to, snoring can either be comic or tragic. For those who suffer it silently, it is a menace.

For those who use examples of snorers to tell funny stories, it’s priceless comic relief. And for those who snore, it’s an alarming health problem. This sleep interruption is not taken as seriously as it should be in society. From little snorts and grunts to roaring, thundering bellows, snoring moves through various decibel levels but no matter where it’s at, it is a sign of an underlying health problem.

Two of the most common symptoms of Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA) are loud and chronic snoring and fighting sleepiness during the day. OSA not only robs an individual of deep, restful sleep, in its extreme form, it can lead to asphyxiation.

Two of the most common symptoms of Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA) are loud and chronic snoring and fighting sleepiness during the day.

Take the case of W.A., a 35-year-old expatriate, who kept dozing off at work due to lack of proper sleep thanks to OSA. When he went out for lunch with his colleagues, he would often doze off in the back seat of his colleague’s car. Many a time his sleep would be accompanied by loud snores. In his own car, he would doze off at the wheel while waiting for the lights to turn green. His wife found her sleep repeatedly disrupted by his snoring cycles. His married life was fraught with tension and his work life a matter of ridicule.

In the case of 43-year-old S.T., snoring also destroyed his marriage. Obese and neglecting his health, he snored throughout the night. His wife’s pleas to seek medical advice fell on deaf ears. Often she would wake up with fear as his breathing grew strangled in his sleep.

Over a period of time, to her horror, she discovered that she too was putting on weight as her lack of sleep began to play havoc with her hormones. This miserable marital situation lasted for almost ten years until she decided to seek a divorce as she realised that living with her husband was damaging her mental and physical health.

“In the case of S.T.” says Dr Anil Chowdhery, ENT Specialist, Jebel Ali Hospital, “snoring turned out to be a very serious problem as it damaged the partner’s psychological and physical well-being. S.T. actually had a severely deviated nasal septum - the bone dividing the two nasal cavities was not straight, thus leading to an imbalanced flow of air through his nose. This led him to suffer from Obstructive Sleep Apnea [OSA.]

“W.A. too was suffering from OSA. While it is unfortunate that his wife left him, it is a highly probable occurrence in marriages where the husband does not seek medical help for his acute condition.”

What is OSA?

According to Dr Chowdhery, “OSA is a disorder which occurs due to the tongue and the soft palate partially or completely obstructing the pharynx [throat] which sends the air to the larynx. This results in a partial or complete blockage in air flow for a few seconds at a time which leads to recurrent episodes of cessation of ‘apnea’ or breathing.

In the event of either condition, sleep gets interrupted. Typically, the pattern of sleep in such cases is fitful and deep by turns. During the fitful phase, breathing is laboured and insufficient and in the deep phase, it returns to normal. If the cessation or stoppage of breathing lasts for more than ten seconds in adults and six seconds in children, it is classified as ‘apneic episodes’. Individuals with OSA may have such episodes many times during the hours of sleep.”

In OSA, there is a narrowing of the upper respiratory tract during sleep. The muscles of the tract are in a dilated state when awake and upright and therefore, breathing is normal. During sleep, especially in a supine position, the muscles relax thus narrowing the air passage.

“This narrowing leads to an increase in the carbon dioxide levels in the blood causing awakening from sleep,” says Dr Chowdhery.

The primary cause of OSA is obesity. “Obesity,’’ says Dr Chowdhery, “is a leading cause of OSA. Obesity leads to fat deposits in the throat and pharynx which thicken making the airway passages narrower. The fat deposits also render muscles in these areas lax, which means that the tongue and jaw then tend to fall back when an obese person is asleep in a supine position. This also obstructs the already narrow airway passage and leads to snoring.”

The height and the neck size of an individual is a good indicator of the propensity for snoring, says Dr Chowdhery. “Individuals with a short, broad neck with a lot of fat around it and with a circumference of more than 43cm may be more prone to the condition as compared to an individual with the ideal height-weight ratio.”

It has been incontrovertibly established by medical experts that a disruptive sleep pattern can wreak havoc with health. Research has established numerous times that lack of quality sleep on a continual basis could lead to excessive daytime sleepiness (EDS), impairment of cognitive functions and a diminished quality of life. What is disturbing also is that our current lifestyles increase the chances of sleep deprivation.

How can one identify OSA?

OSA can be diagnosed after assessing patient history, conducting a physical examination and polysomnography, also known as multi-parametric sleep studies (many parameters such as shallow breathing episodes, apneic episodes and oxygen levels are marked, recorded and analysed).

These studies are carried out while a person is sleeping to measure the apneic episodes. A sensor is used to track the breathing pattern through the night to measure the AHI (a numeric measure used to diagnose OSA and its severity). In this parameter, the ‘apneic’ or no-breathing episodes are measured over a period and an average per hour of such episodes is calculated to assess whether the person has OSA or not. Mild OSA is 5-15 apneic events per hour of sleep, moderate is 15-30 apneic events per hour of sleep and severe is more than 30 apneic events per hour of sleep.

Can one have asthma and not sleep apnea?

“Though OSA is pathologically related to upper airway obstruction,” he says, “and bronchial asthma is related to the lower airway, there is a fair chance that asthmatics are more prone to developing it.”

Says Dr Chowdhery, “Typically, someone suffering from OSA will display all of or some of the following symptoms depending on the severity: during sleep, a loud, cyclic snoring; snorting; choking/gasping; repetitive awakenings; thrashing body movements; reduction in heart beats; and apnea.” The typical apneic episodes occur more when the individual is lying on his back, that is, when he is supine.”

Other signs of OSA include EDS, systemic or pulmonary hypertension, lethargy, morning headaches and nocturia (frequent nocturnal urination). Children with OSA may be hyperactive and exhibit poor school performance.

Consequences if OSA is left untreated

As explained above, due to less oxygen in the blood as a result of improper breathing, various complications can arise in OSA. “Recurrent deficiency in oxygen in body tissue resulting from OSA may lead to changes in blood circulation, neurological conditions, metabolic and inflammatory changes,” says Dr Chowdhery.

“Various studies have also indicated that irregularities in heart beats called cardiac arrhythmias may lead to low blood-oxygen pressure, high blood-carbon dioxide pressure or pulmonary arteries constriction in patients with OSA. This in turn exerts pressure or stress on the heart and its pumping capacity, leading to a further risk of cardio-vascular diseases and stroke.”

Who is likely to have OSA?

“Studies have indicated that people over the age of 40 are more likely to suffer from OSA,” says Dr Chowdhery.

“The risk increases with age and the disorder occurs more often in men than in women [2:1 ratio]. Other risk factors for OSA include smoking, hypothyroidism, hypertension, and the consumption of alcohol or the use of sedatives before bedtime.”

Treatment

The current best form of treatment for OSA is through the CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) contraption the patient wears on his face during sleep. “The CPAP machine is recognised as the gold standard for treatment of moderate-to-severe OSA in adults.

It is a mask which covers the nose and has a set of tubes which are attached to a pressure monitor. The machine automatically detects sleep apnea and immediately blows the appropriate volume of air into the respiratory tract through a ‘pneumatic splint’ that sits on the nose. The downside is that a patient has to wear it for six to eight hours each night during sleep and on a long-term basis.”

Apart from CPAP, there are other supportive treatments like the use of a nasal splint to dilate the nose, or wearing supporters on the jaws to prevent them from falling back during sleep.

By the way …

• A primary cause of OSA is obesity.
• All snorers do not suffer from OSA.
• Those with OSA are at risk of other health complications.
• OSA could lead to a heart attack/stroke.

Inside info

There is plenty of evidence that shorter attention span, lethargy, sleepiness and irritability can lead to road mishaps. ( gulfnews.com )

READ MORE - Dreaming about a good night's sleep?

Sleep Disorders and Springing Forward

Sleep Disorders and Springing Forward - Fighting with your circadian rhythm can cause almost everyone, even those who normally have an easy time falling asleep, to experience exhaustion or sleeplessness. Yet, we do it twice a year in most of the United States.

For some people, the biggest challenge of adjusting to daylight savings time is remembering to change all the clocks and getting up early enough on Sunday to make it to church or other appointments on time. But for others, the semi-annual switch is nightmarish.

The problem is that not everyone's circadian rhythm, the natural sleep cycle that the body tries to adjust to, corresponds to a 24-hour day. Worse yet, some seem to have a varied length, or be at polar opposites from what is expected.

My husband is one of those people. If he was without other commitments, his body would most happily adjust to a sleep schedule that began about 4 a.m. and lasted until 11 a.m. He can, with great personal effort, force his body to adjust to a more day-oriented schedule, but it usually results in poor sleeping, less than four hours a night, and eventually, exhaustion.

Every year, this rhythm is further hampered by the return of daylight savings time. This year, daylight savings time arrives April 13 for most people in the United States.

The spring forward, losing an hour of the time change, almost always shifts his sleep schedule forward as well. His body is reticent to change to the different number on the clock and still wants to sleep for that same immutable period of time.

To combat it this year, he is employing the suggestions of the National Sleep Foundation to change our clocks at midday Saturday, April 12, to try to trick himself into feeling sleepy earlier. But many of the suggestions don't seem likely to work. For example, the NSF says to go to bed at your regular time (as determined by the clock) on Sunday, avoid naps the day of the change, and get a full night's rest between Saturday and Sunday. Of course, it also says to get up at your usual time on Sunday.

The problem is that two of these things are contradictory.

He has insomnia anyway and trying to force his body to sleep when it isn't ready results in tossing and turning, but no rest. Then, if he gets up at the conventional time on Sunday, he will not have gotten a full night's rest.

While other insomniacs may have different troubles than he does, it is important to prepare for the coming time change and attempt small adjustments prior to the spring forward. By consulting your medical provider prior to the event, you may have better luck staying away on Sunday, April 13.

And, in the end, the National Highway Transportation Safety Board says that the time change is good for us all. Research shows that there is at least a one percent drop in traffic accidents after the shift to daylight savings time. ( news.yahoo.com )

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