At the Chiropractor, Well-Adjusted Pets

Wow I never thought that animals could go to chiropractor to get adjusted. But it does make sense because they do have bones like humans and sometimes those bones get miss-aligned. I have never been to a chiropractor myself, but would love to try it because I do feel like it will provide benefits in the long run. 

By ABBY ELLIN

One morning last August, Mary Arabe’s 9-year-old gray and black tiger cat, Leo, came home from a night out exploring with a severe limp and an elbow swollen three times its normal size. He was clearly in pain; Ms. Arabe thought he had dislocated his shoulder during a fall.

“He kind of lay around the barn that day; you could tell he was hurting,” said Ms. Arabe, who lives on a 25-acre farm in Rogers, Ohio, with 10 chickens, three horses, three cats and two dogs. “He was in so much agony I thought, ‘If someone can’t remove this animal’s pain I have to put him down.’”

She took Leo to the veterinarian, who said he could do nothing for him. Despondent, she took him to Rick Tsai, a chiropractor in Darlington, Pa., who a few years earlier had adjusted Ms. Arabe’s puggle, Bustar, after a head and neck injury.

An X-ray found no broken bones, but there was a large amount of swelling and fluid retention. Dr. Tsai couldn’t make any promises, but he placed his hands on the cat’s spine, hips and neck and manipulated the joints until they popped.

“We brought the cat home, and the next day he was walking fine,” said Ms. Arabe. “Two thirds of the swelling in the arm was gone. Whatever Dr. Tsai adjusted, it worked. He healed him.”

Millions of people swear by their chiropractors, and chiropractic has long been a mainstay in the equine world, especially among show or racehorses. Now it is gaining popularity among pet owners, as a way to treat household pets suffering from arthritis, sprains, joint pain and other ailments.

Animal, or veterinary, chiropractic originated around 1895, when human chiropractic first began. But it did not gain wider appeal until 1987, when the late Sharon Willoughby-Blake, a veterinarian and chiropractor, started Options for Animals in Hillsdale, Ill., which taught vets and chiropractors how to adjust animals. Two years later, the American Veterinary Chiropractic Association, a professional membership group and the main certifying agency in North America, was formed.

According to Robbie Hroza, vice president of operations for Options for Animals, about 2,000 students have gone through their program. Over the last two years, student enrollment has increased by 50 percent; a good portion are recent graduates of veterinary or chiropractic schools, she said.

Still, the practice remains controversial, in both people and pets. While some studies have found that chiropractic care can be more effective than medications for people with problems like neck pain, others have linkedforceful neck manipulation to strokes. Other researchers have found that unfavorable chiropractic outcomes are under-reported in medical trials.

There are only a few scientific studies about chiropractic’s efficacy on animals, and tensions exist both within and between the chiropractic and veterinary communities. The American Holistic Veterinary Medical Association, a trade organization, reports that in 2012 about 900 of the estimated 97,000 veterinarians in the United States practiced some type of animal adjustment.

In some states a chiropractor is not allowed to touch an animal without either a veterinarian’s referral or direct veterinary supervision. And in itspain management guidelines for dogs and cats, the American Animal Hospital Association and the American Association of Feline Practitioners caution, “chiropractic methods potentially can cause injury through the use of inappropriate technique or excessive force.”

“There is currently insufficient published evidence of efficacy in dogs and cats to make specific recommendations about the use of chiropractic intervention,” they add....Continue Reading 

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Indoor Tanning Remains Popular, Despite Risks

I can see why many women are getting addicted to tanning beds even with the risks of skin cancer. Women, most especially white women, like seeing their skin tan and will go through any measures to get tan skin. I've been to a tanning salon once and saw this white woman with her young daughter getting a tan at the salon. I could not believe that this mother would allow her daughter to get tan at a young age. It is because of pop culture that people think that "tan skin is the in thing" 

By ANAHAD O'CONNOR

Despite warnings about skin cancer, about a third of the young and adult white women in a new study said they used tanning beds, and many were using them frequently. Tanning beds are widely believed to have played a large role in the increasing rates of skin cancer in recent decades. The most serious type, melanoma, has risen sharply among young white women in particular.

The new study, published in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine, sought to document the prevalence of tanning bed use among white female high school students and white women ages 18 to 34.

It found that among the high school students, 30 percent had used a tanning bed in the previous year, and 17 percent had reported doing so at least 10 times, which was considered frequent use. Among those in the older group, a quarter had engaged in indoor tanning in the previous year, and 15 percent were classified as frequent users. In both groups, the practice was most common in the South and Midwest.

The authors of the report noted that indoor tanning before the age of 35 increases melanoma risk by up to 75 percent, and that the risk increases by roughly 2 percent with each additional tanning session per year.

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Too Young to Have a Heart Attack

I was unaware that heart disease is the #1 killer of women until reading this post. I believe that younger people are having heart attacks because of the food they eat. The junk and fast food is not good for children growing up. Children should be eating vegetables and fruit and a well balance diet. It is sad to see families so busy now-a-days that they cannot prepare a proper meal. Instead, they take the easy route and go through a McDonalds drive thru for the convenience. 

By DIANE BENSON HARRINGTON

The foreshadowing escaped me: The night before we left for our summer vacation in Michigan, I accidentally stepped on my Kindle — which, like my heart, I cannot live without — and broke it. Reduced to reading novels on my iPhone, I made the best of it several days later, sitting in a sunroom overlooking Eight Point Lake, where my family gathers each year with friends.

The day before, proving to my teenage sons that 48 isn’t too old for fun, I had hung on for dear life as I zoomed behind a speedboat on a ski tube. The next day, I was enjoying a few moments of solitude in those blissful minutes before the sun goes down, finger-swiping to turn the page of my novel on my phone’s tiny screen, when my left arm started hurting.

You know that childhood feeling when your mother is mad at you, grabs your arm and squeezes it as she drags you away from whatever grief you’ve been causing? It felt like that, times 10, from shoulder to wrist. My chest got slightly uncomfortable, and I started sweating profusely. For the next four or five minutes, I kept to myself. I was incredibly antsy — up, down, sitting, standing, leaning, lying; my arm and I simply couldn’t get comfortable.

I instinctively knew what was happening but wasn’t ready to say it out loud, trying to reassure myself. There was no elephant on my chest; I’m too young – no one in my family has had heart trouble before age 55; I’m 50 pounds overweight but carry it well. Nevertheless, I motioned my husband up from the dock and, cradling my arm, told him something was really wrong.

He rushed to get some baby aspirin he’d seen earlier in the bathroom, which I chewed. I noticed him quietly doing a Google search for “heart attack symptoms” on his phone as family and friends gathered around us, but I was otherwise inside my head, no longer able to focus on what anyone else was doing or saying.

Our friend drove us to the E.R., where my EKG looked normal and the first nitroglycerin pill had no effect. But 10 minutes later, about the time the second and third nitro pill were making the pain dissipate, the doctor showed up with the result of my cardiac enzyme blood test. It’s supposed to be 0, but mine was much higher. And, he said, that weird somersault feeling I was having right at that moment at the base of my throat was actually tachycardia, a rapid heart rate. Before he was even done talking, an ambulance crew was waiting to take me to a bigger hospital 30 minutes away for a cardiac catheterization.

A little balloon angioplasty through the groin? I could deal with that, and maybe I could convince them to let me go back to the cottage in time for dessert. Instead, I woke up the next day, struggling to breathe, wrists strapped to the rails of a hospital bed, hearing the word “surgery.” I was extremely agitated, confused and unable to ask questions because of the breathing tube running down my throat.

This was not the summer vacation I had planned.

It turned out my “tortuous” left anterior descending artery was 95 percent clogged, and the angioplasty effort tore the inner artery wall, making a stent impossible and creating an even more critical situation. While I was still anesthetized, a surgical team was rounded up at 3 a.m. for an emergency heart bypass. In the span of a couple of hours, I went from expecting a teeny balloon in my artery and a little puncture in my groin to having open heart surgery and an eight-inch scar bisecting my chest.

Did I ever expect this? Not really. I’d read enough to know that heart disease is the No. 1 killer of women, that our heart attack symptoms often are radically different from men’s (just ask Rosie O’Donnell, whose heart attack symptoms the same week as mine seemed more like the flu), and that a third of cardiovascular-disease deaths happen to people younger than 65. But this stuff doesn’t happen to us, right?

Not only did it happen to me; it happened to me twice. I was lucky enough to arrange a flight home on a small plane — larger planes have pressure issues, and the doctors wouldn’t let us drive — but 30 minutes into the flight, my left arm started hurting and I started sweating, not to mention crying at the thought of going through this all over again.

We made an emergency landing. Later, after five hours of tests and discussion, a doctor told me it was stress-induced angina: the symptoms of a heart attack without the life-threatening blockage. He wanted me to stay overnight for observation, but finally agreed to let me continue my trip home.

I’d been relatively pain-free in the hospital, but once I was home, the agony of my titanium-twist-tied sternum was startling. I’ve had to take everything — shifting positions, showering, even breathing — slowly. I’m more aware of my heartbeat, which can be a little freaky. And while I won’t be running marathons any time soon, it’s heartening to hear from friends that I look “terrific,” nothing like a person who had a heart attack five months ago.

I’ve learned many things throughout all of this. Among them, that doctors now try to use a mammary artery, from the chest, for the bypass instead of grafting one from the leg because the mammary bypasses tend to last longer. And it’s likely that a lot of my previous complaints over the past few years — extreme fatigue, lack of endurance, poor circulation, jaw pain (not T.M.J., after all), and so many other vague symptoms — were due to this growing accumulation of plaque in my artery, not perimenopause. Even though I’m far from healed yet, I feel amazingly more alert and less muddled than I did before the surgery, and many of those other symptoms suddenly disappeared.

I also quickly learned I have more friends than I realized, as people brought dinners and well wishes for weeks on end (not to mention commiseration about trying to read a book on an iPhone, a heart-attack-inducing event if ever there was one). However, I’m still coming to terms with the idea of a heart-healthy diet here in Wisconsin, the land of aged and artisan cheeses.

Perhaps most important, I’ve learned to relinquish some control. Even if your doctor says you don’t need help walking up the stairs, let your husband or children escort you anyway. When you’ve been this close to death, the recovery is as much theirs as yours.

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Anorexia Could Be A Sign Of Autism

I couldn't believe how serious anorexia was after reading this article. After watching news about girls starving themselves to seem thinner I thought it was a social thing. But according to a study by the leading autism expert Simon Baron-Cohen, it is found that those with anorexia have an above-average number of autistic traits. Now knowledge of autism and it's treatment can help treat girls(or anybody) overcome anorexia.

Published August 06, 2013/Reuters

Society has viewed anorexia as purely an eating disorder, but the similarities between those who suffer from that and those with autism challenges traditional belief. Autism and anorexia share certain symptoms such as rigid attitudes, behaviors, a tendency to be very self-focused, and a fascination with detail. Both disorders also share similar differences in the structure and function of brain regions involved in social perception.


This issue primarily affects young girls because autism usually affects boys. In fact 1 in every 50 child in the US is diagnosed with autism and those of whom are mostly boys. This leads girls with anorexia to be misdiagnosed as just an eating disorder instead of something more severe.


"Shifting their interest away from body weight and dieting on to a different but equally systematic topic may be helpful," said autistic researcher Tony Jaffa. "(And) recognizing that some patients with anorexia may also need help with social skills and communication, and with adapting to change, also gives us a new treatment angle."


Jaffa led a test on how 66 girls aged 12 to 18 with anorexia but without autism scored on tests to measure autistic traits. He and his researchers found that five times more girls with anorexia scored in the range where people with autism score.

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Cancer Risk Increases With Height

I found this article to be very interesting. I am not tall myself, but I do know people who are tall. I can see why there is a higher risk of cancer with height. I believe the contributing factor is the hormones and growth factors that spur cancer cells. Hopefully one day we can find a cure for at least one type of cancer that can benefit millions of people. 

By TARA PARKER-POPE

A woman’s cancer risk appears to increase with her height, a new study shows.

An analysis of 20,928 postmenopausal women showed that the taller a woman is, the greater her risk for a number of cancers, including breast, colon and skin cancer, among others. The finding, published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, is not expected to change screening recommendations and shouldn’t alarm those with a tall stature. Instead, say scientists, the association between height and cancer may help guide researchers to study hormones and growth factors that influence height and may also play a role in cancer.

“We know that cancer is a disease in which hormones and growth factors modify things,” said Geoffrey C. Kabat, a senior epidemiologist in the department of epidemiology and population health at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University in New York. “Height itself is not a risk factor, but it really appears to be a marker for one or more exposures that influence cancer risk.”

Nobody really knows why cancer risk is associated with a taller stature. It may have to do with hormones and growth factors that spur both height and cancer cells. It may be that height simply increases the surface area of the body’s organs, resulting in a greater number of overall cells and higher subsequent risk of malignancy.

While the current study focused only on women, other research has also found an association between height and cancer among men. One study  found that taller men were at slightly higher risk for aggressive prostate cancer. In May, the Journal of the National Cancer Institute reported that height differences between men and women may help explain why men have an overall greater risk of developing cancer in non-sex specific organs like kidneys and lungs.  That study, of 65,000 men and women, showed that sex differences in height may explain a third to a half of a man’s excess cancer risk compared to women.

Height can be influenced by a number of factors beyond genetics. The amount and type of foods consumed in childhood can influence height, and childhood nutrition may also play some role in cancer risk. A higher circulating level of a protein called insulin-like growth factor, which can be influenced by factors like exercise, stress, body mass index and nutrition, is also associated with both increased height and an increased cancer risk.

The data for the latest analysis were collected from the Women’s Health Initiative, the largest-ever study of postmenopausal women. The researchers identified 20,928 women who had received a cancer diagnosis during the 12-year study period. The data set included not only the woman’s height but also her age, weight, education, smoking habits, alcohol consumption and whether she used hormone therapy. This allowed the scientists to control for other factors that could influence cancer risk and more closely determine the strength of the association with height.

They found that for every 4-inch change in height, there was a 13 percent increase in risk for developing any type of cancer. The cancers most strongly associated with height were cancers of the kidney, rectum, thyroid and blood. Risk for those cancers increased by 23 to 29 percent for every 4-inch increase in height.

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18 Helpful Remedies to Relieve Headache Pain & Tension

We all at some point in our lives suffered from Headache Pain or some kind of Tension. I am fortunate enough to have never experienced a migraine, but I know many people do on a daily basis. Migraine sufferers or even just the common headaches/tensions may be able to benefit from these remedies. 

1. Crush it with cayenne

Utilizing something spicy may not sound headache helpful, but cayenne is somewhat revered in the kingdom of natural remedies to treat pain and inflammation. The secret behind its success lies in an ingredient called capsaicin, which inhibits something in our body that is one of the main elements in pain perception called Substance P. In short, Substance P is part of what makes us feel pain, and the capsaicin depletes it. Numerous studies, the first in 1998 in The Clinical Journal of Pain, support that when applied topically to the nasal passages; people experience a significant decrease in the severity of their headaches, all thanks to capsaicin.

2. Go nuts

Instead of popping a pill when you get a headache, toss back some almonds. For everyday tension-type headaches, almonds can be a natural remedy and a healthier alternative to other medicine. It acts as a pain reliever because it contains something called salicin, which is also an agent in popular over the counter killers. Try eating a handful or two of these wholesome nuts when you feel the ache start to set in.

3. Find some feverfew

Headaches, particularly migraines, can be relieved through the use of the feverfew plant. When a migraine is in the works your blood vessels are changing, and theories suggest that the vessels in your head are expanding and pressing on nerves. Feverfew has been confirmed to relax the tension/constrict blood vessels, easing the painful pressure. It also reduces inflammation and pain overall with a substance called parthenolide, which has results similar to taking a daily aspirin, but without the side effects.

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Sleep Tight Every Night

I find this article very interesting because at some point or another we all had trouble sleeping. At Bayho.com, we have this product that was featured on Dr.Oz show that is suppose to help with sleep disorders. The product is called Guna-Sleep. At the end of this article, they talk about your sleeping style and what it tells about you and your health. I used to be a side sleeper, but now I became a back sleeper. I find myself sleeping on my back more often than my side. 

By Rachel Grumman Bender, Women's Health
Thu, Mar 17, 2011

In addition to food, water, and air, sleep is the one thing we truly can't live without. But experts say more and more women are falling short on shut-eye, and staring at the ceiling all night isn't just frustrating—it can also be life threatening. Studies show that one in six fatal car accidents are caused by sleep-deprived drivers, and according to the National Sleep Foundation (NSF), the 40 million Americans who now suffer from sleep disorders are at higher risk for a slew of serious health issues. Here, what's behind the insomnia epidemic, plus fast-acting solutions for getting quality sleep.

The Vitamin Z Deficiency

A growing number of nocturnal ailments are robbing women of critical slumber. To date, there are about 90 official sleep disorders, the three most common being insomnia, restless leg syndrome, and sleep apnea, a potentially life-threatening disorder in which people stop breathing during sleep, says Philip Westbrook, M.D., former president of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine.

New research has shed light on why sleep problems are skyrocketing. As with many health issues, stress is to blame. "Thanks to the economy, there's been a big increase in stress, especially in women," says Alan Lankford, Ph.D., president and CEO of the Sleep Disorders Center of Georgia. "And stress can have a huge impact on falling and staying asleep." When you're mentally keyed up at night, your body pumps out the stress hormone cortisol, which acts like an adrenaline shot that prevents snoozing.

Also contributing to sleepless nights is a genuinely modern double threat: overactive minds and underactive bodies. Thanks to our coffee culture, people tend to suck down jolts of energy well into the afternoon. "Any kind of caffeine, even the small amounts in hot chocolate and candy bars, can impair your sleep if ingested after 2 p.m.," says James Maas, Ph.D., coauthor of Sleep for Success! Everything You Must Know About Sleep But Are Too Tired to Ask.

Artificial blue light from a television or computer is another powerful mental stimulant that blocks production of the sleep hormone melatonin. So fiddling with your iPad or watching Conan within an hour of bedtime signals your brain to stay alert—and awake. This might not be such a big deal if we got off our butts more often. "Women evolved to be physically active from morning to night," says Westbrook.

"But today's desk-bound woman, even one who regularly hits the gym, still doesn't get the exercise her body was built for, and ample exercise is crucial for good sleep."

Fight back against your body's most dangerous foe—the Sitting Disease.

A Wake-Up Call for Your Health

A solid third of your life should be spent in slumber, and not just so you can recover from those happy hours gone wild. Sleep is critical for overall health, says Maas, "and people are starting to realize it's a necessity, not a luxury." As you snooze, your body repairs errant cells, builds bone and muscle, consolidates memories, and stores up energy for the days, weeks, and years ahead. Sleep is so important, in fact, that some doctors consider how much you get to be a vital sign, on par with body temperature and blood pressure, says Lankford.

When you're spent, your healthy habits tend to disappear. Fatigue makes the body crave a quick hit of energy—otherwise known as a high-calorie carb-fest. (Ever hit a fast-food drive-through after a rough night?) Going to the gym, a smarter pick-me-up, can seem about as doable as taking a trip to Mars, which is why nearly 50 percent of women report skipping exercise when they're beat, according to the NSF.

Habitually skimping on shut-eye can also lead to chronic health problems or worsen preexisting ailments. "Sleep deprivation is cumulative," says Lankford.

"If someone needs eight hours a night and gets only six every night for a week, by Friday she will be functioning on sleep debt." Long term, that can spell malfunctioning hormones that pave the way for increased risks of depression, heart problems, gastrointestinal issues, type 2 diabetes, and breast and colorectal cancers. (Breast cancer, for example, has been linked to high levels of estrogen and low levels of melatonin; production of both of these hormones is affected when you're sleep deprived.)

10 Common sleep myths—uncovered!

Hitting the Bottle

Tossing and turning night after night can make a person desperate enough to storm her doc's office. But instead of searching for the root causes of insomnia, many physicians simply whip out their prescription pads. "Until recently, many doctors were not trained in sleep treatment in med school," says Maas. "Of the 90 or so sleep disorders, most physicians can name around four. Many hand over pills because they don't know how else to solve the problem." To wit, a whopping 60 million sleep prescriptions were filled in 2009, according to research firm IMS Health.

All this pill popping has ushered in a new set of problems. For one thing, some sleep drugs are addictive, especially older ones such as benzodiazepines. Even the new class of nonbenzos can be habit forming, says sleep doctor Shelby Freedman Harris, Psy.D., director of behavioral sleep medicine at Montefiore Medical Center's Sleep-Wake Disorders Center in New York City. "Though people are not hooked on them physiologically, they can develop a psychological dependence and think they'll never sleep if they don't take a pill," she says. Rare but scary side effects include things like memory loss and sleepwalking, sleep driving, or sleep sex. Plus, says Westbrook, no studies show what extended use of these drugs does to your body.

"The bottom line is that prescription sleeping pills are a short-term solution," says Maas. Simply put, drugs may be a godsend for temporary insomnia, but continuous use could be dangerous.

"Taking a pill won't get to the underlying issue," says Westbrook. Most frightening of all, "insomnia can be a symptom of depression, and depressed patients who take sleeping pills have an increased risk of suicide." Likewise, sleep apnea, when treated with Rx sleep meds, can turn fatal.

Are we overmedicating ourselves? The dangersous world of pill and prescription addiction.

Put Sleep Issues to Rest

A safer and more effective cure for sleep problems lies in improving what doctors call sleep hygiene, a combination of natural snooze-inducing practices. Clean up your slumber routine with these tricks:

Stick to a regular schedule. "Routine is so important," says Maas. "You have one biological clock—not one for the workweek and one for the weekend. You need to synchronize it and go to sleep around the same time every day." Changing up your snooze schedule confuses your brain's sleep center and promotes restless nights.

Keep things cool. When you nod off, your core body temperature drops by about a degree and a half, says Lankford. Encourage the process by setting your bedroom thermostat to around 68°F. If you still feel hot at night, you could be smothering yourself under a comforter that's too warm, so switch to a lighter one. Another trick: Take a hot bath before bed. As your body cools, it transitions more easily into sleep mode once you lie down.

Don't be afraid of the dark. Artificial light messes with your internal clock and acts as a stimulant, inhibiting the flow of melatonin. "An hour before bed, turn off your iPad or computer, and don't text or watch TV," says Harris. And by all means, stop watching the clock! Not only do digital versions give off a melatonin-disrupting glow, but watching 20 minutes tick by can lead to more hours of sleepless anxiety.

Exercise earlier. Working out soothes insomnia-fueling stress and eventually lowers your body's built-in thermostat, a necessary pre-sleep step, explains Robert Oexman, D.C., director of the Sleep to Live Institute in Joplin, Missouri. Just finish off your cardio at least four hours before bed—any later and your body temp will still be too high, keeping you awake.

Try some pillow talk. If adopting the sleep-hygiene guidelines above doesn't leave you well rested, you may want to look into cognitive behavioral therapy, in which you learn to challenge, then change, your negative sleep-related thoughts, says Harris. Acupuncture, massage, meditation, or simply taking a series of slow, deep breaths before bed may also help soothe you into sleep. If your insomnia sticks around for more than three weeks, seek out a doctor who is trained in sleep medicine.

Less Sleep, More Pounds

The reason you can't lose weight may lie between the sheets. The less you sleep, the more of the appetite-revving chemical ghrelin your body makes, and the lower your output of leptin, the hormone that signals you're full, says Lee A. Surkin, M.D. This weight-gain double whammy leaves you craving fatty, salty, carb-filled foods, making it practically impossible to pass up that high-calorie breakfast sandwich.

Plenty of women get up before dawn to slip in a workout. But if they aren't going to bed early enough, their weight-loss efforts may be in vain. A study in the Annals of Internal Medicine found that sleep-deprived people on low-cal diets lost 55 percent less body fat than those who were well rested. What they did shed, sadly, was lean muscle mass.

Preliminary studies show that nighttime exposure to light—e.g., the kind your computer, cell phone, or TV emits—may lead to obesity. Melatonin, your body's sleep-inducing hormone, is extra-sensitive to any kind of glow. Even barely there lights can disrupt melatonin production, leaving you wide awake and more likely to raid your secret candy stash.

The Stages of Sleep

Stage 1 straddles the line between alert and asleep.

Stage 2 is when your body temp cools and you're oblivious to your surroundings.

Stages 3 and 4 send you into deeper levels of sleep. Your breathing slows, your blood pressure drops, and your muscles relax.

You then move into rapid eye movement (REM) sleep for anywhere from five to 40 minutes at a time. "In REM sleep, the brain is awake but you're unaware of your surroundings, unconscious in one sense but totally conscious in another," explains Philip Westbrook, M.D. The stage occurs every 90 minutes throughout the night, and it's during REM that you have your most vivid dreams.

Once you've snoozed your way through each level, you typically go from REM right back into stage two. It all tapers off in the a.m., when your body releases cortisol to help you shrug off sleepiness as you open your eyes.

What Your Sleep Style Says About You (And Your Health)

Do you opt for the full fetal position in bed, or are you the sleeper who is invariably splayed out as if about to make snow angels with the top sheet? Although we may get feedback from the person we share a bed with, most of us don't give a second thought to which way our bodies lie after we slip off into dreamland. But according to one sleep expert, the position you prefer during slumber says a lot about your personality... and your health. Here, three of the most common poses, and what they say about you.

Stomach If you prefer a prone position (lying nearly facedown), you're likely a perfectionist who is compulsive, persistent, and goal oriented, says psychiatrist Samuel Dunkell, M.D., a sleep expert in New York City. These qualities may be good for your career, but they don't do your body any favors. Sleeping on your stomach can twist your neck into an awkward position, put excess pressure on your spine, and make it more difficult to inhale, says Lee A. Surkin, M.D. To avoid waking up all achy, gently nudge yourself into sleeping in a fetal pose by lying on your side with one pillow between your knees and another behind your back.

Back Staring straight up at the ceiling can signal an adventurous, confident, and receptive personality, says Dunkell. Catching Z's on your back also keeps pressure off your jaw, which is crucial for people with painful temporomandibular joint (TMJ) disorder. But back sleeping triggers undue stress on your airway, so it's a bad idea for snorers. If you're a noisy breather, try the pillow trick explained above or buy a full-body pillow that will keep you on your side.

Side Some 73 percent of women and 50 percent of men spend the night on their sides. Most curl into a semi-fetal pose, with their knees just slightly bent, says Dunkell. According to his research, such people tend to be compromising and appeasing, whereas those who snooze in full fetal (with their knees practically hugged to their chest) are introspective and intense. Healthwise, sleeping on either side curtails snoring, and resting on your left side keeps your stomach active and eases heartburn, according to the Journal of Clinical Gastroenterology.

The Broken Marriage Bed

Don't let your need for quality Z's tear you and your mate apart. One in four couples nod off in different bedrooms because of sheet-sharing pitfalls. Avoid that fate by following proper sleep hygiene and trying these strategies:

The average person moves 65 times a night, says James Maas, Ph.D. Invest in a mattress that's big enough to keep you from feeling each other flail around. Also, try using two separate comforters or blankets to avoid a tug-of-war.

If snoring is an issue, the snorer should first try nasal strips and sleeping on their side. If that doesn't work, hit the pharmacy for silicone earplugs, which mold to the shape of the ear and cancel out up to 50 percent of noise, says Shelby Freedman Harris, Psy.D. (Consistent heavy snoring should be checked out by a doctor, who can prescribe treatment that will help keep things quiet.)

People may say that sleep is the new sex, says Maas, but one can actually lead to the other. Your body releases feel-good hormones, stress, and tension during orgasm, which makes you fall asleep faster and more soundly. Just sayin'.

Original Article