Why Chronic Diseases Worsen Insomnia (Mechanism and Solution)

Virtually any person who experienced insomnia can testify that it comes together with other symptoms. Why does advance of chronic health problems aggravate problems with sleep? Official medical science cannot provide explanations related to this effect, but this mecianism is easy to understand.

Use your observations
If you monitor sleep of your relatives and friends, you should be able to notice that their morning well being and quality of health depend on one factor mainly: their respiration during sleep. When their breathing is heavy and deep (noisy breathing, snoring, irregular breathing, mouth breathing, etc.), they are in a worse health state. When their breathing is slow and relaxed, they have better sleep and health state. You can even count their breath frequency during sleep to check their health. Besides, respiration of very healthy people during sleep is scarcely noticeable or hearable at all: they sleep as if they are deceased. It can be frightful, but it remains a reality of life.

Do sick people have abnormal breathing?
Before we give some thought to effects of breathing on sleep, let us explore breath in the ill during day. Do they have unusual respiration at rest? Yes, my internet site has final results of tens of physiological articles that found that mildly ill people breathe at rest about two-three times more air than the recognized scientific norm. critically or severely ill, as well as hospitalized and terminally sick paients, breathe even heavier. Terminal stages of cystic fibrosis, cancer, HIV and other health problems usually correspond to about 30 breaths per minute and more, instead of 12 breaths/minute , which is the clinical norm.

How can over-breathing undermine sleep?
In order to study this question, let us analyse effects of breathing on the nervous cells and brain. To begin with, miniscule normal breathing delivers almost optimum oxygen saturation for the arterial blood: (roughly 98 per cent). Hence, ifpeople breathe more, we cannot increase oxygenation of the arterial blood, but we instantaneously decrease CO2 (carbon dioxide) quantity in the bronchi and bronchioles, alveoli in the lungs, arterial blood, capillaries, and all other body cells, the brain cells included.

This product is a vasodilator. Hence, chronic over-breathing results in constriction of blood vessels. This is the central effects that clarifies why we can easily faint after about 2-3 min of forceful or voluntary over-breathing: less glucose and oxygen is delivered to the brain.

Carbon dioxide is also needed for release of oxygen to vital organs. This fact of the breathing physiology is called the Bohr effect: lessened CO2 amount reduces oxygen transport in cells. Actually, several hundreds of medical articles have undoubtedly demonstrated that chronic over-breathing DECREASES oxygenation of the body. But, virtually all health problems are based on low oxygen proportion in tissues.

Additionally, CO2 is an efficient tranquilizer and calmative of the nervous cells in the brain. Neurological scientific articles have found that CO2 deficiency leads to excessive excitability of nerve cells in the brain.

The cause of sleeping problems
Consequently, our deep and fast breath pattern produces insomnia. If someone removes his hyperventilation (the main cause of poor sleep or insomnia) ro normalize his automatic breathing pattern (24/7), he is going to be free from his diseases and sleeping problems in the same instance.

Solutions
There are medical breath therapies that are targeted to eliminate breathing problems and normalize one's unconscious breathing pattern. Among the most advanced methods is the Buteyko breathing technique. Dr KP Buteyko studied breathing, as a manager of the respiratory laboratory, for many years and identified numerous lifestyle factors that make breathing heavier and reduce body oxygen levels. Hence, it is necessary to address these abnormal factors (e.g., mouth breathing, chest breathing that is present in over 80% modern people, sleeping on one's back, lack of physical activity, etc.)

The most efficient breathing exercise is based on Frolov breathing device therapy. It has numerous successful Russian clinical trials and approbations. The Frolov breathing device produces largest increase in body oxygen content that is measured by stress-free breath holding time done after usual exhalation.

Resources
Based on tens of years of medical practice and hundreds of scientific publications, Good Sleep Hygiene includes detailed information about most important factors for good sleep hygiene.

Breathing Problems Solved (NormalBreathing.com) is devoted to distributing knowledge regarding breathing problems (mouth breathing, chest breathing, hyperventilation) with analysis of various breathing retraining methods, graphs, lifestyle reviews, free exercises, manuals, tables, charts and other resources for our better health.