Why We Sleep Worse When Sick

With advance of many chronic health disorders, we can notice impaired sleep quality in many people regardless of the name of the condition. Medical science cannot enplain this effect, but I am going to share with you the "secret" of poor and good sleep in healthy and sick people.



If one monitors sleep of their relatives or friends, he could notice that their morning state and quality of health depend on one factor mainly: their respiration during sleep. When their breathing is deep and heavy (noisy breathing, snoring, irregular breathing, etc.), especially through the mouth (due to blocked nose or nasal congestion), they have a worse health state. When their breathing is slow and relaxed, they have better health state and sleep. You can even count their respiratory frequency during sleep to foretell their health. Besides, breath of very healthy individuals during sleep is scarcely observable or hearable at all: they sleep as if they are deceased. It can be horrifying, but it will remain a reality of life.



Before we give some thought to effects of breathing on sleep, let us analyze breath in the ill during day. Do they have unhealthy breathing at rest? Yes, my web site has results of tens of medical articles that observed that mildly sick people breathe at rest about two and half times more air than the official clinical norm. Severely or critically ill, including terminally sick and hospitalized paients, breathe even more. Last stages of cystic fibrosis, cancer, HIV and other health problems usually correspond to around 40 breaths per minute and more, instead of 12 breaths/min , which is the medical norm.



How can hyperventilation disturb sleep? In order to investigate this question, let us analyse effects of breathing on the nervous cells and brain.



Firstly, miniscule normal breathing provides almost highest oxygen saturation for the arterial blood: (around 98 percent). Thus, as soon aswe breathe more, we cannot augment oxygenation of the arterial blood, but we instantaneously lessen CO2 (carbon dioxide) concentration in the bronchi and bronchioles, alveoli in the lungs, arterial blood, capillaries, and all other body cells, the nerve cells included.



This ingredient is a dilator of blood vessels. Hence, hyperventilation leads to constriction of blood vessels. This is the chief effects that eliucidates why we can easily pass out or faint after about 3 minutes of forceful or deliberate overbreathing: less oxygen and glucose is delivered to the brain.



Carbon dioxide is also imperative for discharge of oxygen to vital organs. This law of the breathing physiology is called the Bohr effect: lowered CO2 amount diminishes O2 transport in cells. Really, a few hundreds of medical studies have undoubtedly observed that chronic over-breathing REDUCES body oxygen quantity. However, virtually all health conditions are based on low cells oxygen content.



Moreover, carbon dioxide is a powerful sedative and tranquilizer of the brain cells. Neurological scientific publications have shown that lack of carbon dioxide results in over-excitement of brain. Thus, our heavy and deep breath pattern causes more problems with sleep in many, but not all individuals. Besides, if one eliminates his hyperventilation, he are going to be free from his health conditions and sleeping problems all at once.



Based on tens of years of clinical experience, Clear Stuffy Nose provides a simple breathing exercise to unblock the nose in 1-2 minutes.



Breathing Problems Solved (NormalBreathing.com) is committed to spreading education with regards to breathing problems (mouth breathing, chest breathing, hyperventilation) with analysis of various breathing retraining methods, clinical trials, manuals, tables, graphs, free exercises, lifestyle reviews, charts and other resources for our better health.