Why Do Some People Get Better Sleep Than Others By W.P. Allen Allen At Isnare.com Ezine Articles

The sleeping and waking system is a very complex system. It's not simply one center or one nucleus, but a whole group of tiny nerve centers starting from the very lowest parts of your brain and up your brain stem to your forebrain. There appeare to be two different types of systems. The first system is one that's pushing arousal while the other is pushing sleep. Both of these sleep systems are active inside you all the time, and they often interact. Whether you are sleeping or not sleeping depends entirely on which of these two sleep systems is dominant at any one time. The activities in your muscles, your anxiety, the intensiveness of your thinking, periphreal noises, bright lights, or other outside stimuli all strengthen the arousal system.

Typically, in most people, the arousal sleep system is the stronger of both the sleep systems. However, its dominance in strength will greatly decrease, naturally, after you have been awake and roused for around 16 to 18 hours (or when there is a lack of or no more stimulation). This is why when we want to go to sleep we seek a dark and quiet place such as the bedroom. The darkness of the area the ability to close our eyes, and the soft bedding surface to lie on provides for a stimulus free environment. However, if your mind is preoccupied with daytime issues such as stress, or when your body sends out stimuli determining pain, your arousal system will remain high and the weaker sleep system will not be able to overcome the stronger arousal system.

It's natural that in a system that is as complex as our arousal and sleep system, not everybody is equally endowed. This is similar to the fact that some people may be tall while other people may be shorter. The stronger your awake system (or the week are your sleep system), the more careful that you need to be with your sleep times.

The sleep arousal system is often genetic so you should be able to trace whether you have a strong or weak sleep system by tracking it through your family. Sometimes patients at sleep clinics will tell researchers that their mother or their grandfather was a person that didn't sleep very often. However, the fact that you can trace lack of sleep through your family does not necessarily mean that it is a genetic problem. It could also be a possibility that your family contains chronic worriers who may fret about other family member sleep habits, which can make them overly concerned about their own sleep habits.

One of the ways in which people combat sleep problems is with a memory foam mattress. Memory foam mattresses are created to eliminate pressure points on the body as a person sleeps. Traditional mattresses often cause pressure points by pushing back on a person's body. This pushing back action can cause people to toss and turn, wake up with aches and pains, and generally feel like they haven't slept as well as they should have. Memory foam mattresses were created by NASA to help relieve the G force pressure that the astronauts had to endure during liftoff and reentry. This same material is available in a mattress. With the ability to dissipate weight over the entire surface of the mattress it makes for a very comfortable and very supportive bedding surface. If you suffer from lack of sleep this may be an option for you.

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