It seems that women of all ages and from all walks of life have something in common – lack of sleep. No, it’s not only moms with babies who suffer from sleep deprivation. It’s practically everyone of this gender.

According to a survey by the National Sleep Foundation:

• 60% of women feel they don’t get enough sleep. A few nights of good solid sleep a week were all they can afford.
• 43% of women feel sleepy at daytime and this sleepiness interferes with their daily activities.

There are many reasons why women don’t get enough sleep and these reasons might be physical as well as psychological.

Physical causes of sleep disorders are mainly due to hormones and may include menstrual cramps and hot flashes.

Psychological causes are more complex and not easily identifiable but one is for sure: women tend to worry too much.

Lack of sleep is linked to many health problems including unhealthy weight gain and cardiovascular disorders. Women’s hearts are shown to be more susceptible compared to men’s hearts when it comes to the effects of sleep deprivation.

Sleep experts recommend that “breaking the worry habit” is the best way to improve sleep. One way of doing this is by mindfulness meditation. Another is by preparing a worry list before sleeping. On one side of a piece of paper is a list of all your worries. On the other side are the possible solutions.

You know what? I think I’ll give the worry list technique a try. Good night!

Source: HealthDay News, 22 June 2008

There’s an epidemic raging on in Europe and it’s called football. And don’t tell the Europeans that it should be called soccer if you value your life. The European Football Championships are starting in Switzerland and Austria this weekend and the fever is soaring high despite the pouring rain. I have gone through this twice in the last 2 years. We were in living in host country Germany during the World Cup 2006 and now we are residing in Switzerland. It’s the same chaos all over again: gridlocks on the highway, overflowing public transport, -and don’t even think about parking spaces. For the next 4 weeks we will be eating, sleeping, and breathing football.

In the US, you have American football, baseball, and basketball to drive American men crazy. In Europe there is only football while other team sports are of minor importance. Football is almost like religion in Europe and European men are the most passionate of devotees.

In times like these, while European men are on an all-time high mood, women are on an all-time low. According to a European-wide survey by the Social Issues Research Centre (SIRC) in the UK, women suffer from lack of attention from their partners during the matches. 72% of Spanish respondents would prefer football to partnership interactions during the matches. 67% of Norwegians and 64% of Dutch and German fans feel the same. Not good for relationships and even more bad news for the falling EU birth rates.

Don’t get me wrong. There are also women who like to watch, even play football – and I am one of them – but we don’t seem to have this overwhelming passion that men have for the game. According to the SIRC survey, male football fans practice rituals before and during a game and wouldn’t think of shedding tears during a loss.

If you think I am exaggerating, here are some proofs that football has overtaken European life:

The football album and stickers. Since April, in malls, train stations, pubs, playgrounds, the Internet, you would find males of all ages – from age 5 to 55+ bartering and exchanging football stickers. The aim is to fill up the album completely and the total cost goes up to hundreds of Euros. No one is immune from this collector’s fever – from the construction worker to the investment banker to my five-year old twins.

The movie houses will be closed. Almost all cinemas in Zurich are closed during the championships. There would be no patrons coming in anyway. Everybody will be glued to TV screens instead. And the screens would be everywhere – pubs, town squares, school houses, shopping malls – and yes – even in corporate conference rooms. I remember during the 2006 World Champions, a memo was issued by our company’s managing director that employees were allowed to watch a major German match in our conference room – as long as they work extra hours on another day.

The tight security. Uniformed and plainclothes police are everywhere. Helicopters and military planes will be hovering up there all the time. The water police force will be patrolling Switzerland’s numerous lakes and rivers while boat owners are praying their property would be spared from vandalism. Heaven help the us once the hooligans get going.

But fellow European women, don’t despair! There are entrepreneurial and sympathetic souls out there who are aware of our needs and sufferings. In Germany in 2006, the large shopping malls, normally open only till 8 pm, extended their opening hours till midnight. This way, the neglected women could shop in peace while men sat in front of the TV with their sausage and beer.

In Switzerland, many establishments are offering football-free entertainment. A couple of cinemas will be showing films catering to women only and Sex and the City will be on top of the list. Several restaurants, hotels and spas declared their businesses to be football-free and will be catering to people who would like to escape the football epidemic. Even the TV channels showing football will be disabled in hotel room TVs.

However, a word of warning: the football fever is quite contagious. I’m getting kind of excited myself!

A recent study, as reviewed by the American Heart association, shows that women tend to ignore or dismiss symptoms of cardiac events, and thus delay seeking medical help.

The researchers from the Yale School of Medicine interviewed 30 women who suffered from a heart attack about the events before hospitalization. The interviews revealed that many of these women failed to recognize the warning signs of an impending heart attack and dismissed them as due to stress, fatigue or just plain indigestion. Some of these symptoms are headache, neck pain, tummy discomfort, and tiredness. Most of the interviewees expect a heart attack to be more dramatic – the kind that you see on films – and to happen to older people. This resulted in women delaying seeking medical help until the symptoms became more pronounced.

Aside from not recognizing the symptoms, the interviewed women also delay because of:

• Uncertainty
• Preference to self-medicate
• Perceived negative treatment by healthcare providers
• Competing time/family demands
• Individual beliefs and behaviors to health system failures
• Seeking corroboration of symptoms and deferring responsibility to engage the healthcare system

From my point of view, one big reason that we (premenopausal) women would tend to dismiss the above-described symptoms is the fact that every month, we suffer from a wide range of physical discomfort in connection with our menstrual cycle. Then comes more difficulties during pregnancy. In other words, women are used to physical discomfort. It’s no wonder if we tend to dismiss headaches and tummy pains as part of our daily life.

The researchers conclude that young women, their doctors, and their families need to be more informed about heart symptoms and how to distinguish them from other innocuous discomforts of daily life.

The CDC estimates that 47% of cardiac deaths occur before arrival of emergency help or arrival at the hospital In addition, more than half of those who died of heart disease in 2002 were women.

How about you? Would you recognize the early signs of a heart attack? Would you know what to do?