In popular culture, it’s the women who are supposed to be the most obsessed by the way they look. Such is the pressure for social acceptance, many spend amazingly large sums of money on cosmetic surgery and other treatments to keep the relevant parts of the body trim and all wrinkles away from the face. Yet, on the quiet, men can have equal concerns albeit most do not spend the same amount of treatments. For some reason, men seem to forget they also go through a menopause where their hormone levels change. This causes that unfortunate swelling of the belly, loss of muscle tone and mass, a slowdown in the sex drive and, sometimes, depression. The skin loses some of its elasticity. Fine lines and wrinkles appear. Eyesight and hearing tend to decline.
Some men manage to go through the danger years between 40 and 70 with only the smallest changes. Others find their lives more seriously disrupted. For example, because the hormone level affects the prostate, some men need to urinate more often. Age also brings an increased risk of heart disease, a loss of up to 15% in bone density and changes to the autoimmune system. Unlike women who have been offered hormone replacement therapy for many years, doctors have had little interest in devising a similar treatment for men. Rather they have picked individual symptoms and devised specific remedies to deal with them, e.g. to treat heart disease, erectile dysfunction, and so on. Put into context, however, testosterone levels fall both because of aging and because of weight gain. So, men who are overweight are more likely to show age-related changes earlier. Nevertheless, doctors don’t consider it appropriate to boost the general level of testosterone, so certain clear risks emerge. As bones weaken, the risk of fractures from falls rises, the libido becomes less urgent and some men experience erectile dysfunction, artherosclerosis rises the blood pressure, and mood changes occur with many growing more depressed.
Outside the purely medical problems comes a greying of the hair, then hair loss on the way to inevitable thin cover or actual baldness. This can be very damaging to self-confidence. Hair dyes have been around from the time people started noticing how some plants could change the color of “things”, but it’s only recently that a real remedy for hair loss has emerged. Of course, there have been fake medicines for centuries. Now Propecia brings the promise of a stop to hair loss for male pattern baldness. But, as with everything, there’s a slight catch. To get the best results, you should start taking this drug as soon as the diagnosis is confirmed. If you delay and age continues to thin your hair, the chance of regrowth disappears and the hair loss may not completely stop. The medical evidence from clinical trials is clear. Propecia is most effective when taken by younger men as early in the hair-loss cycle as possible. The other problem, of course, is that, once you start, you should be prepared to continue for many years. Hair loss will resume when you stop.
There are plenty of remedies out there for insomnia. However, we have to recognize that the inability to sleep is a chronic condition, not a temporary state. While it is important to get some rest every night, you can’t stay on sleep medicine forever. It just isn’t good long-term. What you have to do is treat the underlying condition.
While it’s easy to say we need to change our habits or exercise or reduce our stress, it’s much harder to do in practice. So how do you go about ending insomnia for good?
Below you can find solutions to some of the most common causes of insomnia and learn how to get a little extra help, easily and cheaply.
Stress - While it’s not easy to eliminate stressors from our life, we can learn how to cope with stress better. There are various techniques, such as the infamous counting method, that help us manage. Having someone to vent to is probably the best method, but some of the more far out things like Laughter Therapy are proving to be even more effective.
Anxiety - Normal life anxiety, such as dreading a test or meeting the next day, can stop you from getting to sleep, but regular occurrence could really be an anxiety disorder, which medicine and psychology can treat!
Depression - Chemical imbalances in the brain can make it so you can’t sleep or oversleep. Clinical depression is best treated by a psychiatrist, but eating right and exercising for 20 minutes every day has proved to be as effective as drugs.
Side Effects of Medication - A lot of medications, including some antidepressants, allergy, and blood pressure medications, interfere with sleep. Over-the-counter drugs are not excluded. Many painkillers use caffeine as an ingredient.
In some cases, a doctor might supplement your medication with something to help you sleep. Or, you can see if it would be possible to take the medicine earlier in the day so that it won’t affect you at night.
Caffeine and Nicotine - Smoking or drinking tea, soda, and coffee stimulates the body so that it is harder to fall asleep and really difficult to stay asleep. You also won’t be able to reach the deep stages of sleep that you need to feel rested. Try to avoid these stimulants for 6 hours before bedtime.
Alcohol - Drinking alcohol might make you fall asleep initially, but once you are there your quality of sleep is just ruined. Habitual use can develop into a very bad insomnia problem. Don’t use it for sleep.
Habits - Watching TV or looking at a computer screen before bed will keep you awake. Don’t eat late. And for the love of dogs maintain a regular sleep pattern. Hit the hay and wake up at the same time. Every day. No matter what. Oh, and exercise!
If you want to fix your insomnia, you can get some help from Ambien. Make your sleep regular by getting in bed every night, taking Ambien just before, and forcing yourself to stay awake starting the same time every day. You need to fix your circadian rhythms; Ambien can make it easier.