Learned something new from my shrink and wanted to share it. There's a new study just finished (not published yet 'cuz it's brand new) investigating sleep meds, sleep cycles, etc. The results show that unless you drop into very deep sleep at night, your hypothalamus does not stop producing adrenaline. When that happens, apparently your body converts that adrenaline to cortisol, which puts extra fat around your middle. This is apparently the explanation behind the theory that people who have a spare tire are more prone to heart attacks. The adrenaline during sleep is a killer. In addition, the lack of deep sleep, the presence of too much adrenaline too much of the time causes shrinking of the hippocampus cells, the seat of short term memory. There are only two sleep meds currently on the market which have the necessary ingredients to rebuild the short term memory cells - Lunesta and Ambien CR - by allowing deep sleep. (This was not a study done by the makers of either.) Apparently widely used sleep meds - Trazadone (which I have taken for several years), Zanax, Restoril, and others in that family, do not replicate the architecture of sleep (I love that phrase - so illustrative - I can just visualize the brain waves and sleep cycles), thus do not produce or allow the really deep, healing sleep. Folks with PTSD are more susceptible to this damage, according to her, b/c of the recurring cycles of nightmares and night sweats.
Just thought I'd share that.
