Held in Jakarta, Indonesia, and hosted by the Massie family, owners of Spring Air-Indonesia, the summit attracted licensees from the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, China, Singapore, India, Korea, Thailand, Sri Lanka and Pakistan.

The agenda included a tour of the factory in Jakarta, presentations and updates by the licensees and suppliers in attendance. An open session designed to gather feedback and address needs and questions was also part of the four-day program.

“Our international licensees are a very cohesive group, keenly focused on learning from one another and growing the Spring Air brand in their respective countries,” said Eric Spitzer, Spring Air COO. “Being primarily vertical in structure, they pour their own foam and make their own innerspring products. This enables them to be aggressive in their markets while keeping a close watch on quality.”

Rick Robinson, president, said the majority of Spring Air companies overseas “are also making a substantial investment in building brand awareness every year. Many are either establishing Spring Air-only stores in their markets or are planning to increase the number of single-source outlets they operate in the future.”

In a small study published in the October issue of the journal Sleep, people being treated for high blood pressure, or hypertension, who also took melatonin slept longer, fell asleep sooner and had more restful sleep than people taking an inactive placebo.

“The sleep community is well aware of the difficulties that beta blockers can cause with insomnia and sleep fragmentation,” said Dr. Michael Yurcheshen, a physician with the Strong Sleep Disorders Center at the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York. “Although the sample size [in this study] is small, the results are compelling. If real-world experience parallels [these] lab results, such changes could make a significant clinical impact for these patients.”

Yurcheshen, who is also an associate professor of neurology, was not involved with the study. Not only are beta blockers widely prescribed to combat hypertension, they are also used for many other cardiovascular disorders as well as migraine, anxiety disorders and post-traumatic stress disorder. Some 22 million people in the United States alone take a beta blocker regularly, according to background information in the study, with a common side effect being insomnia. Sleep deprivation, in turn, has increasingly been linked with diabetes, obesity and heart disease, not to mention general mood and attention problems.Beta blockers may affect sleep by inhibiting the release of melatonin, a hormone involved in regulating both sleep and the body’s circadian clock.

To test the theory that melatonin supplementation might help people on beta blockers sleep better, researchers randomly assigned 16 adults with hypertension taking one of the beta blockers metoprolol or atenolol to also take either 2.5 milligrams of melatonin or a placebo every night for three weeks.

All of the patients underwent polysomnography, an overnight sleep test that records brain waves, muscle tone, heart rate and eye movements.

Participants who took melatonin slept an average of 36 minutes longer per night than those taking the placebo.

The treated participants also fell asleep 14 minutes faster, spent more time asleep while they were in bed (a measure known as “sleep efficiency”) and spent an average of 41 minutes longer in stage 2 sleep, which is the longest sleep stage, usually taking up more than 50 percent of a person’s sleep time.

“Melatonin reduced their time awake from about 20 percent to just 12 percent, almost halving their wake time during the night,” said Frank Scheer, lead study author and director of the medical chronobiology program at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

Participants didn’t report any differences in mood or energy levels but such subjective measures vary more than objective measures such as those recorded by polysomnography, Scheer said.

And melatonin levels in the body did rise.

“We showed a very clear increase with supplementation of melatonin at night,” said Scheer, who is also an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.

Melatonin has several advantages over many drugs prescribed to aid sleep.

People on melatonin didn’t have a “rebound” effect of seeing their sleep deteriorate after going off the supplements, as happens with many sleep drugs.

In addition, said Scheer, “we found a carry-over effect of a benefit, so even when participants stopped taking melatonin, there was still some benefit.”

Nor was there any sign of increased tolerance leading to a need for higher doses of the drug. “Indeed, melatonin remained effective across each of the three weeks of supplementation,” Scheer said.

“There are some apparent benefits of melatonin as opposed to other hypnotics,” said Scheer, who nevertheless pointed out that the study is a small one and needs to be confirmed in larger trials.

Melatonin is widely available as an over-the-counter supplement and studies have shown it to be relatively safe for up to half a year, Scheer said. There are no studies that document its safety beyond that time point.

Anyone considering taking melatonin should speak with their doctor or health care provider, Scheer said.

More information

The National Sleep Foundation has more on melatonin.

SOURCES: Frank Scheer, Ph.D., director, Medical Chronobiology Program, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and assistant professor of medicine, Harvard Medical School, Boston; Michael E. Yurcheshen, M.D., associate professor of neurology, and physician, Strong Sleep Disorders Center, University of Rochester Medical Center, Rochester, N.Y.; October 2012, Sleep

Sleepwalking has been described in medical literature dating before Hippocrates (460 BC-370 BC). In Shakespeare’s tragic play, Macbeth, Lady Macbeth’s famous sleepwalking scene (“out, damned spot”) is ascribed to her guilt and resulting insanity as a consequence of her involvement in the murder of her father-in-law.

Sleepwalking is characterized by a complex behavior (walking) occurring while asleep. Occasionally nonsensical talking may occur. The person’s eyes are commonly open, but have a characteristic glassy “look right through you” character. This activity most commonly occurs during middle childhood and young adolescence. Approximately 15% of children between 4-12 years of age will experience sleepwalking. Generally sleepwalking behaviors wane by late adolescence. However, approximately 10% of all sleepwalkers begin their behavior as teens. It appears that persons with certain inherited genes have an increased tendency toward developing sleepwalking behaviors.

There are five stages of sleep. Stages 1, 2, 3 and 4 are characterized as non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep. REM (rapid eye movement) sleep is the sleep cycle associated with dreaming as well as surges of important hormones essential for proper growth and metabolism. Each sleep cycle (stages 1,2,3,4 and REM) last about 90-100 minutes and repeats throughout the night. The average person experiences four to five complete sleep cycles per night. Sleepwalking characteristically occurs during the first or second sleep cycles, during stages 3 and 4. Due the short time frame involved, sleepwalking tends not to occur during naps. Upon waking the sleepwalker has no memory of his or her behaviors.

The sleepwalking activity may include simply sitting up and appearing awake while actually asleep, getting up and walking around, or complex activities such as moving furniture, going to the bathroom, dressing and undressing, and similar activities. Some people even drive a car while actually asleep. The episode can be very brief (a few seconds or minutes) or can last for 30 minutes or longer.

One common misconception is that a person sleepwalking should not be awakened. It is not dangerous to awaken a sleepwalker, although it is common for the person to be confused or disoriented for a short time on awakening. Another misconception is that a person cannot be injured when sleepwalking; however, injuries caused by such events as tripping and loss of balance are common for sleepwalkers.

The symptoms of a lack of sleep are often obvious to watchful parents. Some of these tell-tale signs include:

• recurrently falling asleep in the car (excluding young infants);
• requiring extreme stimulation and repetitive reminders to get up in the morning;
• behavioral abnormalities such as excessive emotionalism, aggression, and crankiness; and
• an older child’s (over 8 years of age) recurrent need for an afternoon nap.

Go to the gym, but don’t kill yourself

Common narcolepsy symptoms include:

• Cataplexy (loss of muscle control). Often, narcolepsy may cause you to have a sudden loss of muscle control while awake, usually triggered by strong emotions, such as laughing or crying.
• Hallucinations. Some people with narcolepsy experience vivid, sometimes frightening, visual or auditory sensations while falling asleep or upon awakening.
• Sleep paralysis. You may be unable to move or talk at the beginning or end of sleep.
• Microsleep is a very brief sleep episode during which you continue to function (talk, put things away, etc.), and then awaken with no memory of the activities.
• Nighttime wakefulness. If you suffer with narcolepsy, you may have periods of wakefulness at night, with hot flashes, elevated heart rate, and sometimes intense alertness.
• Rapid entry into REM sleep. Narcoleptics have unique sleep cycles. You may enter the REM or dream phase of sleep right after falling asleep, whereas most people take about 90 minutes to enter REM. Therefore, you’ll experience the characteristics of REM sleep (vivid dreams and muscle paralysis) at the beginning of sleep, even if that sleep is during the day.

Is snoring causing a rift in your relationship? No matter how much you love each other, lack of sleep or poor quality sleep from frequent snoring can strain a relationship as well as put your partner’s health at risk.

When snoring is a problem, relationship tension can grow in the following ways:

• Sleeping alone. If you or your partner snores, you might decide to sleep alone. That only makes for a lack of physical intimacy and a strained relationship. And if you’re the one snoring, you might feel lonely, isolated, and frustrated about something you feel you have no control over.
• Snoring spats. It’s common to be irritable when lack of sleep is an issue. But try reining in your frustration. Remember, you want to attack the snoring problem—not your sleep partner.
• Partner resentment. When a non-snorer feels they do everything possible to sleep through the night (ear-plugs, noise-machines, etc.) but their partner does nothing to combat their own snoring, it can lead to resentment. Working as a team to find a snoring cure can prevent future fights.

If you value your relationship, make it your priority to find a snoring cure so you can both sleep soundly. Working together to stop snoring can even be an opportunity to improve the quality of your bond and become more deeply connected.