National Sleep Awareness Week is March 6—13, 2016. Sleep plays an important role in your good health. Getting enough sleep can protect both your mental and physical health and the quality of life and safety. The amount of sleep needed depends on several factors but mostly on your age. Here are some guidelines for different age groups:
- Infants need 16-18 hours of sleep per day
- Toddlers need 11-12 hours
- School age children need at least 10 hours
- Teens need 9-10 hours
- Adults (including the elderly) need 7-8 hours
Lack of sleep can cause:
- Depressed mood
- Attention and memory problems
- Excessive daytime sleepiness
- More nighttime falls
- Low energy
- Problems thinking and doing things
- Delayed response time
- Car accidents
- Unable to complete normal tasks after 2 days without sleep
- Hallucinations after 5 days without sleep
Here are a few tips to help improve your sleep:
- Have a regular sleep pattern.
- Use the bed only for sleeping (no TV, computers or phones).
- Wind down and relax before going to bed.
- Make the bedroom comfortable (dark, quiet and good temperature)
- Avoid alcohol tobacco and caffeine before bed.
- Avoid day time naps.
- Don’t lie awake watching the clock.
- Avoid sleeping pills except in exceptional circumstances.
- See your health care provider if trouble sleeping persists.
For more information go to cdc.gov/sleep. Keep up with the latest posts by NEW Health for more health and wellness information.
This article was great. The truth is, as much as we all love living in the North End, how does one get
a Good Night Sleep, especially if you live on Hanover & Salem Sts. The Noise is Endless.
There are drunks screaming & yelling, Car Radios blasting in the early morning hours during the
week days, people leaving apt. buildings to have a cigarette & talking like it is 1 in the afternoon instead
of 1 in the morning. They can give fines out in Hyannis Center at 5 in the afternoon for car radios
blasting and not in the City. I don’t get it. Hyannis is a Big Resort Area. Do you think they might
have Big Political Connections & refuse to put up with this B.S.? People often say this is City
Living, another B.S. Line. People only get away with what you allow them to get away with. If anyone
sleeps in a Bedroom that faces the Street, I don’t care what kind of Windows You have, the Noise is
overbearing. If anyone has a Window Company or a Means of Blocking out Sound, please put it on
this site. I never want to leave the North End, but these are the facts, like them or not.
I would suggest checking with a high end window treatment place. I had inside shutters installed. They reduced sound from the outside and yet attractive too. Also I have heard that condos near Storrow Dr use inside storm windows. They were meany to prevent drafts, but people have found that they are effective sound dampeners. A combination of the two might help. I figure if you check with someone in the window treatment game, they are familiar with your problem.
Yes, noise pollution is part of city life and, as a consequence, unhealthy. May I suggest a ‘white noise’ machine….used by many a city dweller.
I guess that in todays society the “politically correct” term for a bunch of obnoxious people who have had too much to drink is noise pollution. The suggestion written here are directed at the victims instead of the perpetrators & the COB.The village idiot could have predicted that by having too many waterholes in the area, issuing more & more liquor licenses,extending hours & having establishments open at 2AM & later that the drunks can flock to after last call would cause “noise pollution”.& countless other problems.
Michael: Noise pollution is a term used for environmental conditions: airports, buses, traffic, horns, trucks, buses, exhaust fumes, and in a small, congested neighborhood such as ours, people noise can be a huge nuisance also.
Jamison, agreed on all the above but people noise is not environmental. it’s a conscience behavioral issue.These people apparently were not raised with the values that I was raised with & have [once again[ zero respect for anybody or anything. It doesn’t if your a “newcomer” or an original it’s an issue that affects everyone & should not be tolerated.Busses, planes, trains,sirens, garbage trucks come with the territory but having your sleep & privacy interrupted by a bunch of ignorant drunks do not.
Good topic with St Patrick’s Day less than a week away. Bars in the neighborhood should close earlier that day to prevent another drunken riot.
T. Mobile, I have all that you mentioned to block out sound. I have a serious sleeping disorder &
therefore, I have done everything you can imagine, but White Noise.
Michael, God Bless you for being right on target again. I would also like to add that those people who
were affected by planes in the East Boston & Winthrop area were supplied by Mass Port with
Soundproof Windows. What I want to know is who is supplying the North End? I paid out of my
own pocket $8,500 for 4 Soundproof Windows that True Value was advertising & they were installed on the
inside of my house, & I also have Shutters. These windows were advertised in True Value to block out
75 – 95% of Noise, not so, maybe 55%, which is better than nothing at all. This is no fault of
True Value.
Jamison, There is no White Noise that is going to help me, I would need a Horse or Elephant
Tranquilizer to completely drown out sound, but I am never leaving the area. Jamison, just
for the record, you don’t think for 1 minute all the noise & disruptions that take place in the
neighborhood could ever take place outside of Marty Walsh’s house, do you? The summer
hasn’t even come yet & I can only imagine what that is going to bring. Revenue is a definite,
but Peace & Quiet, not with this Administration; they are only focused on MONEY never the
Quality of Life.