Although most people associate the term insomnia with endless nights lying awake staring into the gloom, waiting to drop off, it is actually a catch-all term used to describe a wide variety of symptoms with varying degrees of severity and covering problems such as staying asleep or waking up too early in the morning. Each of these disorders requires a different type of treatment, and determining whether or not you are suffering from primary or secondary insomnia is the first step to receiving the appropriate one.
Primary insomnia is classified as disturbance to sleep patterns lasting at least a month and has no obvious physical or medical cause. Secondary insomnia is a side effect of a separate complaint, such as asthma (which can worsen at night, causing sleeplessness) or depression.
Causes for the insomnia are classified as intrinsic (a condition within the body, such as sleep apnoea, narcolepsy or Restless Leg Syndrome) or extrinsic (such as alcohol-disturbed sleep, a noisy sleeping environment or an emotional complaint, such as stress or grief). And the length is also key in deciding how serious your problem is: transient insomnia is a disturbance in sleeping patterns that lasts for a few nights, brought on by factors such as jet lag, excitement, stress, illness or a change in sleep schedule. Intermittent insomnia persists for about two to three weeks, and can be caused by a job change, serious illness or financial problems. Chronic insomnia lasts longer than a few weeks and seems to show no signs of abating naturally; perhaps the cause in unclear.
When trying to treat insomnia, you need first to understand which of the categories your symptoms fall into; this will then help you to find the key to restoring restful sleep. A good way to work out the cause of your poor sleep is to keep a sleep diary, to help pinpoint any recurring themes. If you can track a pattern, such as deadlines and late dinners directly affecting your ability to drop off, you can start by eliminating them, or managing them differently; in some cases, simply moving the TV out of the bedroom can have startlingly effective results.
However, self help measures may not bring you any real relief. It may be that you are suffering from a condition called psycho-physiological insomnia, which describes ‘learnt’ insomnia. A period of sleeplessness may have been triggered by grief or stress, and can persist long after the negative even had been dealt with. Or the sleeper can have become anxious about sleeping well, making it a source or stress and stimulus in itself. Idiopathic insomnia describes a lifelong sleeplessness that is usually attributed to an abnormality in the neurological or neurochemical control of the sleep-wake cycle, and usually makes itself known from childhood. There is also sleep state misperception, where a patient imagines they have slept much less than they actually have, but this can still leave them feeling dreadful and distressed.
Even if you need to approach a healthcare practitioner to address the problem, the diary will be invaluable in finding a treatment to fulfil your specific needs. It will also help ease the feelings of helplessness and frustration that so often accompany insomnia.
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How Sleep Works
By Simon Dawson
While we are still unclear about the exact role of sleep, scientific research has revealed more about the form it takes. Sleep has two main states - REM (Rapid Eye Movement) and non-REM.
Within the non-REM stage there are four distinct stages. The first stage is very short, lasting about 10 minutes. It allows the muscles to relax and the brainwave patterns begin to slow down. During this stage you are very easy to wake, and as it begins, you may have that sensation of 'nodding off', with little rouses into consciousness.
To an observer stage two looks very much like stage one, however an EEG (a graph called an electroencephalogram that depicts the pattern of brain waves produced by the brain) shows that there is a change in the type of brain waves being produced. A single wave, called K complexes, is followed by sleep spindle (named after the spindle shape it makes on the EEG screen). It would take a louder noise or firmer prod to rouse you from this stage, but you are still considered to be in the 'entering' stage of sleep.
About 10-15 minutes after the onset of stage two, you enter stage three. The brain waves are now slow and make rolling shapes on the EEG screen, indicating a very deep sleep. Your heart rate and blood pressure fall, your breathing is slow and regular, and you will need a ringing phone, shouting or shaking to bring you back to the waking world, which would find you groggy and disorientated and probably not very happy (which is how you would also feel if woken up during stage four). This is followed by the last stage of non-REM sleep, which is even deeper. Your muscles are now totally relaxed and you are difficult to wake up - an onlooker might use the phrase 'dead to the world'. It is during these deep stages that our body carries out its repair work, fights any illness or damage and, in men releases the growth hormone. This is the sleep that truly refreshes us. As the night wears on, the deep stages of sleep become shorter and the REM stages lengthen.
These four non-REM stages described above take you approximately one hour into your first sleep cycle. You will then re-emerge towards consciousness and experience a brief awakening that you won't remember; this is often when you turn over or grab back some of the sheets. After this you start REM sleep, where high-frequency waves begin to appear on the EEG screen. Your brain has now started to create some alpha and beta waves, which are similar to the ones produced when we are awake. You are probably dreaming and your eyeballs are moving under their lids, which is what gives REM sleep its name (you can also dream in non-REM sleep, but these dreams tend to be simple and short). Although dreams seem very real and physically active, your body won't act out your dreams as your muscles are paralyzed in this stage and you remain motionless (some scientists believe that this is the body's way of preventing you from harming yourself). Sleepwalking is likely to happen in the non-REM part of your sleep, which isn't accompanied by paralysis.
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Many people today (especially dieters) have a 'fat phobia'. They think that eating fat will make them fat, but that can't be farther from the truth. Let me explain. When you go on a low-fat diet, you usually eat more carbs, mainly from starch and sugar. And these, are more likely to make you gain fat than fat itself. Starch and sugar trigger the fat-storing hormone insulin, but fats don't. In fact, eating the right kinds of fat can actually help you lose weight because when your body gets the fat that it needs, it will have less need to store fat.
But before i go into any more detail, let me remind you that not all fats are equal. The fats that you're getting from fried food and junk foods are not at all what your body needs, and those will make you gain weight among other health problems. The fats that I'm talking about are the 'good' fats which are referred to as ESSENTIAL FATS. These fats come mainly from raw nuts and seeds and their oils (e.g. flax seed oil, etc), and some oily fish such as salmon. Besides helping you lose weight, these fats will also improve your skin, hair, digestion and just about everything else in your body. You need them in your diet on a daily basis.
How much fat? I recommend a handful a day of raw nuts and seeds, or 2-3 tablespoons of cold-pressed nut/seed oil, preferably in an omega 3-6-9 combination (such as Udo's oil). Your nuts and seeds must be raw, meaning un-roasted and unsalted, and they are best stored in a freezer to avoid rancidity, and the oils are not to be heated or cooked with and always stored in the fridge. Go to the supermarket today and buy your favourite nuts and seeds. try almonds, walnuts, cashews, brazil nuts, pine nuts, pecans, pistachios, hazelnuts, macadamia, sesame seeds, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, or flax seeds. You can eat them on their own, sprinkle them on foods, eat them as a snack, or add them to salads.
It also a good move to eat a few nuts/seeds at the same time as eating fruit in order to help lower the effect fruits have on your blood sugar. Many people take omega 3 capsules and think this is giving them enough essential oils, this is not the case. If you can it is best to get the essentials oils your body needs through your diet. You would have to consume a great number of capsules a day in order to get the amount required. Aim to get the oils through your diet and if you wish to supplement this with the capsules then feel free, but you shouldn't need to if you make an effort to add it to your diet.
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iTunes - Recording Music From a Hi-Fi
By Simon Dawson
Other than playing music through your home stereo speaker system, the other reason you might want to connect your computer to a hi-fi is to "rip" analogue sound sources - vinyl, cassettes, even a radio program - into a digital file format. You can't record directly into the iPod this way, but anything you record onto your computer can then be transferred onto your Pod.
Getting analogue sound into your iTunes Library is more time consuming than ripping from CD - and more difficult to get right in terms of sound quality. You will have to set the levels right, record the album or track in "real time" into some audio recording software and then mess around with filters and effects to clean up the sound. So if you can find a CD reissue or a MP3 version of the track online, that's probably the best option. But for those tracks that can't easily be found in digital formats, here's what to do...
Stage 1: Hooking Up
First of all, you'll need to make the right connection. With any luck, your computer will have a line-in or mic port, probably in the form of a minijack socket (if it doesn't you can add one with the right USB device). On the hi-fi, a headphone socket will suffice, but you'll get a much better "level" from a dedicated line-out - check on the back of the system for a pair of RCA sockets labelled "Line Out", "Tape Out" or something similar. That way, also, you'll only need a standard RCA-to-minijack cable - which you might even already have.
Stage 2: Check you have enough disk space
During the actual recording process, you'll need plenty of hard drive space: as much as a gigabyte for an album, or 15MB per minute. (Once you've finished recording, you can convert the music that you've imported into a space-efficient format such as MP3 or AAC, and delete the giant original.)
Stage 3: Choose some software
Recording from analogue sources requires an audio recoding application. You may already have something suitable on your computer, but there are scores of excellent programs available to download off the Net.
Stage 4: Recording...
Connect your computer and hi-fi as described previously, and switch your hi-fi's amplifier to "Phono", "Tape" or whatever channel you're recording from. Launch your audio recorder and open a new file. The details from here on in vary according to which program you're running and the analogue source you are recording from, but roughly speaking the procedure is the same.
You'll be asked to specify a few parameters for the new recording. The defaults (usually 44.1KHz, 16-bit stereo) should be fine. Play the loudest section of the record to get an idea of the maximum level. A visual meter should display the sound coming in - you want as much level as possible without hitting the red.
If you seem to be getting little or no level, make sure your line-in is specified as your recording channel and the input volume is up: on a Mac, look under Sound in System Preferences; on a PC, check the line-in in Sound and Multimedia in the Control Panel, and the level by opening Volume Controls (Start Menu/Programs/Accessories/Entertainment), clicking Properties in the Options menu selecting Recording and Pressing OK.
When you're ready, press "Record" and start your vinyl, cassette or whatever, playing. When the song or album is finished, press "Stop". A graphic wave form will appear on the screen. Use the "cut" tool to tidy up any extraneous noise or blank space from the beginning and end of the file; fade in and out to hide the "cuts".
Stage 5: Tidying up the sound
It won't always be necessary, but it's often a good idea - especially if you're recording from vinyl - to try and clean up the sound a bit. Your audio editor may offer hiss, pop and crackle filters, or for serious projects you could try a dedicated noise reduction program, such as SoundSoap. However, don't go clean-up mad and don't overwrite your original file until you get just the right sound: removing hiss and crackle is good, but if you end up with a recording that lacks warmth or presence of the shellac version, you'll be disappointed.
If there's a "normalize" function you could also use this to maximize the level without distorting it. This will ensure that, if you rip a number of tracks, they will all end up at the same volume level.
Stage 6: Convert the file
When you are happy with what you've got, save the file in WAV or AIFF format, and perhaps back it up to CD. Then import the file into iTunes (choose Import... from the File menu), convert it to a compressed format of your choice and delete the bulky original from both your iTunes folder and its original location. Your remaster is now ready to be played back on iTunes or uploaded to your Pod.
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iTunes - Music Online - iTunes Music Store
By Simon Dawson
The iTunes Music Store isn't the only option for downloading tracks from the Internet. But if you use iTunes and an iPod, it's unquestionably the most convenient, offering you instant, legal, access to hundreds of thousands of tracks for 79p/99c each. Unlike some of its competitors, the iTunes Music Store is not a website, so don't expect to reach it with Internet Explorer or Safari. The only way in is through iTunes: simply connect to the Net, click the Music Store icon in the Source List, and after a few seconds the iTunes window will be taken over by the Store's front page...
Logging in for the first time
Though any iTunes user can browse the Music Store, listen to samples and look at artwork, if you actually want to buy anything you need to set up an account. Which is easily done: hit the Sign In button (top right); press Create New Account (or choose, if you prefer, to use your existing.mac or AOL account details); and follow the prompts to enter your payment and contact details. If someone else is already signed in to the Store on the same computer, they'll need to sign out first.
You'll need your ID and password each time you want to but something, so keep them safe.
Navigating
You shouldn't struggle to find your way around the iTunes Music Store. Like online CD stores such as Amazon, it lets you peruse by genre, look at "Staff Favourites", "Featured Artists", "Exclusives" and so on. But it also lets you use the various tools familiar from browsing your own iTunes Library. For example:
Searching
Once you are in the Store the iTunes Search field can be used to search the Store's catalogue. The homepage also features a link to Power Search" where you can narrow your search criteria.
Browsing
The Browse function works in exactly the same way as it does for your own Library: hit the Browse button in the top right corner and then browse genres, artists and albums in the columns that appear.
Quicklinks
Whether you are browsing your own Library or the Music Store's catalogue, you can use the grey circular Quicklink buttons in Song List to quickly access all the Music Store's selections for a particular artist. Quicklinks can be turned on and off for your own Library in iTunes Preferences under General.
Previewing Music
You can preview thirty seconds' worth of any track within the Music Store catalogue simply by double-clicking the song's name in the Song List. You can also drag any previews into playlists on the Source List to listen to later. These previews will appear in the Song List all ready for you to click when you want to buy the whole track.
Buying music
Once you're ready to buy some tracks, there are two ways to go about it. You could use the "1-Click" method, whereby a single click of a Buy Song button in the Song List will debit the payment from your card and start the track downloading to your iTunes Library. Alternatively you can shop using a "Shopping Cart", which appears in the Source List. As you browse the store you add songs to your cart using the Add Song buttons; when you are done, click the cart's icon in the Source List, inspect it's contents and then hit the Buy Now button in the bottom right corner to pay and start downloading.
You can set which method you wish to use in the iTunes Preferences panel under Store.
Authorizing your computer
Music purchased from the iTunes Music Store can only be "authorized" for use on five machines at any one time. This way Apple hope that they can curb the unauthorized sharing of copyrighted music. Your computer is authorized to play music you purchase when you set up your account, or when you enter your ID and password to play a song that you've downloaded.
If your account is already authorized with five computers, you will have to deauthorize one of the machines before playing music on a sixth. This is done by selecting Deauthorize computer... from the Advanced menu in iTunes. Equally, if you ever plan to sell or ditch an old machine which has been used to play purchased songs, make sure you deauthorize it before you say goodbye.
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iTunes - Music Online - Radio & Podcasts
By Simon Dawson
Tuning in Online
Radio on the Internet works pretty much like radio in the real world, except that - what with the Net being global and there being no online equivalent to radio stations fighting over frequency bands - the choice is almost infinite. You're limited neither by your geographical area nor your next-door neighbour's four-storey gazebo.
You can listen to a fair selection of radio stations within iTunes, but this is only a tiny fraction of what's available elsewhere on the Net. And then there are "Podcasts": shows saved as MP3 files so they can be transferred to an iPod or kept for later.
Internet Radio
Radio in iTunes
Radio in iTunes is extremely simple. Connect to the Internet, click the Radio icon in the Source List and browse through the list of genres and stations. For each station you'll see a bitrate - this is important as you will only enjoy a glitch-free listening experience if you select stations which stream at a bitrate that is slower than your Internet connection.
When you've found a station you like the look of, double-click it, wait a few seconds, and the stream should begin. You can create shortcuts to your favourites by dragging them into a playlist.
New stations are frequently made available online. To update your list select Radio in the Source List and then hit the Refresh button in the top right corner of the iTunes window.
More Internet radio...
iTunes only scratches the surface of online radio. Search Google or browse a directory such as About, and you'll find links to thousands more stations. Most of these stations are accessed via a website. All you need to tune in, if you don't have them already, are the right media players: RealPlayer and Windows Media Player are both suitable.
...and on to the iPod
There are two main limitations with online radio, apart from the imperfect sound quality. One is that, though some online radio stations offer programmes "on demand", you generally have to be in the right place at the right time to listen to them. Second, you can't access online radio on your iPod. However, there are programs available specifically for getting around these limitations by recording radio onto your hard drive as MP3 files. RadioLover (Mac) and HiDownload (PC), for example, allow you to set up schedules for recording the same show each day or week, record multiple streams simultaneously, and even break streams into individual MP3 files, ready to be imported into iTunes. But beware that, depending on you country, the station you're listening to, and what you do with the download, recording from a radio stream may be illegal.
Podcasts
Unlike most online radio, which is "streamed" across the Net in real time, Podcasts are made available as files (usually MP3s) that can be downloaded and transferred toy our iPod or other digital music player. Podcasts are usually free and often consist of spoken content - current affairs, poetry, cookery, etc. There are many musical Podcasts, too though there's a grey area surrounding the distribution of copyrighted music in this way.
It's usually possible to download an individual "show" directly from the website of whoever produced it, but it's far easier to use iTunes to subscribe to Podcasts that you're interested in. Click Podcasts in the Source list and then click the Podcast Directory link to browse and subscribe to Podcasts via the iTunes Music Store. iTunes the automatically downloads the last dew programmes from each Podcast you've subscribed to and places them in a special playlist, ready for transfer to your Pod. That way you have fresh news stories, debates, poems, music or whatever each day - ideal for the morning journey to work. To control how all this happens look under the Podcasts and iPod tabs of iTunes Preferences.
If you don't get on with the iTunes set up, try a third-party Podcast "aggregator".
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iPod - More Than Music
By Simon Dawson
iPods as a hard drive
Moving and backing up files
Though they might be revolutionizing the way we listen to music, iPods are, at the end of the day, little more than glorified data storage devices in pretty little boxes. iPods and iPod Minis contain a hard drive exactly the same as the one in a computer, while the iPod shuffle uses a memory "chip". So it's no surprise that, besides its role as a digital music player, an iPod can also function exactly like a standard external drive, storing any type of computer file. Assuming you have some free space on your Pod, you can use it for transporting documents between home and the office. And your Pod will still play music as usual.
Enabling hard drive use
To use your iPod as a hard drive, first you have to enable this feature. Simply attach the Pod to your computer as usual, and, when iTunes recognizes its presence, click its icon on the Source List and press the iPod Preference button at the bottom of the window (or open the iTunes Preferences window and choose the iPod section). Check the "Enable disk use" box under Music and don't worry about the "manual unmounting" warning that may pop u p - it's only telling you that you'll have to eject the Pod each time you want to disconnect it.
Using your new drive
Once disk use has been enable, your iPod will appear as a standard drive (or volume), as well as within iTunes, whenever you connect it to your computer. On a Mac it appears on the Desktop and in the left-hand column of Finder windows in this state, the drive is said to be "mounted". On a PC it appears within My Computer as an external drive icon with a drive identification letter (perhaps "F:" or "G:").
Now you can use the drive as you would any other volume within either Windows or Mac OS: view its contents (though your music will be invisible), create folders, drag files on, drag files off. And so on.
You'll probably find several folders in the iPod's drive when you open it: these relate to iPod organizer functions and photo functions. None of these folders should be deleted.
Ejecting your drive
When you are done with the drive, eject it (or "disconnect" it) in the same way you would whenever the "Do not disconnect" message is displaying.
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iPod - Hooking Up to a Hi-Fi
By Simon Dawson
The iPod does an excellent job of putting your music collection in your pocket. But when you want to listen at home, a pair of earphones is not ideal. Neither, for that matter, are tinny little computer speakers. There are various special iPod-speaker options available, though the ideal solution is to hook up your iPod, your computer, or both, to a decent hi-fi - something that can be done in a number of ways. Besides the obvious advantages in sound quality, marrying your computer and hi-fi also allows you to get music from vinyl, cassette and radio into your iTunes Library and onto your iPod.
Playing through a hi-fi
To get the sound from your Pod or computer into your hi-fi, the latter should ideally have an available line-in channel - look on the back for an unused pair of red and white RCA sockets. They may be labelled "Aux" or Line-in", though any input other than Phono (which will have a built-in preamp) should be fine.
If your hi-fi doesn't have a line-in, but it does have a radio, you could consider an FM transmitter (have a search for these there are loads available). If it does have a line-in, you have a number of options...
Connection with cables
Computer to hi-fi
Nearly all computers have a line-out and/or headphone capabilities - usually in the form of a single 3.5mm "minijack" socket. So if your computer and stereo share a desk or are only a few feet apart, you can easily pick up an RCA-to-minijack cable and run it straight from the computer to the hi-fi's line in. (Some computers have RCA line-outs as well as a minijack, in which case you can use a standard RCA-to-RCA cable.)
When buying a cable, check all the plugs are "male" not "female" (they probably will be) and, if you can, spend a little extra to get gold-plated jacks - they deliver a far cleaner sound.
If your computer and hi-fi are further apart or in different rooms, you could buy a long cable and get the drill out, but you might prefer to investigate Airport Express (do a search for this).
iPod to hi-fi
One problem with running your computer through your hi-fi is that you need to have your computer on to hear anything, which can be a pain if your machine takes ages to boot up or has a noisy cooling fan. You might find it more convenient to attach your iPod instead. A Pod doesn't give you quite the ease of use and flexibility of iTunes, but it's small, silent and doesn't require you to run a cable across your room.
Simply run an RCA-to-minijack cable between your hi-fi's line-in and your Pod's headphone socket or, much better, the "Line Out" on the back of the Dock. The Dock solution can be made all the more convenient when combined with a wireless remote control.
Connecting wirelessly
AirTunes
If your hi-fi has a line-in socket, but you don't want to be limited by cables - perhaps you have a laptop or your computer is in a different room from your stereo - investigate Apple's Airport Express wireless base station with its so-called AirTunes feature.
Attach one of these to a power point near to your hi-fi and connect it to the stereo with a standard RCA-to-minijack cable. Then, any computer with Wi-Fi capability - known as AirPort on a Mac - can beam music straight from iTunes to the hi-fi, even from the other side of the house. If your computer doesn't have Wi-Fi you can add it inexpensively with the appropriate internal, external or PCMCIA device. Once everything's in place, you can simply open iTunes Preferences and check "Look for remote speakers connected with AirTunes" in the Audio tab. Your hi-fi will automatically appear in a dropdown menu on the bottom of the iTunes window.
AirPort Express can also beam an Internet connection around your house, and allow you to connect to printers wirelessly.
FM transmitters
An FM transmitter plugs into the headphone socket on you iPod (many will also plug into a computer) and beams the sound around the room as an FM radio signal. Then your stereo can tune in just as it would any other radio station. Though you won't get CD fidelity and your stereo or iPod will need to be relatively close to your radio, this is a very convenient solution, allowing you to walk around the house zapping music from your iPod to any nearby radio. It's also the only easy way to connect to a hi-fi that lacks a line-in socket. This can also be used in the car!
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