Q: Is sleeping with the upper half of the bed raised and the legs flat or raised equivalent to Inclined Therapy?

A: No, sleeping with the upper half raised is pretty much useless and may cause pressure sores.

Your weight when sleeping like this is compressing your spinal column.
It is also compressing the flesh and skin on your buttocks for many hours and this may eventually lead to the development of a pressure sore.

Your circulation is only assisted partially, but compromised because the same compression of the flesh in your buttocks together with the inevitable build up of venous and arterial pressure due to the veins and arteries affected by this compression will be counter productive.

Then there is the problem with stretched tendons and ligaments, bent forward, there is inevitably some tension applied to the muscles, tendons and ligaments. Over time this can have a detrimental affect

Last but not least are the joints in the hips and in the spine, If you are sleeping on your back, this means you are bent forward for 8 hours a day. Elderly people walking bent over, unable to straighten up, was that the position they slept in?
Sleeping on your side with the upper half raised will adversely affect the hip and spine joints, sleeping on your back will also adversely affect the spine. Sleeping on your tummy will result in someone calling an ambulance..

Inclined Therapy I.T.

Sleeping on an inclined bed however, does quite the opposite.

Immediately the spine is placed under gentle traction, (the opposite to the folded posture). The weight is distributed evenly so you don't feel like a sack of potatoes when you lay down, or the bed somehow feels softer than before.

Your heart rate decreases by 10-12 beats per minute on an inclined bed while you sleep, yet manages to pump more blood around the body, which in turn causes more friction as the blood flows around faster, which in turn generates more heat and you feel warmer in bed, while the cooling system also benefits so we are able to maintain our body temperature better as more water evaporates due to the increased / maintained temperature. Sleeping flat for instance causes a 2 degree drop in body temperature around the time that most people die in bed, yet sleeping inclined does not.

Your respiration rate decreases by 4-5 breaths per minute, which is a lot, yet oxygenation improves because the lungs are inflating more and deflating more which takes a little longer so although there are less breaths per minute a greater volume of air is moved in and out, which again increases the evaporation and this in turn alters the density of the surfactant in the respiratory tract which in turn alters the density of the surfactant that is returned back into the blood and gently assists the circulation as it flows through the arteries providing we are correctly aligned / Inclined.

But we don't just have blood circulating, we have lymph and cerebrospinal fluid, we have a flow of fluids through the tissue and skin, through the bones, and even a flow through the myelin wrapped around the nervous system. The heart is not responsible for these other circulations so cannot be attributed to them. Yet we know posture and respiration plays an important roll from the literature. So could all of these independent circulations require density changes from evaporation and correct alignment with gravity to gently assist them to make the repairs required to overcome a whole range of illnesses?

I believe this to be true and indeed have already proven it many times before.

What we are already seeing unfolding here on this forum is impressive and If Foreversprings and others posts are anything to go by we are in for a very exciting 2010.

I do not believe in the majority of cases surgery is required!

Varicose veins were believed once to require surgery, yet the surgery frequently fails requiring more expensive surgery, which raises the question why?

So many people have noticed their veins no longer ache or bulge using I.T. So rather than approaching this problem by patching up the damage, why not engage the possibility that given sufficient time using I.T. we may not require surgery and those that do not respond will probably require surgery?

Interesting times are afoot.

Q: Is there anything Inclined Therapy does not work for?

A:
Cancer: Having been unable to help Dad. I guess it's fair to say IBT won't help people by preventing cancer from spreading. Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or ALS. Not had much success with halting this illness, although to be fair only 2 people in the advanced stage of the illness have reported back to me. Some cases of progressive multiple sclerosis are very slow to respond also. And although spinal cord injury has been shown to be reversible to some degree a full recovery from spinal cord injury after 2 years post injury is unlikely. Though a huge amount of recovery is possible and has been reported by many people with both complete and incomplete spinal cord injuries. Dikul, The Russian Trapeze artist who fell and became paralysed made a complete recovery after being told he could never walk again. He went on to become the strongest man in the World by using an exercise regimen involving repetitive exercise using a sloping bench for push ups over many hours, often falling asleep on the sloping bench. His first job following some recovery was riding a motorcycle around the inside of a giant tube, known as the wall of death. I have postulated on the possibility of a centrifugal force being used to improve the outcome of spinal cord injury further. Who knows, in a few years time when the implications for this research are fully realised we may see a centrifuge used for spinal cord injury recovery.

Immortality is not going to happen using IBT in the foreseeable future. We will still get older, but I suspect based on the many reports I have already received that the ageing process may be slowed down by at least ten years using IBT. Not enough figures to substantiate this and not enough years of research yet either. But in the fifteen years I have researched this, a large number of people have stated they feel 10 years or more younger using it. Wrinkles also appear less and the face is less puffy and distorted as it is waking from a flat bed. Muscular atrophy is reversed using IBT and bone loss arrested. The stooped posture common in the elderly is also corrected due to the slight traction on the spine each night. This is also backed up by many published papers where muscular atrophy and bone loss among other adverse reactions have been observed using both flat bed rest and head down bed rest as a model.

An eye condition called retinitis pigmentosa, or RP, a condition that affects the cones at the back of the eye did not respond to IBT, although many other benefits from the inclined bed were felt by a man who was totally blind (rare), he did not regain his sight.

Yet Several other people with multiple sclerosis who were also registered blind through supposedly irreversible optic nerve damage did recover their sight and go on to being able to function without glasses. One lady in particular is now able to drive a vehicle without glasses.

Male Baldness. Although it has to some degree slowed it down and in some cases encouraged hairs to continue to grow without falling out. Pubic hair needs to be cut as I have mentioned before.

Cystic fibrosis. No luck with two children who have this condition, sorry to say.

There may be more conditions that IBT does not help.

Question from sophiecentaur on Naked Scientists website 06/03/2009 23:43:28

Is there anything that IBT doesn't work for?
http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=3886.30;wap2

Q: How long does it take for IBT to work?

A: IBT begins to work immediately from the first night you avoid sleeping flat.

Some people will experience significant changes from day one, while others will take months before they begin to experience significant change.

People with ms CCSVI are reporting improvements using I.T. here:
http://www.thisisms.com/ftopict-8535.html
http://www.thisisms.com/ftopic-voteresults-6755-days0-orderasc.html

Q: How do I adapt my bed?

A:
Plastic bed risers are inexpensive and measuring 6 Inches or 15 cm's can be used under the bed frame with ease. These usually are supplied in 4's
This gives us two for the bed at home and due to them fitting inside of each other, they pack neatly into a suitcase for those days we are away from home.

Use blocks as shown in the picture on the main forum page for a box divan type bed.

If the bed joins in the middle, then you will need 6 inch / 15 cm blocks at the head end and 3 inch / 7.5 cm blocks in the middle and take off the castors at the bootm to provide the correct angle.

A simple and tidy way to modify a bed is to get a length of strong grey soil pipe from a builders merchant. Cut to correct lengths so Top of bed would be 7.5 inches middle of bed 3.25 inches and bottom of the bed 1.5 inches these fit over the castors of the bed and provide a better looking modification than the blocks. One length of pipe will do several beds and they are pretty cheap too, especially if you find one in the recycle centre that has not been used. The casters are then inserted into the pipe lengths.

A Plywood board 1/2 / 13 mm or thicker, cut to size of mattress, placed under the mattress with 6 inch timber across the bed frame at the top, 3 inch in the middle and some anti slip fabric (type used to prevent mats and carpets from slipping, placed between the board and the mattress.
This method should be used with pine beds and bunk beds, where the frames are too weak to take the stress of being inclined.

For hospital type beds, a length of 3/4 inch plywood cut to size of mattress, placed under the mattress will allow the mechanical mechanism to tilt the whole bed when the head end is raised.

A foam wedge can be cut to the length of the bed and placed under the mattress. This method is not favoured due to the compressibility of the foam.

A wedge can be made from folded blankets placed under the mattress.

Bed legs can be removed or sawn off to give the correct angle.

The frame can be altered moving the metal joinery up or down the frame.

Should we sleep with a pillow when using Inclined Therapy?

A: Preferably, yes, Pillows will align the head with the spinal column and this will improve the circulation over laying without a pillow and at the same time support the neck in the correct position when laying on ones side.

However, if you are a stickler for sleeping without a pillow the effects of I.T. should still be felt, but logically a pillow makes more sense.

Online Irregular Triangle Calculator: Imperial and metric measurements: http://www.handymath.com/cgi-bin/irregangle8.cgi

Q: Why raise the bed six inches at the head end for Inclined Therapy?

A: An experiment was performed to determine the optimum angle for circulation.

Using a closed water filled loop of tubing with coloured salt solution added at the pillow end and the loop stretched down the bed, the bed was elevated.

The lower elevations in the range of 4-4.5 inches resulted in the salt flowing down one side and the clean water flowing back up the same side. 2 directional flow in one tube while fascinating to watch was not the desired effect.

After raising the bed to 5 inches the downward flow was in the salt added side representing the arteries and the return flow was in the opposite salt-free side representing the venous return or indeed the return flow of the cerebrospinal fluid system or the return flow of the lymphatic system.

this return flow and return is under tension and was observed using soft walled silicon tubing showing clearly how the solutes affect the pressure of the water molecules.

The downward flowing side clearly bulged outwards under the positive pressure induced by gravity, while the return flow water only side was pulled in, indicating that the molecules were placed under tension by the gravity affect on the salt dissolved in water.

Over time this has been born out by many people sleeping inclined, while a 4 inch incline is better than sleeping flat, a 6 inch / 15 cm raise producing a five degree to the horizontal on a 75 inch long bed.

Fascinating history of the bed reveals that the oldest beds know from the ancient Egyptians some 4 thousand years ago were raised by exactly 6 inches at the head end according to a curator of a museum in Boston. USA.

Question is how did they know? Did they observe animals sleeping on an incline and imitated them and then find the benefits? We will never know but it is intriguing.