Sleep! What’s All the Fuss?

Thank heaven for earplugs...
you can scream all you want I'm
not getting up.

Sleep is such a popular subject there is a journal called SLEEP produced by Associated Professional Sleep Societies, and sponsored by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and the Sleep Research Society. Now, that’s a lot of sleepy people. Of course if you are reading this in your sleep you might not get the meaning of the last sentence, because usually sleep readers don’t remember what they read, and even if they do they tend to lose their sense of humor while asleep.

If you are like most people you have had trouble sleeping. While problems tend to increase as people get older, difficulty sleeping can strike at any age. At my yoga class a couple of new parents claim they slept just fine until they brought home their baby. Apparently, babies, who sleep a disproportionately large number of hours in a day, don’t always choose those hours wisely.  According to these young parents, and if memory serves me, a newborn may choose to wake from one to twenty times during a night and remain awake from a few minutes to several hours. Honestly, I don’t understand their tenacity in disrupting the sleep of others in the household, but they do.

Yes, this is just like at home.

Given this previous scenario one might think once children have grown older and left the proverbial nest their parents would sleep better. Ironically, sleep dysfunction among these weary individuals has actually been known to increase. Fortunately, without having to take children to the orthodontist, saxophone lessons, band concerts and friends homes after a long day at work, an older adult has time to see one of those sleep professionals mentioned at the start of this post.

About 18 months ago my physician sent me for an overnight visit at the nearby sleep disorder clinic. An eager technician stuck a dozen tabs to my hair and another dozen around my face. To these tabs she attached a bunch of wires that converged into a receptacle that plugged into a machine that conveyed electrical impulses to a bunch of monitors in a control center. Once I was sufficiently uncomfortable she asked me to lay in a bed in a room a step above the one at the local Motel 6 and go to sleep. A short time after she turned off the lights and closed the door her voice came over a loudspeaker in the room saying if I needed anything, like to use the bathroom, I just needed to call her name and she would unplug me so I could walk to the toilet and do my business. Looking up to the ceiling I could see the red light of the infrared camera recording my every move. It would be hard to imagine anything that could of further enhanced this simulation of my natural sleep environment.

Wow! This is way cool!

Neither I, nor my wife who took the same test a year later, qualified for the wonderful machine known as a CPAP. We both have only mild sleep apnea, not enough to require the ventilation therapy provided by the Continuous Positive Air Pressure mask. The only recommendation was not to sleep in the supine position. In other words, stay off my back. This makes particular sense when my insomnia kicks in full force and the only comfortable position is on my back. Then, I have to wonder if I remain there will I stop breathing during my sleep, and if so what will be the consequences. Worrying about the possibilities clogs my mind and inhibits sleep. Amazingly, I feel alert the next day…so, what’s all the fuss?