Sleep Facts

We’ve all heard the mainstays of how to fight insomnia. Most seem rather obvious. Don’t drink caffeine before bedtime. Wake up at the same time every day. Put your concerns out of your mind. To me these suggestions might as well simply say, “To cure insomnia - go to sleep.” We all know how to do the obvious. But when these techniques fail? In these cases unconventional techniques may prove useful. In others, reexamining the basics from a different perspective can be useful as well.

First we’ll take a look at some of the unconventional techniques. Your mileage may vary. Most of these techniques are related to getting you in a state where your brain is generating alpha waves. Alpha waves are conducive to meditation and sleep.

1. Counting sheep revisited. Repetitions in sound and images are great for setting the stage for sleep. Closing you eyes, relaxing and imagining driving down a road, or floating down a river. The important step is to repeat the cycle. This means playing the same clip in your mind again and again in a seamless loop. This is the equivalent of a visual mantra. This is the principle that counting sheep is based on.

2. White noise generators. These purring noises, whether air conditioning units, a compact disc of ocean sounds or pure white noise generators often can do the trick.

3. A rhythmic massage. This requires some help of course. The important thing to remember is that this isn’t your normal massage. Normal massages may help too, but the purpose of this massage is to set up a rhythm conducive to relaxation. Just as images or sounds through repetition can induce a hypnotic pre-sleep state, a rhythmic, gentle but repetitive massage can as well.

4. A metronome. For some a metronome will help get the balance right. This is a tricky one though. Some people find the sound of a metronome disconcerting and distracting. Remember, slower is better.

5. Focusing on a phrase and repeating it. Unlike meditation you normally don’t want to vocalize this phrase. Simply repeat it in your mind. It can be a real word or a non-sense word.

Sometimes re-examining the basics works well too. Try mixing things up to see how things work out.

6. Instead of avoiding certain foods - try eating others. Turkey and tryptophan aren’t just for Thanksgiving. If they work for you they might be worth considering a few hours before bedtime. And the old mainstay of milk helps some as well.
7. Sometimes people can benefit from light therapy. This augments the normal light they receive as circadian cues with artificial light to bolster the process. This article from Columbia University provides more information http://www.columbia.edu/~mt12/blt.htm.

8. Adjusting the temperature. Sometimes it can be something as simple as adjusting the temperature of the room. People have different comfort zones with respect to ambient temperature and sleep. It may take some fine tuning but this might be just the ticket.
9. A good bed time story. This sounds trite and silly but can work. If you have a partner who doesn’t have problems sleeping they can be a great resource. Hearing another voice that is “ready for sleep” in the right context can work for you too. It may seem silly telling stories at first - but once you get over that it often works well. And often the sillier the better. You don’t want to do any heavy thinking.

10. A great mattress. For some starting fresh with a really comfortable, mattress can make all the difference. It’s important to make the right choice as the wrong mattress will just feel foreign and uncomfortable. But the right mattress can reorient you in a way that is very conducive to sleep.

So if the typical sleep suggestions seem a little obvious to you - you might try these. I have used all of them at some point with great success.

Breathing is such a natural, automatic thing. You usually aren’t even consciously paying attention to doing it. Imagine if all of the sudden you just stopped breathing and found yourself unable to take a breath for 10 seconds. Now imagine this happening dozens of times per hour. If you were awake it would be terrifying. People who suffer sleep apnea can have this happen during their sleep without even being aware of it. This can result in a sudden heart related death as the improper levels of oxygen and carbon dioxide in the blood cause the nervous system to go haywire. It is estimated that one in four adults suffer some form of this disorder.

If you’re asleep, how can you even know if you suffer from sleep apnea? Some signs are more obvious including resltess sleeping and loud snoring and gasping. Others are more cryptic such as headaches upon waking, moodiness, forgetfulness and heavy sweating at night. Sleep apnea comes in two categories: central and obstructive. In central sleep apnea the brain mysteriously stops sending the signal to breathe during sleep. Obstructive sleep apnea is far more common. Illnesses, obesity, alcohol or drugs can often cause obstructive sleep apnea.

In the worst cases of sleep apnea a face mask is worn in order to prevent the air from becoming blocked and stimulate its flow. Continuous positive airway pressure using these masks is the most effective form of treatment for obstructive problems. Medication is rarely successful in curing the condition. Other methods including electrical stimulation using pacemaker type devices are being studied in the hopes of finding additional treatment paths.

The important thing to remember of course is to see a doctor if you have any concerns at all about your sleep. They can refer you to a sleep specialist and in the case of sleep apnea an effective solution can almost always be found. Sleep apnea is a progressive illness and over time it can get much worse. Because of the potential risk of dying in your sleep this is a condition that should be taken care of as soon as possible.

Even though most people would prefer to die in their sleep, few would feel comfortable knowing that they could have prevented it. Sleep apnea is a silent killer, and even when it doesn’t kill it can affect the quality of your life. Everyone deserves a good night’s rest, be safe and see a doctor if you feel your sleep might be compromised. You’re life may depend on it.

When you don’t sleep for long periods you really do become a different person. Or I should say that you start acting in ways that are incongruous with your normal behavior. But why is this?

We still don’t really know why we sleep at all. There are certainly many theories and speculations. One thing we do know though is what not sleeping does to the mind.

Researchers from the UCSD School of Medicine & the Veterans Affairs Healthcare System, San Diego worked with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) technology to watch the brains of sleep-deprived subjects while having them perform simple learning tasks in a 1999 sleep study. They found that the frontal lobe was highly impaired in those deprived of sleep. On the other hand the prefrontal cortex was actually more active.

This results in a lower level of inhibition, difficulty with speech and a harder time with finding creative solutions to problems as the frontal lobes are very active in those areas. The increased activity in the prefrontal cortex makes one more focused on goals and helps one socially interact. This allows putting aside immediate needs and delaying instant gratification for future gratification. Phineas Gage was a famous railway worker whose prefrontal lobe was damaged resulting in his inability to temper his immediate feelings and focus on long term goals.

Researchers also have found that the areas of the mind associated with math and other higher problem solving functions are shut down with sleep loss as well. You simply can’t solve those hard problems when you don’t have the sleep.

What does all of this mean. Effectively someone who is deprived of sleep loses creativity and inhibitions, loses some basic math skills but at the same time becomes more likely to put aside short term goals in order to focus on long term goals. The person deprived of sleep also becomes better at interacting with others to fulfill these goals. All of this makes good sense at some levels. Nature is telling us to stop being novel and creative, stop trying to solve complex problems that depend on math and stop worrying about the details that are inhibiting us. Nature tells us to worry about working with others to get the big goal solved. This goal of course is actually getting some sleep.

When your brain doesn’t get to sleep its number one priority is to only solve the immediate problems that are keeping it from sleeping. This generally is a good thing, although it can lead to obsessive behavior at times when an issue becomes too significant. We’ve all known someone who can’t sleep nights worrying about a long term goal.

I think the most interesting realization for me is that sleep is essential for creative thought. You just don’t solve hard problems well when you are sleep deprived. These reasons are all compelling enough that the value of a good nights sleep should be immediately apparent to anyone. Even a person who is suffering from sleep deprivation itself.

People who are sleep deprived are much like those zombies we see in schtick horror movies. Instead of mindlessly looking for brains however they want one thing. The cry for “brains…….” is replaces by an equally insistent cry for “sleeeep…..”.

Don’t let this happen to you!

Sleep sex is a rare condition that causes unwanted sexual behavior during sleep. This condition ranges from disruptive moaning to unwanted sexual advances on their partner during sleep. Originally discovered by Stanford researchers in 2002 it is believed that this condition results from glitches in brain waves during sleep. Christian Guilleminault, MD, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Stanford School of Medicine stresses that this condition is medical in origin rather than psychological.

Rather than moving normally through the phases of sleep - each of which has a classic brain-wave pattern - the patients in the Stanford study had strange patterns during sleep phases - short disruptions in their sleep. Recordings in the Stanford study showed that the sleep sex behavior occurred during these disruptions in the sleep cycle. Seven of the patients apparently had problems with walking in their sleep.

Apparently, sleep sex can be alleviated by the same medicines that fix problems related to sleepwalking. Emotional problems do in fact seem to change the way sleep disturbances are acted upon. Whether a sleep disturbance shows itself as sleep sex or sleepwalking depends on the emotional state of the sleeper when the disturbance begins.

The main point is that sleep sex is something that can and should be treated. Given that some reported cases involve violent acts committed on partners during sleep its important to get help as soon as possible. By removing the stigma associated, hopefully more sleep sex victims will get treated.

I’ve been fascinated by sleep related disorders for many years now. This is, however, the first I’ve heard of sleep sex. It’s reassuring to know that for those who suffer from it a treatment is readily available. I can’t imagine suffering from this condition and not realizing that a simple fix can be found by a visit to a specialist.

Dreams involve three amazing evolutionary adaptations - suspension of disbelief, long term memory suppression and inhibition of motor control. Each one of these adaptations is essential in order for dreams not to make us feel completely crazy either during or after dreams take place.

Suspension of disbelief

In life when things take a turn for the truly weird you second guess things. Everyone, no matter how naive, has some level of skepticism. In dreams even the most skeptical of people accept what they see as real. Without this suspension of disbelief, the flow of dreams would be brought to a halt and possibly hijacked. This happens for some people in the form of lucid dreams. Somehow during lucid dreaming suspension of disbelief is interrupted and the dreamer can often control the aspects of their dream. If we did not suspend disbelief during dreams - everyone’s dreams would always be lucid. They would be immediately aware they were dreaming. This “night-time naivety” is in contrast to our natural way of looking at things and is an adaption that makes us go through the exercises presented to us by our dreams without questioning them.

Long Term Memory Suppression

If we forgot entire fragments of our recent lives without reason, most of us would be very concerned. Normal people have a reasonable account of the things they have been doing and thinking in the recent past. This is another strange and novel twist of dreams. For some reason our long term memories have been suppressed with respect to dreams. Given the often bizarre content of our dreams this frees us from having to think about them during our waking hours. It seems as though our brains have developed a specific mechanism to forget the strange thoughts we have at night.

Inhibition of Motor Control

Sleep itself seems to inhibit motor activities. Dreams, however, in most cases completely inhibit motor control. This keeps us from acting out the content of our dreams. When this doesn’t work properly we sleepwalk. If we didn’t inhibit motor control during our dreams - everyone would sleepwalk as they slept at night. This would be as strange as it would be disruptive. Nature has built in a protective adaptation for the dreamer that keeps us in one place - safe and sound.

Are dreams beneficial?

No one knows why we dream, but it seems as though somehow it benefits us to do so as we have evolved so many different processes to keep dreams “in working order”. Occam’s razor would tell us that not dreaming at all would be far simpler than dreaming and going into a special state where we suspend disbelief, stop forming long term memories and inhibit our motor control. Given the evolutionary time and cost of these adaptations it would seem as though quite possibly dreams do give us a beneficial edge - even if we don’t know what it is.