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.

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!