Sleep is the key to good health
You go to bed after a long day, but can’t fall asleep. Your mind races with thoughts of the next day’s work, your kids’ grades, your mortgage, economic crises. You watch the lighted dial on your clock — 2:25 a.m., 3 a.m., 4 a.m.
Maybe you give up and get up, eyes burning, brain soggy, limbs leaden, a new day hitched to an old one without a break in between.
Good sleep is the foundation for the rest of our lives — our work, our relationships, our brains and bodies. When sleep goes occasionally awry, we get cranky and sleepy and are more likely to get in car crashes.
The longer insomnia goes on, the more disabling it gets. If the problem outlives a few weeks or months at a time, as it does for an estimated 10 percent of us, insomnia can become a beast to wrestle.
"It affects everything," said Gayle Greene, a college professor and longtime insomniac who in 2008 wrote a book called "Insomniac" to guide her fellow sufferers through the science and the treatments and the ways to live with insomnia. "It affects mood and energy and optimism," she said. "I don’t know how many marriages have crashed on these rocks. It is so hard for people to maintain a normal life."
Most of us occasionally have restless nights when we can’t close the lid on our brains. A lot of us are just too busy to sleep.
A 2009 study by the National Sleep Foundation found U.S. adults slept an average of just 6.9 hours a night, short of the seven to nine hours the foundation believes most adults need to feel fully rested.
"The American society doesn’t pay that much attention to rest or sleep," said Maria Wong, an associate professor of psychology at Idaho State University in Pocatello. "People don’t want to be called lazy. We don’t want to slow down."
Research into sleep is burgeoning, unearthing links between sleep and obesity, dementia, diabetes, depression, suicide and even life span. In early sleep research, rats deprived of their zzzzz’s died within weeks. Some new research suggests some children diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, may be sleep-deprived, not hyperactive. For adults, swing or night shifts at work present special challenges.
There is hope. Treasure Valley experts say they can help most people with sleep disorders, regardless of the reason they toss and turn. The Valley has at least half a dozen sleep laboratories where technicians measure brain waves, heart rate, breathing and other indicators for sleep disorders. Other programs help people develop behaviors that help put them to sleep. Prescription medicines help many patients sleep, although some experts caution against using some of them for long periods of time.
Some insomniacs may help themselves by taking a magnifying glass to their lifestyle choices. "What I see over and over in my patients is they are trying to get more and more done in less time, so they will stay up later and get up earlier to accomplish more," said Joan Haynes, a licensed doctor of naturopathic medicine. "The majority of my practice is fatigue, fatigue plus."
