(The following story by Bob Condor appeared on the Seattle Post Intelligencer website on March 3.)
SEATTLE — Some pivotal lines on the get healthy checklist:
Eat better, fruits, vegetables and whole grains? Check.
Exercise more, do some cardiovascular workouts, lift weights, stretch? Check.
Get more sleep, eight hours a night? Uh, not so fast.
Most of us don’t need the National Sleep Foundation’s annual awareness week (which starts today, check out sleepfoundation.org) to know that we aren’t getting enough rest.
“Sleep is a necessity, but we treat it as a luxury,” said Jim Moss, a sleep researcher and professor at Cornell University in upstate New York. “Seventy-five percent of Americans experience some form of insomnia two to three times per week. Either they can’t fall asleep or can’t stay asleep.”
Moss makes an important point: “It’s not unusual to wake up several times per night,” he said. “The trouble comes in not falling back asleep within 10 minutes.”
If you either can’t fall asleep at bedtime or can’t get back to sleep within the 10 minutes, that’s what researchers like Moss define as insomnia. It’s transient insomnia if the sleep pattern lasts a few nights or maybe a week or two. If the sleeplessness lasts more than three weeks, then it is categorized as chronic insomnia.
Even so, Dr. Ralph Pascualy of Swedish Medical Center in Seattle said “the average person has sleep problems for more than five years before seeking medical attention for it.”
Pascualy offered a refreshing perspective on why all of us might focus more on sleep quality, including those overachievers out there who insist they prosper on no more than four or five hours of sleep each night.
No matter, Pascualy said. The short sleepers are missing a vital facet of getting nighttime slumber.
“Sleep is considered a negation of doing,” he said. “It is understandable that the Western view is that sleep is about doing nothing. But, honestly, sleep is actually an incredibly busy and active state. There are great things going on for your body.”
Pascualy named a bunch of those positive outcomes of a night’s sleep: Neural circuits in the brain are “rewired”; memory is consolidated and fortified; short-term memory moves to long-term memory; growth hormone levels are restored; blood pressure drops; the cells in your organs are strengthened by protein synthesis. And much of these effects only occur during sleep.
“Another positive result of sleep is you break your stress pattern,” Pascualy said. “Sleep helps you avoid becoming exhausted physically and mentally from stress.”
Plus, new research shows it is easier to lose unwanted pounds if you get your eight hours per night.
OK, all good. What if you are intent but struggling to fall asleep or fall back asleep or both?
Moss said your first step is to consider daytime habits, which are the root of most insomnia problems. If you drink coffee in the afternoon, or at least past 2 p.m., that could be tripping you up. Smokers are at higher risks to be insomniacs. Exercising within three hours of bedtime can disrupt your night (morning workouts are ideal for inducing nighttime sleep). The same three-hour alert zone applies to alcohol.
“People say they need a nightcap or even to drink themselves into oblivion to fall asleep,” Moss said. “But alcohol is not a sedative. It’s actually a stimulant. You might fall asleep and get through a 90-minute cycle (our nights of rest come in 90-minute segments of deep and lighter sleep). The second half of your sleep is most affected by alcohol.”
Moss said there are sleep strategies that have been tested and confirmed by sleep researchers. One is keep your bedroom cool, 57 degrees is best. Strive for a quiet sleeping environment with either constant or minimal noise. Darkness is essential; the less light the better. Don’t eat too much before bed and don’t go to bed starving, either.
“If you can’t fall asleep or fall back asleep within 10 minutes, then I recommend getting out of bed,” said Moss, who has worked with hundreds of insomniacs at Cornell’s sleep lab. “You can do some light housework or read. But keep the lights low.”
Moss has another idea that has worked well for individuals who tend to magnify insomnia by focusing on life’s problems as they are staring at the ceiling.
“I recommend that we all have a ‘worry time’ before bed,” he said. “Write down all of your problems on a list, and then put them to rest on the nightstand.”
Both Moss and Pascualy resisted the notion of sleep medications as a solution for chronic insomnia. That hasn’t stopped a more than 60 percent rise in sleeping pill prescriptions since 2000. Such medications are best used only for transient insomnia, Moss said.
A better approach is to seek the advice and therapy of practitioners at one of the nation’s 1,500 sleep centers accredited by the American Sleep Medicine Academy. Be forewarned, there are about 10 times that many so-called sleep centers.