O sleep! O gentle sleep! / Nature’s soft nurse, how have I frighted thee?

William Shakespeare

It seems that lately quite a few of us have “frighted nature’s soft nurse”. In other words, nobody is sleeping. Almost everyone I know appears to be having trouble sleeping. Either insomnia is almost epidemic or it’s just a great excuse for using gummies. I think rampant insomnia is real and expensive, but I also think people are loving their gummies.

I looked at 2 large studies that examined the cost of insomnia. In Canada, the researchers estimated approximately $5,000 per year for an individual with insomnia and $1,500 for someone presenting with 2 or less symptoms. The Canadian study looked at health care expenditures and work absences. Another investigation in the US looked solely at health care costs and found approximately $7,000 per patient with sleep disorder. The difference can be partly attributed to the cost of US health care. Taking the results of either study, it is evident that insomnia represents a significant cost to a person. There is also a financial impact on the nation as a whole. For the US, in 2021, over $94 billion was spent on sleep aids and sleep therapy. The pursuit of a good night’s sleep appears to be expensive.

The reason that we are willing to put out such expenditures for sleep is because sleep is essential to human health and brain function. Sleep is as basic to survival as is access to food and water. Sleep is required for you to form and maintain the neuron pathways in your brain that enable you to learn and remember. Essentially, sleep affects how neurons communicate with each other. In fact, recent research shows that your brain remains remarkably active while you sleep and that toxins are removed from your brain during sleep. Beyond the brain, sleep impacts almost every type of tissue and system in the body – from heart and lungs to metabolism, immune function, and disease resistance. Chronic lack of sleep and poor sleep have been associated with an increased risk of a wide range of health problems, including diabetes, high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, depression, and obesity. To give you a frightening example of the consequences of deprivation of sleep on an individual’s physical and mental health – Trump only sleeps 3-4 hours per night. Enough said.

Plenty of empirical research has shown the importance of adequate sleep for health and welfare, but science also tells us that sleep is much more complicated than you might dream (couldn’t resist). Boiled down to essentials, sleep is comprised of 2 basic types: REM (rapid eye movement) and non-REM, with 3 different stages comprising non-REM.

Stage 1 non-REM sleep is the changeover for waking to sleep. This stage is characterized by light sleep while your breathing and heartbeat slow. Stage 1 lasts several minutes.

Stage 2 non-REM sleep is also a period of light sleep. Your heartbeat and breathing slow and muscles relax. Your eye movements stop and brain wave activity slows. You spend more of your repeated sleep cycles per night in this stage than any other.

Stage 3 non-REM sleep is the period of deep sleep that you need to feel refreshed. Your heartbeat and breathing slow to their lowest levels. Your muscles are relaxed and brain waves become even slower. You are hard to wake in this stage.

REM sleep first occurs about 90 minutes after initially falling asleep. Your eyes move rapidly side to side. Brain wave activity becomes closer to that seen in wakefulness, as does your heart rate and blood pressure. Most of your dreaming occurs in REM sleep. Your arm and leg muscles are temporarily paralyzed to prevent you from acting out your dreams. Memory consolidation happens in both REM and non-REM sleep.

In total, these phases last about 1.5 to 2 hours. For a 7-9 hour sleep, a person would cycle through these stages about 4 to 5 times with each subsequent cycle being less deep sleep and more REM sleep.

Two internal mechanisms, circadian rhythm and homeostasis, work together to regulate when you are awake and when you are asleep. Without going into detail, these mechanisms tell your body when it should sleep and cause you to be sleepy at night and to desire sleep more for every hour that you are awake. Exposure to light is probably the most important factor impacting your sleep need. Other important factors include: medical conditions, medications, stress, alcohol, diet, age, and sleep environment.

By now, you know that sleep is complicated. And critical. And expensive. The reasons for the rise in sleep disorders are many, but the stress of modern life and our near constant exposure to computer and phone screens seem to be the two most important drivers. I don’t see either disappearing, or even lessening, in the near future.

I had continual sleep problems during my working life. I seldom slept for more than 5 or 6 hours per night. Since retiring, I sleep like the proverbial baby. My sleep issues were entirely related to work stress. Others can reduce the risk of insomnia by trying a few adaptations to their daily, pre-sleep routine: never read your phone or laptop in your bed at night; stop dealing with work issues at least 2-3 hours before going to bed; reduce spicy foods in your diet; deduce your daily alcohol consumption; make certain your sleep area is conducive to sleep (reduce light and disruptive noise); and, avoid political news prior to bedtime.

Good luck, if you suffer sleep problems. I sympathize with your plight. The ramifications of sleep deprivation are enormous on your health and well being and, apparently, there is no easy fix. But, there are always gummies. Perhaps reading this essay will help you sleep?

Post Notes

If SNAP ends in 2 days and our poor cannot get food stamps, that will be the cruelest step this country has taken in many decades, maybe since the forced internment of Japanese civilians during World War II.

I was reading a news article on this World Wide Web that I’m connected to and along the left side were headlines of other articles that you could click on. Two consecutive headlines for separate articles on the list that were written by different authors for different publications, but definitely related:

“Trump Policies Still Popular Among Republicans” and

“America Sliding Towards Illiteracy”

Yesterday, I was lying the couch with my dog lying next to me and the house filled with the smell of baking bread. I was just beginning a new book, “The Sense of An Ending” by Julian Barnes (winner of the Man Booker prize) with some new fangled jazz on the speakers. I thought, “life ain’t too bad.” Then, the news came on.