I’ve always been fearful of the coma that happens with sleep, losing consciousness, losing track of time. That I could be oblivious to things happening around me makes me anxious and vulnerable. I seldom sleep restfully. My sleep is punctuated with many awakenings and sometimes difficulty in falling back asleep. As a child, I was a sleepwalker. Family members recall the many times they woke terrified to see me hovering above their bed in the middle of the night. Sometimes I would wake up and find myself in the oddest places, like my closet.
For most of my adult years, my inability to sleep restfully was a feature - not a bug. Physicians who work in intensive care units have unpredictable, weird hours. My ability to get by on sleep cycles of 2-3 hours was an asset and gave me bragging rights whenever the hard-core critical care specialists (ER, ICU, Surgery) compared notes on productivity and hours ‘wasted’ on sleeping.
But here’s the thing about sleep deprivation, especially chronic sleep deprivation. We can be totally unaware of the effects it has on our body. It’s kinda like what happens with aging and vision. I remember the first time I was prescribed eyeglasses for my gradually worsening distance vision. WOW! I did not know how terrible my vision had become until eyeglasses restored clarity in the world around me. Same thing happened when I had cataract surgery - whites were blindingly white, not warm soap sudsy brown - and I did not know the visual loss I had been suffering until it was restored.
Sleep deprivation is exactly the same. When we are sleep deprived for months or even years, we gradually accept the consequences as normal. Energy loss, lower alertness, decreased physical performance, inability to balance emotions - all consequences of sleep deprivation. It’s no wonder the military use sleep deprivation as a torture strategy!
As critical care docs, we were absolutely confident our performance was unimpaired due to sleep deprivation because, like gradual vision loss, we didn’t know what we didn’t know. Research shows that doctors who work thirty hours straight without sleep make around 460% more medical mistakes in the ICU than those that get enough sleep! And working 30 hours straight without sleep is often a normal workday for critical care specialists.
Truth is, most humans do better with two rest periods in a 24-hour cycle. From time immemorial to the 19th century, the dominant pattern of sleep for Western societies was biphasic. Most people went to sleep shortly after dark, slept for several hours, then woke briefly for a couple of hours (this was usually the time when humans engaged in sex or had their ‘second supper’), then went back to sleep until dawn. Artificial illumination and an imposed work day schedule eliminated that sleep pattern, although many cultures still have a period late in the day where rest is encouraged.
Our sleep pattern is different depending on our life-cycle stage. Science has shown that brief arousals naturally occur regularly during sleep, and typically increase in number with age. Using electroencephalograms (EEGs), scientists have recorded an average of 80 arousals per night in 18-20 year-olds, 116 arousals for 31-30 year-olds, and 130 arousals for 61-70 year-olds. These arousal periods seriously interfere with deep sleep. By the time a human reaches 70 years of life, they will have lost almost 90 percent of deep sleep ability, which contributes to the health deterioration often associated with aging.
Interestingly, single women at any age have more microawakenings than couples.
Every living creature sleeps but there is such wide variation in patterns. I always thought I would like to sleep like a dolphin - where half of the brain stays awake while the other half sleeps. This is true for all the mammals that live in water because otherwise they would drown. Many species of birds also have brain hemispheric specific sleep. Astoundingly, birds only sleep for a few seconds at a time when they are in the process of migrating for thousands of miles. Wouldn’t that be convenient when you’re trying to meet a deadline?
Sleep is more than just conserving energy and recovery - it improves immunity, inspires creativity, prevents infections, controls appetite, lowers blood pressure and is critical for storing recent information to long-term memory.
“We are such stuff as dreams are made on and our little life is rounded with a sleep.” William Shakespeare
So, I think this might be an appropriate music video - and she's the kind of woman I've always admired. Gutsy, independent, provocative. {smile}
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