Current Biological Issue - SLEEP the Silent Killer

Something that has been plaguing me a lot in the recent months, and especially in the last week is insomnia. I have tried many different means for over-coming it, but the only methods that tend to work for me are either going until the point of exhaustion, or medications. I had my wisdom teeth out last week, and I was given medication that has caused me to sleep a great deal, and in the moments where I am awake it has made me very groggy. Though this is a method for getting sleep, it is not ideal. This experience drew me to the National Geographic article entitled "The Secrets of SLEEP", I'm sure you can understand why I was drawn in by the title given my current experiences in life.


The article first attempts to create an understanding why just why we need sleep to begin with, I rather enjoyed a particular quote:

"If sleep doesn't serve an absolutely vital function," the renowned sleep researcher Allan Rechtschaffen once said, "it is the greatest mistake evolution ever made." Max, D. (2010). The Secrets of SLEEP. National Geographic, 217(5), 74-93. Retrieved from Academic Search Premier database.

 In an attempt to explain the reason we need sleep, the article examined various studies, including one where lab rats were kept awake for two weeks straight, and at the end of the two weeks all the rats had passed away. The necropsies found nothing wrong with the animals, no organ damage or anything of the sort, the only conclusion that the scientists could come up with was that the animals died from lack of sleep. How many nights have you woken up, having not been able to get an adequate amount or quality of sleep only to find you simply have a very hard time being able to function at all during the day. When we are in pain, such as a headache often you will hear people advise you to "sleep it off". 


The article then begins to examine insomnia itself, and treatments that are in use currently. It mentions patients using sleeping pills often complain that their sleep is not restful, or that they wake feeling groggy. I personally can attest to this. In the past week I have spent roughly 4 hours a day awake, and even as I write this I am nodding off, because I just don't feel like I have actually rested. My body, and brain are not getting the sleep they need. 

Perhaps we simply have forgotten how to sleep, is another issue raised by the article.  This makes a lot of sense to me personally, I remember my great-grandmother talking about how she went to bed when the sun went to bed, and she woke up when the sun woke up. She had a farm she needed to help with, and animals seem to follow this trend as well. We, as humans, in our distinctly social culture tend not to follow this trend as much as we may have in decades past. We live in cities, where electric lights make way for a fake sun that can shine at any given moment, provided we have the means to pay for light bulbs and electricity. We live in a global world now, I have friends in England who live in a time zone that operates seven hours ahead of my own, I have friends in Australia who operate fourteen hours ahead of my own time zone. In order to communicate with those friends, I have to be awake during the night, or very early morning. Now, just to make this clear, I ended up maintaining these friendships on the basis that I could not sleep in the first place, so I don't know that I consider this my own problem. 

We insist on starting classes at 8am, instead of when the natural chemical rhythms of youth bodies dictate waking up in the middle of the day. I know I remember in high school that I was never really awake until around ten to eleven in the morning. Before that, I just pushed through the motions.I cannot tell you what classes I had that early in the morning, because I have virtually no memory of them, because my mind was not awake. It was for this reason, I chose to schedule my classes starting no earlier than 10am here while attending university. I also schedule myself to work until 10pm at night, because this is my "awake and functioning time". It's when I'm most coherent, and most productive.


I propose that in order to solve this issue, which effects productivity and overall general health, which would in turn save money on health insurance which is a very big deal if you're paying attention to the news lately, we have the ability to set out when we are available for work, whether it be school or earning income. I believe it would be beneficial to employers and employees to enable sleep to become considered as vital to life as food, water, shelter are considered. Sleep is so often considered expendable, yet we have seen in various studies that lack of sleep causes lack of productivity and when driving is comparable to driving drunk.* People are always wanting to save money, I would like to see some kind of benefit on all forms of insurance, and driving license fees, or even school fees, for those who at least try to get the amount of sleep needed to interact in a safe manner daily. I think this would encourage more people to be aware of their sleep patterns, and the risk that it has on their health, their economic situation, the economy as a whole, and so many other aspects of life. I think it would also help with communication, we tend to be nicer when we've had sleep, more patient, more Christ-like.
 
References
*Pizza F; Contardi S; Baldi Antognini A; Zagoraiou M; Borrotti M; Mostacci B; Mondini S; Cirignotta F. Sleep quality and motor vehicle crashes in adolescents. J Clin Sleep Med 2010; 6(1):41-45


(2009). Effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of an educational intervention for practice teams to deliver problem focused therapy for insomnia: rationale and design of a pilot cluster randomised trial. BMC Family Practice, 109-18. Retrieved from Academic Search Premier database

Wiggs L, Stores G (1999) Behavioural treatment for sleep problems in children with severe learning
disabilities and challenging daytime behaviour: effect on daytime behaviour. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry. 40, 4, 627-635.