It surprises me how many people don’t get enough sleep to feel fully rested when they awaken. Recently I saw statistics that 40% of Americans function on sleep deprivation! YIKE. That’s an awful lot of dysfunctional performance! In order to understand why you can’t fall asleep or stay sleep, you need to understand that sleep is the outcome of an interaction between two classes of variables: sleepiness and “noise.”
Sleepiness – Under normal conditions, your sleepiness should gradually increase throughout the day, peaking just before you go to bed at night. This is ideal, as you want your sleepiness to be high at the beginning of the night.
“Noise” – refers to any kind of stimulation that inhibits or disrupts sleep. If noise is conceptually greater than your level of sleepiness, you will not fall asleep. “Noise” occurs in three zones: the mind level, body level, and the environmental level. Mind and body can often be handled personally. For physical noise, pain, discomfort, indigestion or residual caffeine from drinking coffee too late in the night are some examples.
Mind noise deals with uncontrollable thoughts that keep you awake. Dr. Rubin Naiman– a clinical psychologist, author, teacher, and the leader in integrative medicine approaches to sleep and dreams—calls this mind noise “cognitive popcorn”. It is one of the most common forms of mental “noise.” Environmental noise may be less controllable when others are involved such as neighborhood parties lasting into the early morning hours, barking dogs, generators of companies located close by, sirens, street lamps, general traffic noises, and functional railroad tracks located close by. It can be more controllable when is comes from a snoring partner, TV or computer in the bedroom, music, night lights or a bedroom that’s too warm.
Unfortunately, most people don’t bother taking the time to determine what’s really keeping them from sleeping soundly, and reach for a pill instead. An estimated six to 10 percent of US adults used some sort of hypnotic sleeping pill in 2010. But, as evidenced by a new study, using sleeping pills can be a dangerous, not to mention ineffective, solution. According to the new research, using prescription sleeping pills can increase your risk of cancer and premature death. In fact, the study, published in the BMJ Open, suggests that those who take such medications are nearly four times more likely to die than people who don’t take themv.
