This is one column that I hope puts you to sleep. Or, at least, alerts you to the value of dealing with difficulties you may have in sleeping.
I write, not because of personal problems with sleeping but through my awareness that many age peers labor under the burden of insufficient or poor sleep. Sitting through years of dull lectures in an overly long academic program may have given me an unfair advantage.
Professionals who have studied sleep problems estimate that more than one-half of Americans over age 65 have them. About one-third of us suffer from insomnia in particular.
Dr. Robert Butler, whose name looms large on aging issues, says: “The best way to help secure a good night’s rest is to exercise regularly.” Founding Director of the National Institute on Aging and currently President and CEO of the International Longevity Center in New York City, Butler last fall convened a group of experts to explore the subject of older people’s sleep and its relationship to their health.
The medical professionals at this conference rejected the common view that sleep problems are a normal part of the aging process. Not without some inconsistency they do, however, recognize that later life, with its physical and psychic changes, is a time when problems with sleep are more likely to occur.
They see sleep difficulties as linked with such serious issues as memory malfunction, depression, and greater likelihood of falls. Bad effects on the nervous system and a lowering of the immune system’s resistance to disease are other perils that can result from failing to sleep well.
Fred Turek, one of the conference experts, calls these connections a “vicious cycle” because of the ways they affect one another. Problems such as depression can serve as both cause and effect of poor sleeping habits.
Professor Turek is director of the Center for Sleep and Circadian Biology at Northwestern University. I spoke to his colleague, Kathryn Reid, Ph.D., who shared with me fascinating information about sleep, something she calls “a new area of research.”
I do not know much about circadian rhythms but I often feel like going to bed earlier than I want to retire and I often get up earlier than I wish. That means that the inner clock in my brain and my feelings of fatigue are not entirely in synch.
On most afternoons, I experience a slump period. Usually I take this as a signal for me to nap for 15 or 20 minutes, something I do with pleasure.
Research reveals that naps of this length are better than longer ones. If you sleep more than a half hour, you may awake feeling more tired than when you nodded off. However, Winston Churchill, the patron saint of naps, went in for longer ones, apparently without ill effects of this sort.
Dr. Butler worries about sleeplessness going unrecognized as a medical condition or being treated inappropriately. Physicians sometimes share the stereotype that considers problems in this area simply as a necessary byproduct of aging. Perhaps that is why there is only a 20 percent chance doctors will ask you about your sleep.
Participants in the New York conference freely admit to insufficient knowledge about many sleep issues. Currently, research studies aim to learn more about responses to light therapy, drugs such as melatonin and valerian, and the value of short naps.
Insomnia has never been one of my problems. For that deliverance, I attribute major influence to a habit formed long ago of winding down at the end of each day. I turn down bright lights, do tasks requiring little serious thought, and settle down interiorly. My goal is to create an atmosphere conducive to falling asleep readily.
Experience has taught me the wisdom of not allowing upsetting thoughts to invade the precincts of my brain during the later hours. Then and during the night such thoughts assume inflated proportions. Faucet drips become floods; minor noises turn into thunderclaps; pygmies grow into giants. Problems that during the day are manageable get magnified a hundred times at night.
About another problem threatening sound sleep, namely apnea, you’ll have to ask my roommate. I like to think myself unable to snore but I suspect otherwise. At least, I try not to do it during sermons, political speeches, and academic lectures.
Like just about everything else that affects the human body and psyche, sleep and its problems are complicated.
However, even in the face of incomplete knowledge, experts recommend that people with serious sleep problems get medical help. It is unwise to allow such difficulties to fester when appropriate intervention can go far to provide remedies.
A carefully designed program that combines exercise and diet reform, for instance, may reduce one’s weight enough to make sleep much better. It is unwise to be resigned to sleep problems without getting help in investigating them.
If you wish to read either a summary of the report or the complete text, you can find them online at www.ilcusa.org. You will need to select Press Room.
Richard Griffin