Sleep on it

I’ve been very cranky the past 2 days mainly coz the better-half has not been sleeping well. He keeps awaking up at odd times, walking in & out of the room, opening and closing the bedroom door which makes me wake up with a start after which I find it very difficult to get back to sleep.

He’s got some major project at his workplace which is going ALIVE or some such thing and I’m guessing this is what is making him toss and turn. And when I complain about his restlessness he has the cheek to tell me that my snoring is keeping him awake. Giving him a haughty look I bite my tongue and stalk out of the room.

Yeah well coming back to what I was cribbing about….lack of sleep always has brought out the worst in me. It immediately reflects on my day-to-day activities and dealings with everybody but the thing is I can’t get myself to take a nap during the day to make up for the previous night.

The only times I take naps are:

# When I’m frog-marched along with the kids to the bedroom on Friday afternoons for the compulsory ‘family nap’ [incase you are wondering, we live in the middle-east, your Sundays are our fridays] which usually boomerangs on the better-half coz I get up in a stinking mood ready to snap at anybody who even looks at me. Since I don’t drink and don’t know what a hangover feels like I privately think this is a non-drinkers version of it.

# If I’m terribly horribly sick…..like the time I had typhoid when I was doing my pre-degree; I slept like I was drugged for 2 whole days. But otherwise…..like even after my delivery when all the aunties with good intentions told me to rest while the baby was sleeping I used to be found pacing up and down the corridor with no particular goal in mind.

# And not the least when I’m pretending to nap to trick lull the kids into taking one….and in the process doze off lightly.

But at nights if all goes well I’m out like a light within 2-3 minutes after hitting the bed and have to be prodded, coaxed out of bed at 6.15am by the better-half who gets up earlier to fix the kids school bags.

I rarely recall the dreams I have though once or twice I remember snatches of a nightmare dream that a gang of bloggers recognized the kids in the supermarket but didn’t find me coz I was hiding under a trolley[I was looking my worst, u see]. And ofcourse the Dhoni dream which I would have forgotten long back had I not posted it here.

Coming back to subject, did you know Sleep and the lack of it has many side-effects to it and most all of them bad. On a rare night when I lie awake on the bed my thoughts almost always take me to my father who suffers from severe lack of sleep. From as far as I can remember he could never get to sleep before 2am.
When I was a teenager I used to have very little patience with his problem coz it meant that I could never read late or call a friend and have long conversations into the night. But now I feel so dreadfully sorry for his plight. I mean it’s so unnatural to be wide awake when the rest of the family is sleeping. The weirdest of thoughts come into the mind and refuse to go. All fears are magnified 10fold. Depression and self-pity takes over the system…..atleast that’s how it goes for me.

Well, atleast when my father finally slept he would sleep atleast for 7-8 hrs straight. But there are so many people who are not able to get a good night’s sleep for a number of reasons like working 2-3 jobs to maintain a life-style or suffer from sleep-disorders.
But there are some, who stay up late to read, watch tv, chat on the internet or are out partying hard. And after snatching a few hours of troubled sleep they go back to work the next day as usual.

An article elucidating the effects of sleep-deprivation caught my eye recently, I read it with growing horror and immediately thought of sharing the jist of it with u. Please do go through it carefully. We need to be aware of the extent of damage we unknowingly submit our body to.

Sleep deprivation is a commonplace occurrence in modern culture. Every day there seems to be twice as much work and half as much time to complete it in. This results in either extended periods of wakefulness or a decrease in sleep over an extended period of time. While some people may like to believe that they can train their bodies to not require as much sleep as they once did this belief is false. Sleep is needed to regenerate certain parts of the body, especially the brain, so that it may continue to function optimally.

Recent studies indicate that failing to get enough sleep or sleeping at odd hours heightens the risk for a variety of illnesses…..

> Lower resistance to colds and viruses
> High Blood pressure
> Cancer
> Increased risk of Heart Attacks & Strokes[esp amg young ppl]
> Diabetes
> Obesity
> Early ageing

"Lack of sleep disrupts every physiologic function in the body," said Eve Van Cauter of the University of Chicago. "We have nothing in our biology that allows us to adapt to this behavior."

The amount of necessary sleep varies from person to person, but most people apparently need between about 7-9 hours, with studies indicating that an increased risk for disease starts to kick in when people get less than 6 or 7.

Scientists have long known that sleep disorders, such as sleep apnea, narcolepsy and chronic insomnia, can lead to serious health problems, and that difficulty sleeping may be a red flag for a serious illness. But recent epidemiological studies found that people who slept the least appeared to be significantly more likely to die.

Recently I got an email about Ranjan Das[42yrs] CEO of SAP-Indian Subcontinent, the youngest CEO of an MNC in India who succumbed to a heart attack. Supposed to be an avid fitness freak and a marathon runner his early demise had shocked the Corporate world. It is believed that one of the reasons for his early demise could have been lack of sleep. He slept for just 4-5 hrs every night.
Which also reminded me of a post Swaram had written last month about her husband’s friend who was in his thirties and a fitness enthusiast who succumbed to heart-attack and nobody knew why.

Try this test out: Its called The Epworth Sleepiness Scale; ESS is a scale intended to measure daytime drowsiness that is measured by use of a very short questionnaire. It is a useful test to help diagnose sleeping problems. Click here to do it.

In short, most healthy adults are built for 16 hours of wakefulness and need an average of 8 hours of sleep a night. And, contrary to common myth, the need for sleep doesn't decline with age but the ability to sleep for 6 to 8 hrs at one time may be reduced. (Van Dongen & Dinges, Principles & Practice of Sleep Medicine, 2000)

What is your sleep pattern like???????

For Links: Click here, here and here[matter highlighted in blue taken from here]