We still know far too little about sleep. It’s surprising because if we live to be 75 and sleep 8 hours a day, we’ve slept for 25 years. Why? What’s going on? The restorative aspects of sleep are widely appreciated but little is understood just why sleep is so important.
I met Dr. Bill Dement several years ago at a sleep medicine conference where he was discussing his pioneering efforts in understanding sleep. Years earlier in the sleep lab at Stanford, he noted that during sleep he would see periodic rhythmic eye rolling, which would later be described as REM (rapid eye movement) sleep. He left an EEG monitor running when studying the sleep patterns of his wife, and noted that a unique “awake” pattern was present during these REM episodes (in which the muscles are basically paralyzed). Dement grew up in Walla Walla. The sleep lab there is named after his mother, the Kathryn Severens Dement Sleep Center. They’ve probably diagnosed more sleep apnea in Walla Walla than any other similar sized community.
When beginning to study sleep apnea, a whole new area of understanding began. Sleep apnea is unfortunately very common in persons with obesity and a large neck. It has now become a problem of epidemic proportions. I also met Colin Sullivan at a sleep conference. He invented the first CPAP device and published this breakthrough in 1989 in the Lancet. This device no doubt has saved countless lives. And a major “sleep industry” has grown like Topsy.
But what about sleep in general – insomnia, stress, drugs, etc. The sleep specialists deal with this in consultation, but there is abounding lay literature, sleep apps, and a great deal of pseudoscience. Read this article in the NYT for an update.