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Be Thankful If They Just Snore
The NYT is running has a lengthy piece in their weekend supplement about sleep disorders. Besides a certain amount of humor value, the article covers sleep terrors and sleepwalking and even weirder disorders.
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having had some problems sleeping recently due to stress I can tell you it ain't funny...
can't sleep cause you're stressed...
this stresses you...
cant sleep cause you're stressed...
not much fun..
and *everyones* got a cure:
"tried lettuce sandwiches"
"tried a piriton" etc etc.
thankfully i'm sleeping again, but I don't envy anyone who has this all the time.
Acid House saves Souls
Back when I was around 7 or 8, I used to get 'night terrors', at least that's what the ER doctors called 'em, all the time.. They were incredibly realistic, and scared the hell outta me. I still remember running around the living room couch, screaming at the top of my lungs, because I thought an airplane was gonna fly through the window.. ..turns out it was the ambulance my Mother called. :)
RaGe
We're all just noise on the wires..
and I'll believe none of it until they produce a cure for sleep-kicking-your-boyfriend-in-the-shins.
--Just because you can doesn't mean you should--
If you can't sleep well, you may be snoring and not know it...waking yourself before you enter REM sleep, restful sleep, etc.
Try one of those over-the-counter throat sprays [Breathe Right - Snore Relief] that claim to reduce snoring. You might find yourself getting more sleep than you've had in years.
What do you call a nun who sleep walks?
A roamin' Catholic
source: joke.com
YarrRrr
here
using the archive.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
There used to be this kid, can't remember his name,
that hung out with me and my friends when we were
between the ages of ten to thirteen. He didn't go
to our school, but he was a friend of another kid
that was a neighbor of a friend or something.
I think that made sense. Either way, he would
QUIT BREATHING COMPLETELY when he slept and you'd
have to wake him up or he'd DIE. I can remember his
mom explaining that it was some sort of condition
and we'd have to be careful to watch him when he slept
over. Needless to say, how the fuck are you going to
sleep at all if you are worried some kid you hardly
know is going to die on you? We'd take turns watching
him sleep. I can remember him turning blue a few times
because someone dozed off that was watching him.
Sometimes we'd all stay up together bullshitting
about life and watch him. We started to resent the
fact that we had such a huge responsibility thrust
on us just to hang out with some kid we didn't
even like that much. It didn't help that his
attitude was along the lines of "Oh well, if I
die I die" and we were like "We are saving your
life asshole!". I can remember when he just quit
showing up one day and I made the joke that he
probably died. There was one of those 5 second
pauses then everybody busted up laughing because
when you are young, cruel can be funny. We never
did find out what happened to him.
The most important thing any republican needs to know.
Michael don't you need a sleep? You have done all the posting for more than 24 hours...
Ohh that's why you post this one...
I've lost jobs because I fall asleep at work, because I don't get any rest when I sleep at night. My marriage ended because my wife was afraid that I'd do something to her or to the kids while I slept. My health is in the crapper, and treatments I've taken for this hasn't had any affect. I've slept 14 hours and still felt tired when I woke up.
The article doesn't quite fully describe how hard this is on the patients. You are told that you do things at night, and you have no memory of any of it. I have accused my wife of lying to me when she told me I screamed at the wall for two hours one night. Things are happening, you are told you do things, and you have absolutely no control because you don't even know you do any of it.
My doctor is close to recommending that I undergo another surgery to try to take care of this. I've already had my tonsils and adnoids removed. Now, he's recommending a surgery that would actually scar the tissue in my throat, causing it to tighten up and open the airway.
No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow. - Cmdr. Susan Ivanova
I have sleep apnea. The fix for it saved my career, my marraige, and maybe my life. For years, I woke up 2-3 times a night. My wife told me of my snoring, my stopping breathing & gasping for air while asleep, etc. I was always dog-tired, taking naps every opportunity, etc. Went to the doc. He sent me to a sleep study clinic. :)
Turns out a flap in my throat closes off and prevents breathing while I am sleeping. I thought something like that happened, but I thought it happened like one or twice an hour. Turns out, if untreated, it happens about every 15 seconds while I am asleep. The "cure" is a CPAP machine (controlled pressurized air pump, I think) that keeps a very small steady air flow (about 1/10th normal) down my throat while sleeping, to keep the flap, that closes off my breathing, open.
Since using the CPAP, I now sleep normally. 8 hrs and then I am truly awake and alert, for the first time in maybe 15 years. This is a new thing for me. My medical insurance covered every penny of the clinic visits and all the CPAP stuff. (Since using this, I have gotten 3 doctorates, made $30B, and sired 47 children.;P) I do think that the life of my family has improved by finally having a husband and father who is "there" all the time. Well, as "there" as a geek gets.
If you don't feel alert all the time, go to the doctor. Find out why. And if the doctor does not help you, dump him or her and go find one who will help you. Keep looking until you do. It really is worth it to see life without a haze of sleepiness.
1. The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Deer is a play on The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks.
2. I can't believe that this article doesn't mention William C. Dement. He's basically the father of modern sleep research.
How to Download YouTube Videos
Sleep paralysis.
From the time I was 18 till 22 or so, I would occasional wake from a dream but still have the paralysis from REM sleep.
It is the opposite of fun waking up and being totally paralyzed. Couldn't even talk. It would happen within a dream first as well. One time in a dream I was being chased up a hill by *something* and I slowed down to a crawl. Before long I couldn't move. Woke up. Couldn't move.
Usually took about 5 minutes to wear off. The worse was when I woke up paralyzed one night face down on the inside of couch with my (now) wife sleeping on the outside but basically on top of me. My face was wedged down between the back of the couch and cushions. Could barely see anything, but I knew someone was on me. Nope, didn't like that one at all.
http://www.stanford.edu/~dement/paralysis.html
From the responses I have read peopel need to take these thigns more seriously. While the unusal conditions like sleep walking, sleep terrors, and narcolepsy are interesting, it is obstructive sleep apnea that is the most common and dangerous.
You can die from it! that's how dangerous it is. apnea is an interuption in your breathing. usually from a blockage in your airway.
when this happens at night several things happen;
1) it wakes you up. not to the point where you are aware of it, but it waks you out of a deep restful sleep to a light stage of sleep. this is why people are so tired all the time. this can happen hundreds of times an hour.
2)it raises your blood pressure. when the apnea occurs it spikes your bloood pressure. it has been
measured up 60 mm of Hg. this is what can break loose blood clots and cause stokes in the middle of the night.
these are the 2 most dangerous affects.
the number 1 cause of sleep apnea is being overweight, even as littel as 5 lbs overweight can cause it. and those of you who snore are suspect, snoring and apnea usually go hand in hand.
how many slashdot readers sit in front a computer drinking soda all day? that doesn't help your weight.
there is help though, there are doctors who specialize in sleep disorders. there are labs and hospitals that do testing like I used to do.
there is surgery (I don't reccomend) and devices like the CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) that keep the airway open at night and stops the apnea from occuring.
BTW my mother-in-law, uncle and father all have sleep apnea. it's more common than you think.
there are many things medicine can do for sleeping problems but you have to go see a doctor that knows about sleeping disorders.
google search
"I drank what?" - Socrates
I thought I'd share my own experience with sleep disorder.
About 2 years ago, extensive snoring, driving my wife nuts and keeping me from sleeping more than 5-6 hours or suffer intense headaches pushed me into seeing an ear-nose-throat doctor?an otho-rhino-laringologist.
After discussing the situation, and examining my throat, he thought he'd knew what to do, but some tests had to be done to make sure of the steps to take to fix the issue.
First, all wired-up like your typical Hi-Fi system back panel, and a forced-fed breading machine (augmenting the air pressure as you bread through a mask), I spent a night at home while being monitored. Back at the hospital (after some weeks--the free healthcare system in Quebec has it's drawbacks), the doctor just wasn't sure about the readins he had on the small "portable" machine. So, he suggested we redo the test in the sleep clinic of the hospital, using better equipment (aka, much less portable).
In the ORL sleep disorder business, an "event" is a sequence of 10 to 15 seconds of halted breading caused by blocked airways--this is referred to as apnea. From 0 to 5 "events" per hour, it's considered normal (none being ideal), and can be caused by a bad sleep position, your dreams etc. In the province of Québec, at 15 events per hour, the government feels it's serious enough to do something about it and pay for it. I was doing 32.
The ORL confirmed this to be the source of my headaches fatigue (due to restlessness and lack of oxygen during the night). In my case, the snoring was caused by oversized amygdalaes, and a soften (over time) soft palace due to years of snoring--as times goes, the situation usually worsens.
If you want to know where the soft palace is, stick your figer up the roof of your mouth and slide backward (towards the throat). Where it gives in, that's where it is.
My soft palace was weakened over the years because of the snoring, causing, by ricochet, the uvulae to swell up and further blocking the airways at night. Sleeping on your back worsens the situation because all the soft tissues fall back as you rest.
Now, before you're too amused by the Fred Flintstone images and sounds, be aware that acute snoring can lead to severe health problems and ultimately, cardiac problems and even cardiac arrest. It's VERY serious.
What was prescribed to me was what is known as a UPPP, an uvulo-palato-pharyngo-plastia. After documenting myself on the procedure and consulting a number of web sites about the issue. A google search on UPPP can lead you to interesting sites, such as this one or this one.
The alternative was to spend the rest of my life with a breathing machine, or to suffer the consequences of ignoring the remedes.
I finally opted for the procedure. The first web site I refer above has a throat photo of the before/after surgery, which illustrate a bit what they did. They took out my amygdalaes, part of the soft palace (including the uvulae) and tightened the back throat tissues. Recovery from this was a snap (about 16 hours after surgery I was eating toasts--although I was told this wasn't typical).
The result are amazing. I can not do the same 5 hour nights but be completely rested! I can do 12 hour nights if I want to lay down a bit, and not have headaches. I can concentrate better, I don't make a single whistle as I sleep, and overall feel healthier.
There is a slight (5-10%) chance of occasional nasal-reflux with the UPPP procedure. Nasal-reflux is food that shoots up your nose if you're not careful as you eat. I've only gotten this twice since the procedure, about 16 months ago. It's easily avoidable, and basically involves changing your swallowing timing (the absence of the amygdalaes causes food to go down quicker in your throat).
Another possible side effect to this surgery is not being able to pronouce the R (as in "farce") as we do in french (rolling the Rs). This is of no concerns for the anglophones, however. Hispanic might be affected. You still can pronounce Rs, but it's hard to roll then as we do in french.
If you think you have a sleep disorder, ACT ON IT. Ask questions, get doctor referrals and begin your journey to a healthier life.
Tel'aran'rhiod ;)
-Rylfaeth
I'm 31 and started sleepwalking when I was 12. Sometimes I will wake up during the experience and I have a fuzzy memory of the 'dream' that I've been acting out. Other times I will wake up in the morning with a huge bruise somewhere (one time I woke up with a broken toe) or things in the bedroom are broken and I have no memory of what happened. The scariest thing that has ever happened to me was when I spent the night at a girlfriend's house and woke up the next morning with a fuzzy recollection of sitting on someone's chest and choking them. I asked my girlfriend about this and she said she didn't remember anything but that her throat and neck were extremely sore and bruised. We were both pretty freaked out and I went to a sleep center after that but they didn't detect anything unusual (after all, I don't sleepwalk *every* night and it was hard to sleep at all with all the crap they had hooked up to me). I took the sleeping pill they prescribed for awhile but it didn't stop the sleepwalking and made me drowsy the next morning so I eventually stopped taking it. The doctors at the sleep center didn't seem to really have much experience with this sort of thing (I think they mostly had people in for insomnia and sleep apnea) so they didn't really have any real idea about how to treat it (since they hadn't detected anything in the study there's wasn't much to go on anyway). Im glad to see an article like this give more attention to the issue, although now Im worried Im going to get Parkinsons Disease! I got married a year ago and I'm terrified that one day I will wake up and my wife will be dead in the bed next to me. Perhaps Ill visit the sleep center again (it's been 8 years since I went last time) and maybe they'll have a better clue about how to treat me.
The term for this is Restless Leg Syndrome and is treatable. It's similar to spasms in the legs. This can not only cause your partner annoyances, but can keep waking you up many times a night, keeping you from getting a proper night's sleep. (sleep that follows a restful pattern through all the stages of sleep).
I am treated for this with medication and it has done wonders for my energy level. If this seems like a serious problem, find a sleep disorders specialist in your area. More information is available at Restless Legs Syndrome Foundation.
I am, and always will be, an idiot. Karma: Coma (mostly effected by
In the words of a friend currently going through the exact same thing I'm going through, "you'll soon discover why sleep deprivation is one of the world's purest forms of torture"...
Cheers,
Ian