What Sleep Disorders Can Teach Us About Getting A Better Night's Rest

Speaker 1: 00:00 In theory, we should all be well rested after the time change gave us that extra hour this weekend. But it seems that a lot of us need more than one extra hour. The centers for disease control and prevention says about one in three Americans are chronically sleep deprived and 20% of Americans suffer from a sleep disorder. There's a lot about sleep that remains a mystery, especially for those who suffer from rare forms of sleep disorders like narcolepsy. That conditions spurred writer Henry Nicole's to find out what science has to say about getting a good night's rest. He joined me via Skype to talk about his book, sleepy head, the neuroscience of a good night's rest. And here's that interview. And Henry, welcome to the program. You've been diagnosed with narcolepsy, a sleep disorder that's still not well known among the general public. What kinds of symptoms did you experience? Speaker 2: 00:56 So most people will probably know it's to do with too much sleep. That's the principle. Symptom is excessive daytime sleepiness, but it comes with a four, five, six other, uh, symptoms that are recognized by clinicians, including something amazing called cataplexy, which is where an emotion will cause you to collapse. It looks like you've fallen asleep or it looks like you've died, but in fact, you're completely conscious. Just your muscles were paralyzed in exactly the same way as they are during dreaming sleep. Um, then you have sleep paralysis, which a lot of people will be familiar with. This is where you, you've actually woken up. Now you are in your bedroom, you know that it's now no longer sleep, but you cannot move. And it's terrifying. This is the same physiological state, in fact. So your muscles are paralyzed in that terror. Your brain creates these hallucinations, images that kind of commensurate with the fear you're experiencing. Speaker 2: 01:58 So it's just about the most terrifying thing that you can possibly imagine. And then in fact, in Sonia as well, narcolepsy, you know, people laugh and say, Oh, I wish I had narcolepsy because then I'd be sleeping. Well, no. Okay, let me just get that clear. Narcolepsy is really not good sleep. You might be sleeping a little bit more than normal, but none of the sleep of someone with narcolepsy is proper sleep. It's incredibly fractured. You typically wake up 30 times a night and very, very rarely get the deep sleep that we all need to function. So it's a, it's a sleep disorder of too much sleep and too little sleep simultaneously. And then there is actually no paradox there. It's just not a pleasant experience. Speaker 1: 02:49 Are there treatments available for narcolepsy? Speaker 2: 02:53 There are a bunch of treatments that they use to sort of patch together someone with narcolepsy, but none of them is particularly targeted at the actual problem. So there is a loss of neurons that occurs in most cases of narcolepsy as a result of an also immune attack. So that means your body was fighting an infection. It's usually something like the flu and it takes out all the pathogens and it's doing its job. But in the process takes out a tiny population of incredibly important cells in the center of the brain and there's really no way to get those back. Speaker 1: 03:34 Now in the, in your book sleepy head, you talk about a range of sleep disorders like sleep apnea, chronic insomnia and sleep deprivation. Do all of these sleep disorders have common effects on a person's life and health. Speaker 2: 03:50 That was really one of the most interesting things for me was to explore the whole landscape of sleep disorders. I could have just focused on narcolepsy and ran a whole book about that and was a bit anxious about taking on these other ones. Things like sleep apnea or insomnia, restless leg syndrome, but the connections between them are very real and where they all, what they already have in common is sleep deprivation. So any kind of sleep disorder, even narcolepsy where you seem to be sleeping too much is in fact a kind of sleep deprivation. You suddenly in a high risk category for mental health disorders and then serious, serious physical damage including increased risk of obesity and type two diabetes, cardiovascular disease, stroke and um, it's, it's, that's not even mentioning of the increased risk of car accidents and all those sorts of things. Speaker 1: 04:54 Henry, is there an ongoing debate over the function of sleep? And what happens when we sleep? What you researchers agree on and where is there still disagreement? Speaker 2: 05:03 Uh, pretty much everywhere. Um, that was one thing I made a point of was asking most people I interviewed what sleep was about. At first I felt silly [inaudible] me asking that but I'm glad I did because you just got an answer. But quite often it was a different answer. And these are people at the top of their game whose, whose careers are researching sleep. And if you're getting a different answer from these people, it means two things we don't really know yet. But also, and probably more importantly sleep as performing many, many functions. And the key take home here, I mean I could list them, it gets a bit boring. It's things like replenishing your transmitters, creating strengthening connections between urines and paring back connections between other ones, removing metabolites and lots of functions going on like this. The key things are take is it's an incredibly active time for the brain. Speaker 1: 06:01 Now, I mean, anyone listening to this can hear that this book sleepyhead goes into a lot of very complicated matters when it comes to sleep and sleep disorders. But I wonder, do you include any advice perhaps for the people listening who may not have a sleep disorder but perhaps feel like they could get better sleep than they do? Speaker 2: 06:23 So I, I've sort of written off my sleep as I can't get the neurons back that I've lost and I, and I thought, right, there's nothing I can do about my dysfunctional sleep. Actually the revelation for me was, well of course there are other things that are affecting your sleep and making it even worse. So I think everybody can work and still work. Even if you think you've got great sleep, it is an ongoing project. So the real is try to maintain the same bedtime and wake time through the week and we can, if you start to get into this cycle and getting up still at the same time, at the weekends, you will realize just a much greater, uh, level of functioning, not just at the weekend, but continually through the week. And then obviously doing silly things like taking a phone into the bedroom or having a TV in the bedroom. Speaker 2: 07:20 None of that, because all of those are risk factors. But where apart from the light that you're exposing yourself to in the, in, in the dark, in that late at night, these are risk factors for insomnia. So anything that's going to keep your weight while you're in the bedroom is a dangerous thing because you start to build up associations and you start to your brain, you enter the bedroom trying to sleep, but your brain has now learned, Oh, this is the place I'm awakened. And so you just lie there away. So you've got to focus on the bedroom as a place for sleep. Um, you made sure you, you know, look out for any snoring, uh, and possibility you might have for sleep apnea. You've got to get that sorted. Speaker 1: 08:00 I've been speaking with Henry Nichols, author of sleepy head, the neuroscience of a good night's rest. Henry, thank you so much. Thank you.