Sleep disorders
I’ve just watched a very interesting program on 4 Corners.
It was about sleep deprivation. Many drivers have micro naps apparently without knowing it. The statistics in America show that someone dies in a car accident due to sleep deprivation about once an hour.
The saddest story was about a doctor who had to do 13 days and nights in a row, not all at once, but over that time period. He also suffered epilepsy which he knew to be triggered by lack of sleep. On the 13th day, he said to his wife how tired he was. She said “one day to go” and he went to work. He slept at the hospital after his shift in a place designated for doctors. He had an epileptic fit in his sleep and died.
As the lawyer who acted for his widow said, “If we can’t get it right in hospitals then where can we”.
Quite. My father was, and my cousin and nephew are, all doctors and they have told me of the culture in hospitals while doing one’s internship. You are considered weak if you can’t hack it.
One of my friends is also a sleep disorder psychologist and academic. This is a very important part of our lives. She tells me that daylight and exercise are essential for good sleep and this program vindicated that saying that a glance at blue sky is twice as good as looking at green grass for a proper sleeping regime.
In my final months of teaching, I was staying up until at least 1am because I was so interested in computers. I would drag myself to work, barely awake, in the mornings.
Now that I’m retired and my son has left home, I don’t have a particular reason to get up early. I always hated getting up in the cold especially. So it gets to be that after a while I am sleeping during the day and awake at night, but that’s not good either even though I’m getting sleep. Our biorhythms are effected by doing that. I change it usually by staying awake for as long as I can and gradually fixing my hours and back it goes again. But staying awake by just 24 hours effects our concentration as much as .08 of drinking does.
Well, I must try to do it this time. For over a week now I have been awake before noon, very early at first and now later. I must do it because I’m always tired. I always feel jet lagged. I feel my concentration is practically nil….
Off to bed soon.
June 17th, 2008 at 11:40 pm
This is still true for med students, what are they learning by being so sleep-deprived? That it’s acceptable to destroy your health, and that being in top form doesn’t matter…