Wednesday, February 13, 2008 Literatus: Sleepless nights By Zosimo T. Literatus, R.M.T. Breakthroughs
WILLIAM Wordsworth wrote his poem To Sleep II, A Flock of Sheep: Three sleepless nights I passed in sounding on/ Through words and things, a dim and perilous way.
You may have experienced it once in a while, but lack of sleep becomes a nightmare when waking time comes.
Your body is too heavy to drag to the shower or to the breakfast table. Your world seems to float, only to realize that it is your head that “floats.” You look at people with your blank eyes and with mind numb as from anesthesia. You begin to wonder if this is how zombies feel when they come back to life!
If you can easily switch back to your regular wakefulness schedule, you are luckily normal. Some people are not as fortunate as you are. They have what is called in mental health as delayed sleep phase syndrome (DSPS), a condition found in 43 percent of people with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).
OCD is a common, long-term disorder characterized by a person’s inability to control a behavior which can be said to be “silly” or “bizarre.” An example is the inability o control an impulse to wash your hands frequently even without proof that they are dirty or soiled. In the United States alone (based on a 1980 study), two to three percent of Americans (about four to six million) are expected to have an episode of OCD in their lives. If you have a meaningless habit you cannot scrap out, think again. You could have OCD.
DSPS is the most common form of circardian rhythm sleep disorder, as what researchers Y. Dagan and M. Eisenstein observed in their 1999 study published in Chronobiology International.
The syndrome results in daytime sleepiness and wrecks havoc on work and social functioning. It is a mismatch between the usual daily schedule required in the person’s environment and his built-in sleep-wake system.
It is uncommon in the general adult population, with estimates of only 0.17 to 0.72 percent. It is much higher among adolescents (7.3 percent), and relatively much higher in otherwise normal children (10 percent).
Sleep disorder investigators believe that DSPS is a disorder that starts in childhood. From early childhood, the cycle of wakefulness and sleepiness is regulated by an internal “clock” in the brain.
A typical adult has a built-in sleep-wake cycle of slightly more than 24 hours so that the cycle is reset daily to keep it aligned with the external 24-hour day.
More of this next week. You will know how this syndrome develops from childhood to adulthood so you can use the knowledge in doing something whenever you observe DSPS in people you know. Its serious effect has been captured well by two-time sportsman champion racer Bob Ingman: “Last night, I dreamed I had insomnia. I woke up exhausted, yet too well rested to go back to sleep.”
