[acb-hsp] "Dreamland"

[Louise Pearson]

Ah thanks for this.

And do you find you are less tired during the day?

Louise.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "John Kolwick" <john2109 at suddenlink.net>
To: "Discussion list for ACB human service professionals" <acb-hsp at acb.org>
Sent: Thursday, August 16, 2012 9:09 PM
Subject: Re: [acb-hsp] "Dreamland"


>     Hello, I have taken it on a few occasions and it does seem to help to 
> some degree.  I also have known of others who use and have reported 
> positive results.  You do need to sometimes play around with the amount of 
> melatonin you take it can some times require a little more that the 
> recommended amount.  I take it about 30 to 60 minutes before I go to bed.
>
> -----Original Message----- 
> From: Louise Pearson
> Sent: Thursday, August 16, 2012 7:01 AM
> To: Discussion list for ACB human service professionals
> Subject: Re: [acb-hsp] "Dreamland"
>
> Hi everyone
>
> Now this brings up an interesting topic to me at least Peter, and I
> apologise for therefore going off topic.
>
> Does anyone on list take Melatonin? I am having trouble just feeling tired
> all day at work.  I actually have sleep apnoea, so ... I've been back and
> had another sleep study, but ... this is actually not the problem
> apparently.
>
> So I'm back at the old ... should I, as a totally blind person, be taking
> supplements of melatonin? I'd be interested to hear from anyone who has
> tried this out ... and/or fiddled with the time of day when they
> administered this?
>
> I have heard that it can be good to take in the middle of the day, for
> example.
>
> I apologise again for going off topic.
>
> Thanks
>
> Louise.
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "peter altschul" <paltschul at centurytel.net>
> To: "Acbhsp" <acb-hsp at acb.org>
> Sent: Thursday, August 16, 2012 2:22 AM
> Subject: [acb-hsp] "Dreamland"
>
>
>> "Dreamland": Inside the Mystery of Sleep
>>  August 14, 2012
>>  The opening scene of Marcel Proust's "Swannbs Way" is one of the most 
>> famously difficult to get through in literature.  That's not because of 
>> its style, which is sublime, but because it describes the experience of 
>> falling asleep.  Many susceptible readers nod off the first few times 
>> they attempt it.  All writing about sleep has this problem; of the 
>> fundamental human appetites, it's the least exciting.  The better you 
>> invoke it, the more likely you are to incite it, and because it canbt be 
>> remembered, sleep can't be described.  Nothing could be duller than 
>> watching someone else do it.  Only people who can't sleep spend much time 
>> thinking about it, and if there's anything more tedious than witnessing 
>> another person's nap, it's listening to a keyed-up, obsessive insomniac 
>> go on and on about how they can't.
>>  So kudos to David K.  Randall for writing what must be the most 
>> diverting and consistently fascinating book on the topic ever, 
>> "Dreamland: Adventures in the Strange Science of Sleep." I feel I can 
>> speak with some authority on the subject because I've read quite a few 
>> sleep books in my time.  My interest arises from my own mild parasomnia, 
>> or sleep disorder, one that runs in my family.  We talk and sometimes 
>> walk in our sleep. Randall suffers from the same condition, although of 
>> the two of us, he's the only one whobs truly stsufferedst from it.  A few 
>> years ago, he hurt himself when he collided with a wall while 
>> sleepwalking.  It was the first time (he knows of) that he'd ever walked 
>> in his sleep, but every night his wife curls up at the far end of their 
>> "oversized" bed, wearing earplugs to shut out his btalking, singing, 
>> laughing, humming, giggling, grunting." Also, he kicks.
>>  If there's anything creepier than hearing someone laugh in their sleep, 
>> it's got to be another of Randall's propensities; he can fall asleep with 
>> his eyes open.  We deduce, therefore, that his wife is a woman of 
>> fortitude, but the sleepwalking incident freaked her out properly.  She 
>> insisted he seek treatment and Randall visited a sleep lab.  An 
>> uncomfortable night spent with electrodes taped to his head elicited the 
>> observation "you certainly kick a lot" and not much more.  Randall 
>> learned that "sleep is one of the dirty little secrets of science." We 
>> don't know as much about it as we should, or could.
>>  Hence, "Dreamland," a book that cleverly approaches a spectrum of 
>> sleep-related issues from the worst-case-scenario perspective.  If you 
>> want to know how serious the problem of sleep deprivation can be, look at 
>> the U.S.  Army, which is only just coming to terms with the role lack of 
>> sleep plays in the 25 percent of American combat deaths resulting from 
>> friendly fire.  During the occupation of Iraq, soldiers sleeping less 
>> than four hours per night reported five times as many altercations with 
>> civilians as those who had the full eight.  Lack of sleep impairs a 
>> person's ability to make decisions, communicate with others and improvise 
>> effectively.  Well, we all know that, don't we? But learning how much 
>> blood and good will has been squandered as a result of macho attitudes 
>> toward soldiers' sleep needs (four hours a night -- for hardworking 
>> 20-year-olds -- really?) is sobering.
>>  Randall explores the significance of circadian rhythms -- the body's 
>> internal clock, which "tells an organism when it is time to perform an 
>> important activity and when it is time to rest" -- 
>> by looking at the lives of professional athletes.  Stanford sleep 
>> researchers, he relates, demonstrated that East Coast football teams 
>> labored under a permanent disadvantage in Monday night football games. 
>> The games were always scheduled at 9 p.m.  EST, no matter where they were 
>> played, to maximize television viewership.  The average human body will 
>> bperk up around nine o'clock in the morning and stay that way until 
>> around two in the afternoon, which is when we start thinking about a nap. 
>> Around six in the evening, the body gets another shot of energy that 
>> keeps us going until about 10 at night." A three-hour jet lag may sound 
>> minor, but it meant that West Coast teams always played at what their 
>> bodies thought was 6:00 p.m., a peak in the cycle, while their East Coast 
>> opponents played at a time when their bodies were winding down.  The 
>> point spreads reflected the difference.
>>  Perhaps the most bizarre material in "Dreamland" concerns sleepwalking, 
>> and specifically the responsibility a person has for any crimes he 
>> commits while asleep.  It happens.  If most sleepwalkers are like me --  
>> barely able to bumble across the room before waking ourselves up -- a 
>> rare, unlucky few have been known to perform complex actions, like 
>> cooking or driving a car, while unconscious.  In 1988, a 23-year-old 
>> Toronto man was acquitted of murdering his mother-in-law while asleep. 
>> Randall notes that "parasomnias seemed to be a particularly male trait," 
>> but I suspect that men, who are more prone to aggressive dreams in the 
>> first place, are more likely than women to engage in sleepwalking that 
>> presents a threat to others.  Attempting to strangle one's bed partner 
>> because you think he or she is an attacker is a classic example.  Less 
>> dangerous forms of sleepwalking, like my own, simply don't get reported.
>>  The most unusual thing I've ever done in my sleep is write a letter --  
>> although I'd only managed the salutation before the difficulty of the 
>> task woke me up.  The next morning, the handwritten evidence of this 
>> incident spooked me.  It was like a message from a stranger I could never 
>> meet, but who just happened to inhabit the same body.  Whether I could be 
>> held responsible for this stranger's actions isn't a question I've ever 
>> had to face, but it's the kind of quandary that courts, legal scholars 
>> and a handful of neurologists have had to wrestle with.  One expert 
>> Randall interviews advocates a new classification for such crimes: 
>> "semi-voluntary." If the culprit knows he has a problem and doesn't take 
>> measures to control it, he holds at least some responsibility for the 
>> results.
>>  The concept of an unconscious mind has fallen out of intellectual favor, 
>> associated as it is with largely invalidated Freudian models of the self. 
>> Yet some of the sleep-related subjects Randall covers in "Dreamland" do 
>> touch upon this territory, from dreams to the many accounts of people 
>> who, after having pondering a persistent problem, suddenly woke up with a 
>> fully formed solution.  Paul McCartney wrote the hit song "Yesterday" in 
>> just this way.
>>  It appears that, while asleep, the brain sorts through the day's events 
>> and lays down long-term memories, an administrative process that Randall 
>> describes as "cleaning up and organizing the mind's filing cabinet." This 
>> does not at all resemble the highly symbolic theater that human beings 
>> have imagined the dream landscape to be for millennia.  However, in a 
>> later sleep stage, once the initial tidying is over, the brain begins 
>> bfinding connections and associations with the data embedded in its 
>> memory cards,- a creative activity that looks an awful lot like thinking. 
>> This makes the idea of an unconscious self seem less obsolete.
>>  "Dreamland" covers an abundance of other slumber-related issues, from 
>> sleep apnea to the importance of mattresses (which is negligible) to the 
>> interesting fact that most people sleep much better alone.  It's all 
>> weirdly fascinating, which -- trust me -- is a testimony to the lively 
>> curiosity, solid research and inventive angles that Randall brings to 
>> each aspect of his subject.  You almost certainly don't sleep the way you 
>> think you do.  There's much evidence to indicate that people are the 
>> worst possible information sources when it comes to their own sleep 
>> habits. That's not surprising when you consider that they're unconscious 
>> for most of it.  It's remarkable to think that such a mundane activity 
>> should still be shrouded in so much mystery, but you couldn't find a more 
>> charming guide to what we do know than "Dreamland."
>> _______________________________________________
>> acb-hsp mailing list
>> acb-hsp at acb.org
>> http://www.acb.org/mailman/listinfo/acb-hsp
>
> _______________________________________________
> acb-hsp mailing list
> acb-hsp at acb.org
> http://www.acb.org/mailman/listinfo/acb-hsp
> _______________________________________________
> acb-hsp mailing list
> acb-hsp at acb.org
> http://www.acb.org/mailman/listinfo/acb-hsp