[acb-hsp] "Dreamland"

[Mary Ann Robinson]

I also take it and have done so for almost a year.  I take3mg one-half to 
one hour before going to bed.  If I wake up in the middle of the night, I 
can usually go back to sleep.  I also feel less tired the next day.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Louise Pearson" <frogdog at iinet.net.au>
To: "John Kolwick" <john2109 at suddenlink.net>; "Discussion list for ACB human 
service prof.essionals" <acb-hsp at acb.org>
Sent: Thursday, August 16, 2012 7:15 AM
Subject: Re: [acb-hsp] "Dreamland"


> 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."
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>>
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