[acb-hsp] "Dreamland"

[Louise Pearson]

Hi Jessie and everyone

Look thanks for this sharing of what has worked for you, excellent.  I am
not currently having so much trouble staying asleep or getting to sleep
(although that has been a problem for me in the past), as I am controlling
the urge to sleep during the day.  I've done a few literature searches, and
I'm sure I'm a candidate for that disorder you were mentioning too.  At
least after the recent sleep study, it does not appear to be apnoea related,
but ... I'll have to see what the sleep specialist says.

Like you, I am so not into pills. Melatonin I don't mind as it doesn't seem
to have side effects as such, ut regular sleeping pills, god no.  And like
you Jessie, I'm not likely to be so good on routines.  I go to bed at
different times most nights.

Hmmm, all very interesting, and thanks everyone for their input.  I am
seeing the sleep specialist on thursday, so it was more that I was wanting
to have some food for thought, in going along to see him.

Louise.

-----Original Message-----
From: acb-hsp-bounces at acb.org [mailto:acb-hsp-bounces at acb.org] On Behalf Of
J.Rayl
Sent: Thursday, 16 August 2012 11:28 PM
To: John Kolwick; Discussion list for ACB human service professionals
Cc: Discussion list for ACB human service professionals
Subject: Re: [acb-hsp] "Dreamland"

Hi Louise,  I have taken Mellatonin and, in the winter, it works well.  It
does not work for me in the summer as well.  This may be due to other
factors, however.
In any event, why not try it?  You've really nothing to lose, and it will
not hurt you.
It is really better to take Mel about 30 minutes before you want to be
asleep.  So, if you'd like to be asleep at 11:00, take it between 10:15 and
10:30.  Then, you need to be in a quiet, not lighted place and just,
hopefully, allow yourself to drift off to sleep.
The deal wit Mel is, to get it to work most effectively, you need to
establish a routine pattern--11:00P to 7:00A (something like that), then
adhere to that every night.
And, that's another reason it does not work well for me because I'm just not
much of a routined person.  If I am out or have a good book, or talking to a
friend, I do not want to say, Oh No! my bewitching hour of _____ and I need
to go to bed now.

I wish you well.
Sleep is essential to many things, and here in the US, they are big onto
this non-24 sleep-wake syndrome for people who are blind.  I"m sure I've got
it, could qualify for the study, and they've been hassling me like there is
no tomorrow; however, I'm not! into the blood work, measuring urine all the
time, and, I'm not sold on sleping pills at all.

Other things that I find that have helped are Chamomile tea, and other teas
designed especially for sleep-relaxation.  I use, and recommend, them all
the time.
Another thing that I like, but do not use routinely, is vanilla milk.  You
use the real stuff with alcohol in a cup or glass of milk, add a little
sugar, heat it and MMMMM.  I sleep well, usually, too.

Hope that helps.


Jessie Rayl
thedogmom63 at frontier.com
www.facebook.com/Eaglewings10
www.pathtogrowth.org

----- 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 7:09 AM
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 

_______________________________________________
acb-hsp mailing list
acb-hsp at acb.org
http://www.acb.org/mailman/listinfo/acb-hsp