I have sleep apnea.
I have known this for years. My wife has complained about my snoring, snorting and assorted noises for years. She took to wearing earplugs. I have been tired for years. Lately it has been so bad I nap in my office chair at work, at my desk at home, have fallen asleep too many times to name in my car, pulling off at gas stations to sleep for 10 minutes, etc, etc, etc.
I finally got a sleep study. Boy, do I have sleep apnea. Treatment is advised at 5 episodes per hour. I had 78 hourly. Right. One every 46 seconds. Sleep comes in REM, then stages 1, 2, and 3, with 3 being deep, delta wave sleep. I had NO REM, NO stage 3. Only a constant oscillation of near waking and stage 1-2 all night.
Then I got my CPAP unit. Oh God. I have slept like I have not slept in YEARS. Last night I slept 7.25 uninterrupted hours. I turned off my light at 10:30 PM, and at 5:45 AM I awoke spontaneously. Life is completely changed. Not only am I awake I feel weirdly relaxed and much happier. My blood pressure is significantly down. I was having episodes of SVT. Now I don't get those sudden rushes of a pulse of 150 for 5 minutes, without any reason.
We don't understand sleep. No one actually knows what it is 'for'. As a result many people believe sleep is a waste of time. They try to stay awake and work, or play, or whatever. And since we can not demonstrate any actual cognitive degeneration with prolonged sleep deprivation, it is easy to think it is unimportant, since we measure ourselves and our world by our cognition.
Ah, but cognition is a cerebral function. We don't even think about the 'lower centers' of our brain. Dont' be so fast to call them lower centers, buster. These areas control most of our movements and all of our coordination, learned and repetitive movements, temperature, appetite, sex, sleep, hormones. All from 'lower centers'. From a biological and functional viewpoint a person with an IQ of 80 who has these areas intact is far more functional than a person with an IQ of 145 who has no gonadal function.
There was a time not long ago when to read an anatomy and physiology textbook would teach you many things. You would learn that the functions of the thymus, thyroid and adrenals were unknown. The mechanism of TB was unknown. The regulation of the menstrual cycle was unknown. But all these things have functions and cycle regulation that is exquisite and integral to our function as organisms.
Sleep is clearly the same. Whatever is happening in sleep it is happening to the whole brain and the whole body. And we must have it.
Now, how is this related to heat? By heat I mean the estrus cyycle of animals. I read an interesting article in the NYT about childlessness. This has risen to previously unknown levels in the US. Peak fertility in the US was 4.2 children per reproductive age woman in the 50s. Now it is 1.9, below the replacement level of 2.1. For years the US has relied on immigrants legal and illegal to grow its population. But those immigrants, mainly hispanic, have both stopped entering and stopped reproducing. Mexico's reproductive rate was 7.2 children per reproductive age woman. Now it is 2.1! And among immigrants the rate has fallen to replacement rate only. And now 20-35% of US women are or plan to be childless, an all-time record.
The article, too sadly typical of the 'journalism' of the NYT, gives a variety of vaguely smug and overtly narcissistic reasons for childlessness among women. But that is not what interested me, and I think the writer has missed the lead issue.
Animals who are stressed do not go into heat. Animals who are overcrowded and/or do not have enough food do not go into heat. This is felt to be some sort of 'autopilot natural mechanism' for population control. There is not enough food, ergo stop having babies. Now of course humans don't go into heat, and we are far too sophisticated, with our 'higher centers of thought', to be controlled by such things as inadequacy of food. Besides, in NYC, among the group interviewed by the NYT, there is no shortage of food.
But once again our lower centers may be controlling the action, probably ARE controlling it. We are in a toxic environment chemically and socially. There may be no overt starvation, but many people are feelling very uncomfortable about society and government. And there may well be signals, as yet not understood, that affect our reproduction. Since we have no heat, no estrus cycle, that is not the way our reproduction would be controlled. Instead we, like dolphins, are capable of sex any time. That being the case, reproduction can only be slowed by reducing sex or by reducing interest in reproduction, or by altering menses hypothalamically.
And maybe that is what is happening. A minor alteration in birth rates changes our world population in 100 years from 12 billion to 1 billion. Right. ONE billion. Already we are going to miss our national population estimates by 10% in 30 years. That's a lot. A lot a lot. And maybe, as with sleep, we do not understand the importance of our bodies' 'lower functions'. And maybe, like with sleep, their disturbance leads to a lower libido, a change in the hormonal response to babies, and an aversion to sex and childbearing that we, worshipping our higher centers, call a 'chocie for childlessness'. It may be a choice. But it feels more like a Malthusian nightmare of our own creation being worked out in slow motion.
Ted
I have known this for years. My wife has complained about my snoring, snorting and assorted noises for years. She took to wearing earplugs. I have been tired for years. Lately it has been so bad I nap in my office chair at work, at my desk at home, have fallen asleep too many times to name in my car, pulling off at gas stations to sleep for 10 minutes, etc, etc, etc.
I finally got a sleep study. Boy, do I have sleep apnea. Treatment is advised at 5 episodes per hour. I had 78 hourly. Right. One every 46 seconds. Sleep comes in REM, then stages 1, 2, and 3, with 3 being deep, delta wave sleep. I had NO REM, NO stage 3. Only a constant oscillation of near waking and stage 1-2 all night.
Then I got my CPAP unit. Oh God. I have slept like I have not slept in YEARS. Last night I slept 7.25 uninterrupted hours. I turned off my light at 10:30 PM, and at 5:45 AM I awoke spontaneously. Life is completely changed. Not only am I awake I feel weirdly relaxed and much happier. My blood pressure is significantly down. I was having episodes of SVT. Now I don't get those sudden rushes of a pulse of 150 for 5 minutes, without any reason.
We don't understand sleep. No one actually knows what it is 'for'. As a result many people believe sleep is a waste of time. They try to stay awake and work, or play, or whatever. And since we can not demonstrate any actual cognitive degeneration with prolonged sleep deprivation, it is easy to think it is unimportant, since we measure ourselves and our world by our cognition.
Ah, but cognition is a cerebral function. We don't even think about the 'lower centers' of our brain. Dont' be so fast to call them lower centers, buster. These areas control most of our movements and all of our coordination, learned and repetitive movements, temperature, appetite, sex, sleep, hormones. All from 'lower centers'. From a biological and functional viewpoint a person with an IQ of 80 who has these areas intact is far more functional than a person with an IQ of 145 who has no gonadal function.
There was a time not long ago when to read an anatomy and physiology textbook would teach you many things. You would learn that the functions of the thymus, thyroid and adrenals were unknown. The mechanism of TB was unknown. The regulation of the menstrual cycle was unknown. But all these things have functions and cycle regulation that is exquisite and integral to our function as organisms.
Sleep is clearly the same. Whatever is happening in sleep it is happening to the whole brain and the whole body. And we must have it.
Now, how is this related to heat? By heat I mean the estrus cyycle of animals. I read an interesting article in the NYT about childlessness. This has risen to previously unknown levels in the US. Peak fertility in the US was 4.2 children per reproductive age woman in the 50s. Now it is 1.9, below the replacement level of 2.1. For years the US has relied on immigrants legal and illegal to grow its population. But those immigrants, mainly hispanic, have both stopped entering and stopped reproducing. Mexico's reproductive rate was 7.2 children per reproductive age woman. Now it is 2.1! And among immigrants the rate has fallen to replacement rate only. And now 20-35% of US women are or plan to be childless, an all-time record.
The article, too sadly typical of the 'journalism' of the NYT, gives a variety of vaguely smug and overtly narcissistic reasons for childlessness among women. But that is not what interested me, and I think the writer has missed the lead issue.
Animals who are stressed do not go into heat. Animals who are overcrowded and/or do not have enough food do not go into heat. This is felt to be some sort of 'autopilot natural mechanism' for population control. There is not enough food, ergo stop having babies. Now of course humans don't go into heat, and we are far too sophisticated, with our 'higher centers of thought', to be controlled by such things as inadequacy of food. Besides, in NYC, among the group interviewed by the NYT, there is no shortage of food.
But once again our lower centers may be controlling the action, probably ARE controlling it. We are in a toxic environment chemically and socially. There may be no overt starvation, but many people are feelling very uncomfortable about society and government. And there may well be signals, as yet not understood, that affect our reproduction. Since we have no heat, no estrus cycle, that is not the way our reproduction would be controlled. Instead we, like dolphins, are capable of sex any time. That being the case, reproduction can only be slowed by reducing sex or by reducing interest in reproduction, or by altering menses hypothalamically.
And maybe that is what is happening. A minor alteration in birth rates changes our world population in 100 years from 12 billion to 1 billion. Right. ONE billion. Already we are going to miss our national population estimates by 10% in 30 years. That's a lot. A lot a lot. And maybe, as with sleep, we do not understand the importance of our bodies' 'lower functions'. And maybe, like with sleep, their disturbance leads to a lower libido, a change in the hormonal response to babies, and an aversion to sex and childbearing that we, worshipping our higher centers, call a 'chocie for childlessness'. It may be a choice. But it feels more like a Malthusian nightmare of our own creation being worked out in slow motion.
Ted
Your comments, "Then I got my CPAP unit. Oh God. I have slept like I have not slept in YEARS. Last night I slept 7.25 uninterrupted hours. I turned off my light at 10:30 PM, and at 5:45 AM I awoke spontaneously. Life is completely changed," made me think of chapter 14, "Breath" from Paul Brand and Philip Yancey's book "In His Image."
ReplyDeleteIn that chapter, Brand tells the story of a woman who had slowly developed a substernal goiter. This thyroid growth was the size of an orange and had slowly come to compress the woman's trachea over the years. As Brand tells it, when she came in for a post-operative check a few weeks after the surgery,
"She rushed up to me, and even before I had time to greet her she almost shouted, 'I can breathe!'
I was puzzled. 'Were you afraid the operation would stop your breathing?' I asked.
No, no, you don't understand,' she said with great excitement. 'Now I can BREATHE for the first time in years and years. I can run up stairs! I feel like a teenager again. I can breathe!'"
She could BREATHE...and now you can SLEEP.
When a basic necessity of life is restored after so many years of slowly losing it, I suppose it must feel like being resurrected to new life...
-D-