An Over-Workers Guide to Why You Can’t Sleep
“From an evolutionary standpoint, the process of becoming motionless and unaware for a third of the day seems like a recipe for disaster”
There is seemingly no end to the number of articles you can find scattered across the internet on why sleep is necessary, and yet staggeringly little is known about the essential bodily function. Now, if you’re uninterested in the ‘why,’ a sufficient answer for you may be as simple as: ‘I feel like crap if I don’t get enough sleep.’ Unfortunately, for those of us who feel the giddy excitement that trails pure curiosity, the current answer is disappointingly as short: we don’t know why we need sleep.
Fortunately, as of five years ago, a cutting-edge facility in Tsukuba, Japan opened to pursue the true answer to that question. The International Institute for Integrative Sleep Medicine has over 120 researchers from all over the globe band together in an attempt to unearth the very nature of sleep itself, rather than focusing on symptoms and disorders like typical sleep research. This article by The Atlantic dives deeper into the facility, as well as describes the results of some sleep research to-date.
The First Problem: Why do I have to Sleep at All?
From an evolutionary standpoint, the process of becoming motionless and unaware for a third of the day seems like a recipe for disaster, and yet we all do it. Sometimes we’re forced to forget about getting enough sleep, but even so, we should all be more concerned with getting a high quality of sleep to make up for missed time. There are many conflicting sources stating how much sleep is necessary at each stage of one’s life, but when you’re not getting enough sleep you’re painfully aware, regardless of how old you are. Whether it’s children at home, stress from work, or enjoying time with friends, everyone has environmental and physiological boundaries which dictate their bedtime and sleep habits.
What tends to be most confusing, is that there are some people that tend to function better without sleep. As for those that require at least 8 hours of sleep like myself, we don’t like those people. It is easy to say that we are all physically different but it really comes down to the efficiency of people’s ability to enter REM, and the recuperating benefits they get from having a deep sleep. If you have sleep apnea or chronic snoring, your tongue will block your airway and restrict oxygen from reaching your brain and, in turn, stop you from going into rapid eye movement (REM). At this point 8 hours will feel like a 4-hour sleep, which makes you question why you bother trying to sleep at all. If you think you may have sleep apnea it is 100% worth it to go to the doctor for a sleep study.
Another Very Apparent Problem: If I have to sleep why is it so hard?
To make bedtime more comfortable and enticing despite these restrictions and limitations, we attempt to appease our bodies with fancy bedding, calming music, special lighting, and many other things we think might create the perfect environment for slumber. But what happens when it’s your body that’s making it difficult to sleep? When your body, which so desperately needs the rest, is rebelling against something so fundamental to its own survival? In North America, the innocuous answer is to see a doctor; however, there are many people for whom this is not possible. Even if you can see a doctor for the problem, there’s a fairly high chance they will say that your discomfort is a normal part of the aging process, or is a typical abnormality that you just have to live with.
Though it’s comforting to know nothing serious is wrong with you — if you’re fortunate enough to be able to see a doctor for poor sleep — it certainly won’t help you sleep better at night. It won’t help you feel more rested when you wake up in the morning, and it won’t help you feel awake enough to enjoy your life. It can be hard to manage chronic conditions when there is little that can be done to make you feel more comfortable. The International Institute for Integrative Sleep Medicine may soon be able to offer some respite for those with chronic sleep conditions as they begin to understand more about the act itself. Until then, many people are subjected to purchasing random gizmos and gadgets that do not have the necessary science behind them to actually help you sleep, leading your partner to waste money on one of these ‘Christmas gifts’ to help you sleep better so they can too.
Finally an action item for your sleep doctor: If I am sleeping, why does it feel like I’m still tired?
If you are sleeping the 7 to 10 hours a night recommended by the National Sleep Foundation, then you should probably either reevaluate your life to see why you’re so busy, or talk to your doctor. For those that want to be prepared for when the doctor asks you what is wrong, keep reading. The different stages of sleep impact how you feel when you wake up. These stages are: awake, light sleep, rapid eye movement (REM), and deep sleep, but the most important thing you should care about is REM and non-REM. REM is when you body is resting and repairing from your long hard day of work. Now here is the bad news and one question we can answer about sleep. If you have acute illnesses or conditions that prevent you from going to into REM sleep, you will wake up feeling tired. Now this may seem unfair because snoring, sleep apnea, restless leg syndrome, etc. are all linked to preventing people from going into REM; but the key takeaway is that science is invested in a solution. Even though that does not help you sleep tonight, it is promising knowing that there are people hunting for solutions to your problem.
Until a universal method for improving general sleep is found, the recommended solution is to be your own champion. Engage with the scientific community, try different products, and keep trying to sleep when you can. Even if that means buying that overpriced body pillow, if it helps you feel better when you wake up in the morning, that is what everyone in your life wants for you.
