Over 172 million americans suffer from insomnia. Do you?
Discover the proven, drug-free program
To help you relax and get the sleep you need!

Don't let insomnia keep you awake at night! Take action now with the Sounder Sleep System™ and start rediscovering the blissful experience of a good night's sleep-naturally. Based on traditional and modern self-healing methods, including yoga, qigong, meditation, and the author's own techniques, this effective program has been used by people around the world to reduce stress, induce relaxation, and ensure sound sleep. Fully illustrated, with easy to follow instructions, The Insomnia Solution features eighteen simple mini-moves™-gentle physical movements synchronized with natural breathing-to help you fall (and stay!) asleep. Learn how to:

• Use three types of mini-moves to relax your body, calm your mind, and lull yourself to sleep

• Identify what type of troubled sleeper you are: tense, nervous, or sleepless

• Create a personalized sleep-assistance program to fit your needs

• Adopt a sleep-supportive lifestyle, from exercise to eating habits.

Rest easier with the insomnia solution.

Enjoy the honey-heavy dew of slumber:
Thou hast no figures nor no fantasies,
Which busy care draws in the brains of men;
Therefore thou sleep'st so sound.

—SHAKESPEARE, Julius Caesar

Do you have trouble sleeping? If so, you are not alone. In a recent poll conducted by the National Sleep Foundation, more than half the respondents had symptoms of insomnia at least a few nights a week. Thirty-five percent said that they experienced symptoms every night or almost every night in the past year. Since September 11, 2001, sales of sleeping pills have soared by 25 percent, and anti-anxiety drugs are up nearly 10 percent according to the chief of integrative medicine at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. And Dr. Carl E. Hunt, director of the National Center on Sleep Disorders Research, estimates that there are as many as seventy million problem sleepers in the United States. By all accounts, the United States is suffering from an epidemic of sleeplessness.

We may chuckle when we see someone nodding in front of the TV, at the movies, or during a political speech. Poor fella needs a vacation! we think, without much compassion. But sleep problems and sleep deprivation are no laughing matter. Sleep-challenged people are irritable, inattentive, and accident prone. They are more likely to suffer depression, heart disease, or stroke than their well-rested peers. A 1999 study reported in the journal Sleep notes that insomniacs suffer impaired concentration, impaired memory, a decreased ability to accomplish daily tasks, a decreased ability to enjoy interpersonal relationships, and an increased use of health care services. The Archives of Internal Medicine notes that insomnia sufferers are more likely to develop affective disorders, heart disease, and other adverse health outcomes. Another study puts it more bluntly: "Insomnia is predictive of cardiovascular and non-cardiovascular disease."

A study of the hormonal consequences of sleep deprivation was conducted by University of Chicago's Eve Van Cauter and associates at a Belgian university. They found that restricting sleep to four hours per night brings disturbance in the activity and timing of several important hormones including cortisol, melatonin, leptin, thyroid hormones, and prolactin. The study states, "Since these alterations are qualitatively and quantitatively similar to those observed during aging and sometimes during depression, a state of sleep debt, as is experienced by a substantial fragment of the population in modern societies, is likely to increase the severity of depression and widespread age-related chronic conditions such as obesity, diabetes, and hypertension."

Numerous studies associate insomnia with reduction in immune function. One, conducted at a German university, investigated measures of immune defense as well as subjective well-being and psychosocial performance in ten healthy males before and after sleep deprivation and again after recovery sleep. Sleep deprivation evoked not only decreased function of the immune system, most clearly visible on the morning following the sleepless night, but also deterioration of both mood and ability to work, which were most prominent the following evening.

The list of health consequences of insomnia goes on. It would take the rest of this book to detail all the negative health effects of sleep loss, though that is not our purpose here. Perhaps a monetary estimate will best suggest the full scope of the problem. According to one estimate, sleeplessness costs $15.9 billion a year in health care costs alone.

Accidents are another serious consequence of the insomnia epidemic. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) attributes over 100,000 automobile crashes per year to drowsy drivers, with 1,500 fatalities, 71,000 injuries, and a monetary cost of $12.5 billion. A British study revealed that drivers who report moderate to severe daytime sleepiness (about 20 percent of all drivers) are twice as likely to have been involved in a crash as other drivers. Yet 37 percent of respondents to an NHTSA poll said they have fallen asleep behind the wheel, 8 percent having done so in the last six months. But accidents don't occur only on the road. Do the names Bhopal, Chernobyl, and Exxon Valdez ring a bell? Sleep-deprived workers were implicated in each of these industrial disasters.

Insomnia plays no favorites either: our doctors, our police, our pilots, and our military personnel, all those charged with protecting our lives, are just as likely as the rest of us, perhaps more so, to suffer insomnia and sleep deprivation. Does it matter? Of course. Sleep deprivation wreaks havoc with our physical, cognitive, and intellectual abilities. One study of motor and sensory performance during and after experimentally induced sleep deprivation found a general reduction in overall response speed, a decrease in the speed of the fastest responses, and an increase in "lapsing"-delays in responding to stimuli-which in turn produced further decreases in response speed.

Mark Rosekind, a consultant for industrial sleep hygiene, says that many pilots, policemen, and doctors admit to making errors in sleep-deprived states of consciousness. According to his findings, cited in Business Week, 19 percent of health care workers report worsening a patient's condition because of fatigue; 44 percent of law enforcement officers report taking unnecessary risks while tired; and 80 percent of U.S. regional pilots say they've fallen asleep in the cockpit. William C. Dement, in his book The Promise of Sleep, describes tests Rosekind conducted on commercial pilots during long-haul flights between the West Coast and Japan. He found that pilots' reaction times during these prolonged flights often dropped 25 percent, and they frequently lapsed into "microsleeps" lasting five to ten seconds or more. These lapses of consciousness occurred not only in mid-flight but, even more alarmingly, during takeoffs and landings. A recent U.S. Army study suggests that combat stress and sleep deprivation may affect soldiers so badly that they perform as if they were drunk or sedated. Ill effects include slower reaction times, reduced vigilance, and problems remembering key details.

The bottom line? Estimates of the total monetary cost of insomnia and other sleep disorders, including medical, property damage, industrial accidents, employee absenteeism, and lost productivity, approach $45 billion per year. This is a huge cost for society to bear. But the human cost is far higher. Sleeplessness threatens our jobs, our relationships, and our health. It is a major public health issue that impacts the quality of life of millions of people.

On the Brighter Side

God bless the inventor of sleep, the cloak that covers all men's thoughts, the food that cures all hunger . . . the balancing weight that levels the shepherd with the king and the simple with the wise.

—MIGUEL DE CERVANTES, Don Quixote

Now you know the dark side of sleep. Fortunately, there is a brighter side, too: Sleep, when we get the right quantity and quality of it, is nature's best medicine-a universal tonic that boosts our energy and vitality, elevates our mood, quells anxiety, and enhances our ability to learn and remember. When we are well rested, we're more at peace with the world around us and with our fellow human beings. We're more patient and compassionate. Recent research even indicates that sleep makes us smarter and more creative! But here no scientific data is really required, because anyone who has ever endured a string of sleepless nights and dragged through the days that follow them knows what a relief it is to awaken from that first, full night of blissful, restorative slumber. Suddenly the world seems to be a brighter, kinder, gentler place. We feel happier, stronger, and smarter. We feel more balanced and relaxed, more alert and alive.

Scientific research does confirm these subjective feelings about sleep. After centuries during which sleep was believed to be merely a quiescent state of brain and body, contemporary science is beginning to identify numerous, positive benefits conveyed by natural, restful sleep. In the brain, lower metabolic rates and brain temperatures during quiet sleep provide an opportunity for brain cells to recover from oxidative damage done by free radicals during waking hours. Most regions of the brain cannot regenerate cells as other organs do, so this sleep-dependent repair work is essential for keeping the brain in good working order. The active, or rapid eye movement (REM), phase of sleep, when we do most of our dreaming, brings a temporary cessation of release of the essential neurotransmitters norepinephrine, serotonin, and histamine. This brief respite, which comprises about 20 percent of total sleep time, allows the receptors for these neurotransmitters to rest, restoring them to their appropriate levels of sensitivity. The restored sensitivity is thought to play an important role in regulating mood during waking hours.

As we have seen, sleep deprivation depresses the functioning of the immune system, but the converse is also true. A good night's sleep has a wonderful restorative effect on our body's defense system. In one experiment, a group of nineteen healthy people were given a hepatitis vaccination followed by either a full night of sleep or a night of sleep deprivation. Four weeks later, the sleep group exhibited nearly twofold higher hepatitis A virus (HAV) antibody titer, indicating a considerably more robust immune response.

Sleep is unquestionably the most effective stress-reduction technique we will ever know. The demands of daily life can overcharge the sympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system, triggering the so-called fight-or-flight mechanism that launches mind and body into overdrive in response to stress and keeping it there for prolonged periods. Sleep, particularly deep sleep, effectively rebalances the system, giving the parasympathetic branch, which governs our ability to "rest and digest," a chance to assert itself. In this way sleep moderates the effects of stress and switches the body into self-healing mode.

Watching your weight? Deep, restful sleep is something you can't do without, according to Van Cauter. Human growth hormone (HGH), which drives the growth of living tissue during childhood, takes on the job of regulating weight, among other functions, in adulthood. And HGH is secreted only during deep sleep. Without sleep, even the most ardent weight watcher will experience plenty of frustration but not much weight loss.

Can sleep really make you smarter or more skillful? It seems so. A large number of studies offer extensive evidence supporting this role of sleep in what is becoming known as sleep-dependent memory processing. These studies indicate that what we learn during waking hours requires distinct periods of consolidation before it is finally retained in our memories and reflected in our abilities. The simple passage of time does part of the job, but sleep has the unique capacity to enhance the process.

In one Harvard study, subjects trained in a finger-tapping task at either ten in the morning or ten in the evening were tested immediately following training and again twelve hours later without further training. The morning group, who had remained awake for the twelve hours following training, displayed modest gains in speed and accuracy of performance. But the evening group, who received a full night of sleep before the retest, scored startling performance gains averaging 20 percent for speed and 39 percent for accuracy as compared with the no-sleep group. Additional gains were seen over the following two nights. Similar results have been obtained in auditory and language learning tasks, visual texture discrimination tasks, and others.

Another study, conducted at the University of Lübeck in Germany and published in Nature, suggests that sleep brings insight, helping us to find creative solutions to difficult problems. In the study, 106 volunteers aged eighteen to thirty-two were asked to solve a "number reduction task" in which they could gradually improve their score by increasing their response speed with each round. However, they could also improve abruptly by gaining insight into a secret abstract rule underlying all the sequences. After initial exposure to the task, a third of the participants slept eight hours, another third were kept awake, while a third group was retested after eight hours of waking activities. Upon subsequent retesting, participants in the sleep group were twice as likely to discover the hidden rule as members of the other two groups. This research has great significance for both children's school performance as well as workplace productivity and creativity.

Want to excel in school or industry? Be sure to get plenty of sleep. Want a strong immune system? Sleep. Want vibrant good health, happiness, and a trim figure? Sleep, sleep, sleep.

Chronic insomnia and sleep disorders are medical problems, and therefore beyond the scope of this book. If you experience sleeplessness or other sleep-related symptoms for a week or more, ask your doctor or other medical provider to work with you to discover and alleviate the causes of your problem. Of course, once you've addressed all of the medical issues, you are welcome to return to these pages for help in restoring your natural, human ability to fall asleep and sleep through the night. What is presented here is applicable to anyone who wishes to learn how to encourage and amplify those natural, God-given processes that enable us to obtain the rest we need.

However, many people experience transitory insomnia with no apparent medical cause. They exhibit no diagnosable medical condition, other than an inability to sleep for one or several nights. The condition may come and go, it may disappear for a time, it may recur. That doesn't make it any less troubling! If that sort of transitory insomnia is what ails you, this book is for you! Dive right in, and you will learn what you need to know to fall asleep effortlessly at bedtime and to return to sleep quickly should you awaken during the night or early morning.

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Copyright © 2005 by Michael Krugman

Tags: Sleep

About the Author

Michael Krugman, MA, GCFP, is the founder of the Sounder Sleep System. An expert teacher and lecturer on sleep, self-healing meditation, and corporate wellness, he has given seminars to major U.S. and European companies such as Saatchi & Saatchi, HBO, and Equitable Insurance. More