Confessions of a Professional Insomniac

After decades of accumulating 'sleep debt,' is it possible to relearn rest and relaxation?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
At sixty six, I decided to overcome a lifetime of
insomnia by Howard Chua yun read by Mara Finnerty. I
have this nightmare about repaying debt. It's got nothing to
do with money and everything to do with slumber. Sleep
debt is what the experts say you accumulate every time

(00:21):
you come in under the seven to nine hours a
night required to stay healthy and sane. Teens tend to
be the worst at budgeting sleep because their lives are
boxed in by early bus rides to school, extracurricular activities, homework,
and of course, the misadventures ignited by puberty, including multiple
hours spent on social media and video games. They also

(00:45):
need more sleep than other age groups, as many as
ten hours compared to just seven for people in their
sixties like me. Researchers say you can repay the debt
by sleeping longer over the next day or so. But
even if the kids don't do it right away, they
have the rest of their lives to make up for it,

(01:05):
or do they. I'm afraid to count up what I owe.
One US hospital group estimates it may take four days
to recover from just one hour of sleep. Debt. I
confess I cultivated insomnia to advance my career in journalism.
Alacrity is a virtue in the pursuit of advancement, but

(01:25):
a curse in the quest for rest, and my reward
is now night after night of erratic sleep. In the beginning,
it was writing past midnight to make early morning deadlines
for my editors at time. I eventually became an editor
myself and spent all night rewriting for reporters who couldn't
make their copy sing. I was then asked to run

(01:48):
the magazine's Corps of Correspondence, a global network on which
the sun never set. By the time I left the magazine,
I had directed coverage of presidential elections, revolutions and rebellions
in Asia and Africa, the aftermath of September eleventh, wars
in the Middle East, horrific school shootings, and three papacies,

(02:10):
plus the wayward ways of the Windsors and other celebrities.
I spent more than a dozen years waking through the
night to check my messages, not just for breaking news
and imminent deadlines, but with worry for reporters crossing into
war zones safely or getting out and back home. I
thought I was retiring from this professional restlessness, but it

(02:33):
proved hard to break. I complained to friends. I sleep
like a baby. I wake every hour, hungry, fussy, or
wanting attention. Barely a year after leaving Time, I joined Bloomberg,
where my indifference to time zones seemed an advantage. At
one point I was leading daily zoom conferences for my
New York apartment at eight p m with colleagues and

(02:56):
outposts in Hong Kong, Tokyo, Singapore, and s Sydney, and
at three thirty a m. With coworkers in London, Berlin,
and Paris. That was after spending most of the daylight
hours in the office on the other side of Manhattan.
Despite being in my sixties, I thought I can still
do this, but sleep was a losing proposition. In the

(03:19):
last year or so, my schedule has become calmer, mainly
because I'd become too exhausted to deal with breaking news
and moved into a new role. But I still reach
for my phone in the dark, and I often need
an hour to fall asleep after getting into bed. My
rest is fragmented with wakefulness, not like a fussy infant,

(03:39):
but with a choppy enervation typical of the aged. As
I grow older, my fears deepen. Have I compromised my
health and perhaps my sanity? Studies link insomnia to dementia,
cardiovascular disease, hypertension, and a greater risk of mortality. In bed,
I stir with the first hint of daylight, which is

(04:01):
not good when you called it a day after midnight.
There are many nights I spend eight hours in bed,
but sleep for only five or six. I toss and
turn eyes wide open from remembrance of news past or
stirred by the bells of Saint Paul's here in London,
which could be romantic if they didn't strike every hour.

(04:23):
They are especially annoying at three a m. It's at
such aching moments that I recall Servantes, his proverbially lazy
but practical Sancho Panza ends a debate with the rest
ofly ambitious, if unhinged Don Quixote with this beautiful peroration.
Blessed be the person who invented sleep. The cloak that

(04:46):
covers all human thoughts, the food that removes all hunger,
water that drives away thirst, fire that warms you when
your cold, Coolness that tempers heat, and finally, is the
general currency with which all things as are purchased, the
scale that makes the shepherd equal to the king and
the fool to the wise men. It seems an impossible dream.

(05:09):
Can I learn to sleep again? Will I truly rest
only when I'm dead? The science of sleep. Single celled
organisms do not sleep. Neither do plants, even though for
humans they provide the beautiful analogy of the seed waking
to flourish under the warmth of the sun. Otherwise, almost

(05:31):
all animals do, including mosquitoes. Sharks may have to keep
swimming or sink, but they too have ways of resting.
The apex predator of the oceans, the orca, sleeps half
a brain hemisphere at a time as it floats slowly
near the surface, one eye always open to watch for trouble.

(05:52):
Why sleep evolved is a mystery. You think that such
supine vulnerability would have worked against survival. Moosset theories posit
it developed as an opportunity for muscle and tissue recovery
as well as for the maintenance of nervous systems for humans.
It's not a straightforward process. What we know about sleep,

(06:13):
and more practically, what we can do about the lack
of it remains limited. The word insomnia itself is imprecise.
There are many different varieties of sleeplessness, ranging from the
ragged habits wrought by all niters in shift work to
clinical disorders brought on by anxiety and depression. The science

(06:33):
is relatively young, with most breakthroughs coming just over the
past seventy five years. For example, the now widely recognized
term circadian rhythm, the way our internal biological clocks attune temperature,
heart rate, and the release of hormones to the twenty
four hour rotation of the planet, was coined only in

(06:54):
nineteen fifty nine. That was the end of the decade
that gave us a more elaborated definition of sleep. In
the nineteen fifties, scientists began using electro encephalograms egs and
electro oculograms EOGs to record the brain waves and eye
muscle movements of sleeping experimental subjects. That helped establish the

(07:18):
existence of four stages of sleep light, deeper, deepest, and
rem rapid eye movement the best known stage because it's
when most dreams occur. The four mostly play out in
that order, a cycle that repeats through the night unless
the sleeper is bedeviled by episodes of wakefulness. Scientists have

(07:39):
also identified two crucial naturally occurring substances in the body
that make us sleep. The better known of the pair
is melatonin, discovered in nineteen fifty eight, a hormone that
promotes drowsiness and is produced in the pinioglan as darkness falls.
The other is a denazine, which also leads to sleepiness.

(08:00):
It is the waste product of energy generation in our
brain cells. First identified in the nineteen twenties, Its role
in suppressing wakefulness only became clear in nineteen ninety five,
and research continues into how it works. Some scientists surmise
that to propel the sleeper toward waking, spinal fluids flush

(08:21):
a denizene out of the brain or converted back into
potential energy. This is said to happen during the deepest
stage of sleep, when ee G grafts pump out slow
and stout waves, as opposed to the spiky, crowded peaks
of rem and full consciousness. Timing is everything. Our circadian rhythms,

(08:41):
cued by how much or how little light we are
exposed to, are sincd to a part of the brain
that regulates the dispersal of hormones key to managing sleep.
For example, melatonin is triggered by darkness and remains in
the body for only four or five hours. This dispersal
process could be upset if we force ourselves to stay

(09:04):
up late and then get up early. The abbreviated cycles
of sleep might then disrupt the maintenance work the brain
has to carry out, including clearing out a denizine. Sinking
our internal clocks is further complicated by culture, technology, and economics.
In the past two hundred years, industry and commerce have

(09:26):
mostly dictated one continuous, monolithic block of the night for rest,
but it wasn't always that way. Until the late eighteenth century.
Most Europeans practice what's called bi phasic two phased sleep,
retiring at about nine p m for the first sleep,
then getting up for a couple of hours in the

(09:47):
middle of the night to do chores or have conversation,
or pray or have sex, before returning to bed for
the second sleep, which ended when the sun rose. In
Servantes don Quixote, it was a mark of sloth that
my hero Sancho Panza, unlike his feberal master, dozed without
interruption through the first and second sleeps by phasic slumber.

(10:11):
According to the historian Roger Ekirch, might have been the
norm since ancient times. In addition, the siesta could have
been a rational response to the afternoon drowsiness that our
circadian rhythms impose on us. That late day nap was
traditional in parts of Europe beyond Spain, that all changed

(10:32):
with a regimentation of labor by the Industrial Revolution and
the advent of gas and electric lighting, which allowed humans
to stay up later and later because night was almost
as bright as day. Thus were we literally gas lit
into monophasic sleep. My DIY approach to falling asleep, I

(10:53):
find solace in the fact that waking in the middle
of the night has been acceptable in the past. It
seems to dovetail with a suggestion by some researchers that
the first hour or so of sleep includes the night's
largest percentage of the deepest phase, the segment that cleans
up the adenizine that promotes sleepiness. If so, waking up

(11:14):
ninety minutes after falling asleep is physiology, though still annoying.
Modern research provides me with other comforting notions. For example,
don't be too stuck on numbers like eight hours of sleep.
A twenty sixteen study of hunter gatherers indicated that they
slept an average of five point seven to six point

(11:35):
five hours in the warmer months, a little more when
the temperatures dropped. While child mortality is high in those communities,
adults live into the seventies without the complications we associate
with sleep deprivation, weight gain, heart problems, diabetes. The hours
recommended to us are based on broad statistical studies. They

(11:57):
offer a way to gauge how people in industry societies
are doing in terms of rest, but we shouldn't worry
ourselves sleepless accounting for deficits. That brings us to the
amusing distinction between psychophysiological insomnia and pseudo insomnia. The first
has clinical anxiety at its core. The second is sleeplessness

(12:19):
caused by worrying about insomnia. So if I was concerned
I had pseudo insomnia, would I then lose more sleep
worrying that I'm worrying too much about losing sleep? E g.
Readings have shown that some people who complain about not
being able to fall asleep actually were asleep at the

(12:40):
time they believed they were awake. How much of a
mind game is sleeplessness? Then? Was I actually in light sleep?
As I felt my way toward unconsciousness? My Apple Watch,
which helpfully categorizes sleep into various stages, has sometimes placed
me in rem when I could have sworn I was
fully conscious and just waiting for the alarm clock to

(13:03):
go off. If that can count as sleep, maybe my
debt isn't as high as I feared. The next question
was what could I do to trick myself into a
more satisfying rest. Many of you likely have your own workarounds.
This is mine. I won't say it's scientific, and it
doesn't work when I'm too mentally agitated, but it's been

(13:25):
effective often enough over the last few months, especially on
nights when dreams wake me and I fear I can't
fall asleep again. The gist is I pretend I'm asleep,
and after a while I actually am. It's like method acting.
You must aspire to complete identification with your sleeping self

(13:46):
and go through the motions or lack of motion to
achieve it. I start off by distracting myself from my thoughts.
I drum my fingers against the mattress in time with
a double tap of a heartbeat. Counting silently, I do
thirty at a steady rate, then thirty more, slow down,
interspersing breaths to extend the count even more, and inhale

(14:10):
and an exhale for each double tap. I tell myself
I'm matching the respiration rate of sleep. I then slow
the tapping down a little more, along with the cadence
of my breaths. If I haven't yet fallen asleep, I
keep breathing to the same rhythm and begin to consciously
unclench all my muscles, the limbs and fingers and toes,

(14:33):
of course, but just as importantly those in my head,
my nape, scalp, forehead, cheeks, lower, and upper jaw, gums, tongue,
until my body is so relaxed I can't bring myself
to move. That should approximate the antonia temporary muscle paralysis
that comes with the deepest level of sleep and with

(14:56):
rem If I still feel awake at that point, I
fix my attention on my closed eyes to detect the
dim glitter of phosphenes, those effocations of light when there
is no source of illumination, probably caused by the rubbing
of eyelids against the sclera or white of the eyeballs.
I allow my mind to associate shapes in these random sparkles.

(15:19):
At first nebulous flashes become passing polygons, but then like
a Rorschack test, the forms become more recognizable as birds.
A horizon may be even faces and situations from the
depths of memory. It's what I believe Marcel Pruss described
as the kaleidoscope of darkness in the hypnotic dreamscape that

(15:42):
opens alricherchd Tom Perdieu in Search of Lost Time. It's
the closest I will come to lucid dreaming if I
am not yet fully asleep. At this point, I could
well be dreaming I'm awake. This exercise more or less
takes me through the four stages of sleep, from the

(16:02):
lightest to rem When it works, it lasts roughly fifteen
to twenty minutes, equivalent to the latency period experts say
is ideal for falling fast asleep after putting yourself to bed.
This method may be part pretense, and impatience can spoil it,
but I've got to start somewhere to catch up with rest.

(16:24):
Rest is the key word the opportunity for your body
to repair and recuperate from all its physical and mental exertions.
My past may have done damage to my health, but
I can prevent more by consciously pursuing better quality sleep.
For years, I always got out of bed wanting to
turn back in. I can now tell when I've had

(16:47):
a good night's sleep. Apart from the tapping and dreaming,
I also need to draw the blinds so the sun
doesn't wake me, and I need to go to bed
earlier so the beginning of the work day doesn't cut
into my sleep. Even more, Still, it's progress. Why not
take melatonin pills? The hormone does play a natural role

(17:08):
in human circadian rhythms, but I'm always suspicious of artificial
delivery of a physiological process. Plus, the pills have never
worked for me, mostly leaving me agitated. I'm not sure why.
Perhaps the melatonin was somehow trying to reset my warped
relationship with sunlight when I wasn't ready to remake my

(17:30):
schedule and all I really wanted was to fall asleep.
It may not be the best option for chronic insomniacs.
The possible dream I remain envious of friends who can
command themselves into immediate sleep. With more practice, I hope
to ease and to rest as I grow older. Age

(17:50):
has other consequences. It takes longer to fall asleep. Fragmented sleep,
where wakefulness interrupts all sleep stages, including dreaming, is also
more prevalent among people over sixty. That's already evident from
the morning after graphics on my Apple Watch sleep monitor.
As a child, I did not dream, or if I did,

(18:13):
I couldn't remember them. So I've grown fond of my
dreams interrupted or not sleep. Scientists say infants under a
year old spend half their sleep in rem presumably dreaming.
That's probably because their brains have to do a lot
of work assimilating the rules of the new world they
are braving, and dreams are the way to do it.

(18:36):
By the time they are a year old, that figure
will have dropped to twenty five percent. With more time,
the statistic will fall further to twenty percent, and then
as low as seventeen percent when we get to our sixties.
I find it disheartening that, in the surge of scientific
research over the last seventy five years, the content of

(18:57):
our dreams is mostly categorized as epiphenomena. Science, of course,
must focus on what can be measured. It's much harder
to design experiments to gauge what lies beneath consciousness. What
we may lose, however, is what fascinates us about our reveries,
the dreams themselves. The heart of Sancho Panzas and Comium

(19:20):
on sleep was its promise of dissolving the cares of
the waking world. All thirst and hunger sated, all inequalities resolved,
all sins not just forgiven but forgotten. But dreams may
be proof that not all of sleep is forgetting. Indeed,
just as babies dream themselves into the reality of their

(19:41):
parents world, so must we continue to assimilate the universe
as it happens to us, as day becomes night. I'm
not asking for a renaissance of Freudian analysis, but the
fantastic juxtapositions and chimerical imagery of our dreams are clues
to what each of the um. In Western history, memory

(20:03):
palaces were immense mnemonic devices, mental feats of architecture, where
specific rooms in infinite halls were used to catalog all
sorts of detail for future recall. If you needed to
revive a memory, you just walk down the hall to
the right room, and there it was, in your own
encyclopedic labyrinth. The ancient Romans use the technique, the Jesuits

(20:27):
introduced it to Ming Dynasty China. Our brains biological memory palaces,
continuously assemble all that we've experienced in a day, melding
those elements messily yet artfully with what's already stored in
our network of neurons. The great sleep scientist Rosalind Cartwright

(20:48):
wrote that during the eight or so hours we are
in bed, the brain begins selecting from the waking hours
those new experiences to be kept active so that they
may be filed into All of this happens with dreaming,
she says, and contributes to our waking brain's ability to
remain flexible, how we are able to retain new learning

(21:10):
and safely negotiate the bumps of unanticipated misfortunes. Dreams could
well be the road maps to the rest of our
waking lives. But enough hypothesizing, I have a debt to
clear up to sleep, perchance to dream