..... For a change, I’m probably telling you more than you need to know about me, (“You’re certainly telling them more than they want to know about you, which is absolutely nothing”, my darling wife said when she read this over my shoulder, but hey, she doesn’t know you like I do, so I’m just ignoring her as usual), but over the last few years, I’ve developed a very frustrating problem with an inability to fall asleep on certain nights, and even if I do manage to drift off on those particular nights, I nearly always jolt myself awake 2 or 3 or 4 hours later and I can’t get back to sleep again for at least an hour, often, two.
..... And perhaps the most frustrating thing is that I know exactly when this is most likely to happen. You see, it nearly always occurs on the nights before I have to get up to do my radio day job (and despite what my wife tells everyone, I do have a real day job; it’s just that my job involves nothing more than talking, but hey, I work extremely hard at it). On the other hand, on the days when I don’t have to be bright and chipper and energetic and all-knowing just after opening my eyelids, say, for example, on one of the 3 days off a year that my radio contract allows (I’ve been in the radio business for 18 |
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years so I get more time off than most radio hosts), then I nearly always sleep like a baby the night before.
..... Why do I mention this sleep problem to you? Because 1) I want sympathy.
 ,and my wife, Nurse Phyllis, is not about to give me any, but more important, 2) having trouble getting a good night’s sleep is a very common problem among people my age, namely midlifers between 18 and 80, and especially among the WWW – the world’s worst whiners - aging baby boomers.
..... In fact, aside from comparing stories about properties we should have bought, sky-high taxes we’re paying on properties we did buy, awards our kids have won, how our kids have unexpectedly moved back home with their significant others and not
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insignificant pets in tow, and golf triumphs (I never participate in the latter, by the way, because I’m the only Jewish doctor in the universe who doesn’t golf), I can’t think of another topic that gets as much attention at boomer parties as stories about sleep problems, especially from female boomers, so many of whom are either nearing or have completed menopause, which is notoriously linked to changes in sleep patterns. No wonder, then, that the American Academy of Sleep Medicine has concluded that at least 30 % of the population has a problem with “insomnia”, although no one really knows the true figures. In fact, One recent study claims that insomnia is much more common that we generally think, especially in the aging, so that over 50 % of people over the age of 60 have “sleep difficulties”, which the AASM defines as someone having trouble either falling asleep, staying asleep, waking up too early, or feeling un-refreshed after sleeping, and which can lead to consequences such as fatigue (no kidding!), moodiness (ditto!), anxiety about further sleep, as well as poorer mental and physical health.
..... So what should you do if you’re one of the many with a sleep problem?
..... It starts with ensuring that you’re.
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