Wide Awake at 3 am — Again!

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about sleep. Thoughts of slumber usually twirl through my brain around 2 or 3 a.m., when I am most definitely not asleep and instead I’m staring at the ceiling wondering why I’m wide awake.

I never used to think about sleep. I would just do it. No matter when I went to bed — 10 p.m., midnight, 2 a.m. — I would zonk out for eight hours and wake up refreshed. Yeah, good times.

So, I was intrigued when I recently read an article about sleep problems, which had this headline: “If you follow these 5 sleeping habits, you’re 30% less likely to die from any cause.”

Here are the five sleeping habits that will help you live longer:

1. Sleep for an average of seven or eight hours each night
2. Fall asleep without difficulty at least five nights per week
3. Sleep through the night at least five times per week
4. Do not use any sleep medication
5. Feel well rested upon waking up at least five times per week

Hmm, at best I only meet numbers 2 and 4. I never have any difficulty falling asleep. My major problem with going to bed is the fact I cannot get any reading done. Sometimes the Post-it note I use for a bookmark only gets moved to a different paragraph on the same page. I can’t even get one page turned before my eyes slam shut. But don’t worry, four hours later my eyes will be wide open and staring at the ceiling. 

Regarding item number 4, I don’t use any sleep medication and I don’t really want to start. Just do a Google search for the phrase “Lunesta side effects.” Of course I want to sleep through the night, but I don’t want to be groggy the whole next day. (I can do that without any help!) And I certainly don’t want a metallic taste in my mouth, headaches, dizziness, a runny nose, and the possibility of becoming addicted. 

Now, just for fun, do the same Google search, but for Ambien. My senior citizen Bingo card definitely does not list these items: “memory problems,” “sleep driving,” and “hallucinations.” And whatever you do, don’t even look up the definition of “sexsomnia.”

The article I originally referenced explained that a man’s life expectancy is 4.7 years greater if he does all of those five sleep habits. But after listing all the details of the study — 172,000 American adults, average age of 50, carefully studied from 2013 to 2018 — the article said NOTHING about how someone can do those five habits. 

The last sentence of the article was: “The researchers hope patients and doctors will start talking about sleep as part of their overall health assessment and disease management planning.” Just talk about it with a doctor? They might as well have said, “You’re on your own, pal.”

Most articles about medical research studies explain the findings of the study, and then give advice on how a person can change his or her behavior to produce a more favorable outcome. But not this one. It explained the findings and then said, in essence, “Have a nice life — and for those of you who don’t do the five sleep habits, a SHORTER nice life.”

The only thing that article did for me (besides giving me a topic for this column) was to provide one more thing I can worry about during my regular 3 a.m. “stare at the ceiling” adventures.

In addition, the article mentioned that sleeping too much is also bad for a person’s health. Well, I’m sure that’s true. But just for a change of pace, I wouldn’t mind finding out first-hand.