How to get Goodnight Sleep

Some nights, sleep comes easily, and you cruise through the night with minimal interruption. Waking up after a night of good sleep is wonderful—you feel refreshed, energized, and ready to take on the world. Other nights, sleep comes slowly or not until the early morning hours. Or you may fall asleep, only to awaken throughout the night.

As you probably know from experience, sleepless nights often trigger a series of unwanted events. Merely getting out of bed when the alarm goes off can seem like a Herculean task. You may snap at your spouse over cereal for something trivial. At work, you may lack motivation to do normally enjoyable tasks. Perhaps you doze off while watching the evening news—just before the segment you most wanted to see. A few hours later, it’s time to go to bed again, and you’re faced with the uncertainty of whether you’re in for another night of tossing and turning. How can something so right go so wrong?

In this book, I’ll help you find the answer. You’ll understand what happens during sleep, what can go wrong, and how you can help yourself get a truly good night’s sleep.

Too often we forget that sleep is a basic physiological drive, like hunger or thirst, and necessary for life and proper functioning. Those who don’t pay attention to ensuring they get adequate, restful sleep can suffer ill health and enjoy life less. I’ve treated people with sleep problems for more than fifteen years, and I’ve found that the overwhelming majority of individuals can get better sleep—if they’re willing to make sleep a priority, identify the source of their sleep problem (possibly with a physician’s assistance), and then follow through on the recommended treatment.

There is much to look forward to, but before we dive in, I’d like to start by raising a few key points about sleep.

You Are Not Alone

If you don’t sleep as well as you’d like to, you have plenty of company. A 2005 survey by the National Sleep Foundation (NSF) found that, during the preceding year, 75 percent of adults had at least one symptom of a sleep problem, such as waking a lot during the night or snoring, and 54 percent experienced at least one symptom of insomnia. Here are some additional statistics:

• An estimated 30 to 40 percent of the U.S. population suffers occasionally from insomnia, with 10 to 15 percent having a chronic problem.

• Forty percent of adults snore; 2 to 4 percent suffer from obstructive sleep apnea (pauses in breathing during sleep); and about 5 to 10 percent have restless legs syndrome (RLS), causing them to experience painful or unpleasant tingling in their legs at night.

• The partner of someone with a sleep disorder often experiences sleep that is just as disrupted as that of the person with the disorder. For instance, researchers at the Mayo Clinic found that treating one person’s sleep apnea and snoring allowed his or her spouse to get, on average, an hour more of sleep each night during the same amount of time in bed.

• Americans average 6.9 hours of sleep a night—less than the 7.5 to 8 hours sleep experts believe most people need to function at their best.

• Each year, Americans spend an estimated image2 billion on sleep medications and make almost two million overnight visits to sleep laboratories.

The number of Americans diagnosed and treated for sleep problems has risen in recent years and is expected to continue to grow in the future. Some of this is due to increased awareness—more patients are going to their doctors with sleep complaints and more doctors now recognize the signs of sleep disorders. But other factors—the increasingly hectic pace of modern life, the rising prevalence of obesity, and the aging of the population—may also be contributing to a genuine increase in the percentage of people with sleep problems.