It can be a tradeoff- one or the other. Do I have a glass of wine with dinner, a beer to relax after work, a drink at bedtime to speed up sleep onset? All very normal activities- and for some people there is no problem at all. But for a significant number of us, including myself, even one or two drinks causes restless sleep, awakenings during the second half of the night, … [Read more...]
Benzos, Sleep, Memory, Dementia
It's been two years since BMJ (formerly The British Medical Journal) published "Benzodiazepine use and risk of Alzheimer's disease: case-control study" (BMJ 2014; 349:g5205). The main conclusion was that using benzodiazepines ("ben-zoe-dye-AIZE-uh-peenz" or BZDs or benzos, which include Klonopin/clonazepam, Xanax/alprazolam, Valium/diazepam, Ativan/lorazepam, … [Read more...]
Dreams and the Big Bang
A thought experiment: sleeping states are rest states, default states in which the great ocean of brain machinery is repairing itself, humming and chugging along. Don't ask why do we sleep. Ask why and how we awaken; and then in this being-not-asleep, what function does conscious awareness serve? Consider the dream state and stages of sleep as analogous to the microwave … [Read more...]
You Can’t Get Away With It: Sleeplessness Hurts
"I don't need much sleep." "I pulled an all-nighter." "I can always catch up." We have the illusion that we control what happens in our brains, that we can forgo a sleeping state in favor of a waking one without penalty. No, not true. There is a price to pay- you may decide it is worth the price, but the billions of brain cells and their trillions of connections will have … [Read more...]
Sleep and Dementia: A Version of Pascal’s Wager
My guess is that poor sleep, over months and years, increases your risk of dementia, most commonly AD (Alzheimer's Disease). I think of a night of poor sleep as a blow to the head, and its effects are cumulative over a lifetime. Remember how boxers and football players accumulate tiny injuries and micro tears of brain tissue: dementia pugilistica and traumatic … [Read more...]