Sleep Timing and Time Tangles

Thoughts about TIME,
Attention Management and Focus

by Madelyn Griffith-Haynie, CTP, CMC, A.C.T, MCC, SCAC

TANGLES . . .

Piecing together all of the elements impacting our ability to live a life on purpose is a complex puzzle that is often little more than a mass of tangles.

Something as seemingly simple as SLEEP, for example, seems especially tangled when we are looking at the impact of chronorhythms (brain/body-timing, relative to earth timing cues).

Understanding is further complicated when we lack familiarity with certain words – especially scientific terminology.

We have to call objects and concepts something, of course — and each piece of the what-we-call-things puzzle has a mitigating effect on every other.

Unfortunately, new vocabulary often delays the aha! response, perhaps obfuscating recognition of relationships entirely – in other words, those times when we can’t see the forest for the leaves, never mind the trees!

The need to become familiar with the new lingo is also what I call one of those tiered tasks. It pushes short-term memory to its limit until the new terms become familiar. That, in turn, creates complexities from a myriad of “in-order-to” objectives inherent in the interrelationships of what is, after all, a distributed process.

See also: The Importance of Closing Open Loops:
Open Loops, Distractions and Attentional Dysregulation

Connections

There is something slippery in this sleep-timing interweaving I can’t quite put my finger on; something that no one else is looking at – at least no one published anyplace I have been able to find!!

Found HERE

Melatonin + corticosteroid release + light cues + core body temperature + gene expression + protein synthesis (and more!) combine to produce individual chronorhythms.

Individual chronorhythms influence not only sleep timing, but ALSO one’s internal “sense of time” — each of which further influences the effectiveness of other domains.

They do not operate in isolation — even though we usually focus on them in isolation, hoping to fully understand their individual contributions.

Here’s the kicker: prior associations

Whether we like it or not, the underlying, less conscious interpretations we associate with whatever words we use “ride along” with the denotative (dictionary) meaning of every single word.

In addition, the moment the terms become integrated into our understanding of the topic, they boundary the conversation — in other words, tethering it to old territory rather than opening new vistas. (See the linguistic portion of What’s in a Name?  for a bit about how and why).

Where we begin biases our understanding of new concepts we move on to study, which skews the inter-relationship.  Not only that, the relationship between the extent of our understanding of each piece unbalances our understanding of the whole.  Or so it seems to me.

Ask Any Mechanic

Setting automobile spark-plug firing efficiently affects engine performance which, in turn, affects a number of other things — gas mileage and tire wear among them.

I doubt that anyone has ever studied it “scientifically,” but every good mechanic has observed the effect in a number of arenas.  What we can “prove” is that the engine runs raggedly before spark-plug gapping and smoothly afterwards.

I doubt the entire inter-relationship has been quantified to metrics, so The Skeptics may still scoff at our definition of proof, even while the car-obsessed among them will take their engines to be “buffed.”

It makes me crazy!

To my mind, the overfocus on quantification has become its own problem.  Yes, co-occurance does not prove causation, but I prefer a more observational approach day to day.  At least, I do not discount it.

“Doctor, it hurts when I do this/don’t do that!“ is ignoring deeper problems, no doubt, but at least it avoids a prescription for pain medication that may well create a problem somewhere else.

But back to sleep timing and inner time sense — problematic for most of us here in Alphabet City.

Sleep Awareness and Health

The importance of  Sleep
to health, cognition and longevity

© Madelyn Griffith-Haynie, CTP, CMC, ACT, MCC, SCAC
from the Sleep & Sleep Disorders Series

Sleep and Sleep Disorders

My Pinterest Board: Sleep, Sleep Disorders & EFD

A quick gander at June’s Awareness Calendar tells you that the  first week in June is Sleep Disorders Awareness Week.

I have already written a great deal about sleep and sleep disorders, but I couldn’t let the month pass without adding an Awareness post to that Series.

According NSART, the National Sleep Awareness Roundtable, promoting the awareness of the importance of sleep is an extremely worthwhile endeavor.

About SLEEP

NOT the passive state once believed, sleep is a highly active state essential for both physical health and BRAIN health.

Although we all do it, few of us know very much about it – and fewer still make sure we get enough of it to drive our brains and bodies effectively, limping along with chronic sleep debt.

Many of us would LOVE to get more sleep, but struggle falling asleep, staying asleep, or sleeping in sync with norms that allow us to coordinate with the timing demands of our chronically busy 21st Century lives.

NIH, the National Institutes of Health estimates that sleep-related problems affect 50 to 70 million Americans alone, common in both men and women and people of all ethnic groups.

According to the authors of the website Talk About Sleep:

“At least 40 million Americans suffer from chronic, long-term sleep disorders each year, and an additional 20 million experience occasional sleeping problems.

These disorders and the resulting sleep deprivation interfere with work, driving, and social activities.

They also account for an estimated $16 BILLION in medical costs each year, while the indirect costs due to lost productivity and other factors are probably much greater.”

They go on to say that “the most common sleep disorders include insomnia, sleep apnea, restless legs syndrome, and narcolepsy,” which is an indication of how LITTLE research has been done on the chronorhythm disorders – disorders of sleep timing.

But you don’t have to have a diagnostic sleep disorder of any kind to experience the negative effects of sleep debt. In fact, most of us in industrialized societies are chronically under-slept, which means that most of us have racked up sleep debt to a significant degree

Insufficient Sleep is a BIG Problem

The cumulative effects of sleep loss and sleep disorders represent a significantly under-recognized public health concern.

It is associated with a wide range of long-range health problems – all of which represent long-term targets of public health agencies, including the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS):

• hypertension (abnormally high blood pressure)
• diabetes
• obesity
• depression
• heart attack
• stroke, and
• impulsive, at-risk behaviors

In 2008, an organization called Healthy People 2020 met to begin the process of determining 10-year national objectives for promoting health and preventing disease.

They ultimately targeted four main objectives:

1. Increase the proportion of persons with symptoms of obstructive sleep apnea who seek medical evaluation (only ONE of two types of sleep apnea, btw)
2. Reduce the rate of vehicular crashes per 100 million miles traveled that are due to drowsy driving
3. Increase the proportion of students in grades 9 through 12 who get sufficient sleep
4. Increase the proportion of adults who get sufficient sleep

And it all begins with awareness.

Naps help Memory

 Our Brains are not Designed
to Learn Non-Stop
Sleep is essential for memory & learning

©Madelyn Griffith-Haynie, CTP, CMC, ACT, MCC, SCAC
from the Sleep and Memory Series
All Rights Reserved

National Sleep Awareness Week Post — March 2 – 9

Sleep is more important than you think

Some preschools are still considering the elimination of naptime to fit in more teaching.

According to new studies,
that is probably a lousy idea.

Researchers have already shown that, following a good night’s sleep, facts learned one day are retained better the next, in learners both young and old.

It is looking like midday naps, discovered to be essential for brain development in infants, perform the same memory-enhancing function for toddlers and young children as a good night’s sleep for teen and adult learners.

Naps appear to help memory and learning

A study published in PLOS ONE suggests that a little snooze in the middle of the day may help kids retain information they learned earlier the very same day.

[Laura Kurdziel et al., Sleep spindles in midday naps enhance learning in preschool children]

To repeat what I disclosed in an earlier article, Emotional Mastery to help us move forward:

Sleep has been proven to play a critical role in both physical and mental well being. Sleep deficiency is not only associated with physical disease, but also with a range of emotional disturbances from subtle to dramatic.

A great many important functions take place while our brains sleep — such as the healing and repair of the heart and blood vessels, as well as the brain’s housekeeping chores, when memories are consolidated and debris is swept away with the help of glial cells.

Other related neurodiversity posts:
You Don’t Want to Pay the Interest Charges on Sleep Debt
Sleeping with the Enemy: Mom’s N-24

Sleeping with the Enemy: Mom’s N-24

How N-24 affects the rest of us
With a special take on the topic from Guest Blogger TinkerToy

© Madelyn Griffith-Haynie, CTP, CMC, ACT, MCC, SCAC
from the Comorbidities and Sleep & Sleep Disorders Series

“When you hear hoof-beats,
think horses not Zebras”

Most doctors are repeatedly exposed to that little ditty from their earliest days in Med School, encouraging them to always consider the simplest explanations first.

It’s not bad advice for many of the disorders and diseases they’ll come across in the patients who will walk through their office doors seeking diagnosis and treatment.

It just turns out to be exactly wrong when it comes to recognizing chronorhythm disorders – disorders of sleep TIMING.

2015 N24 Awareness Participation Icon – get one here

November 24th is N24 Awareness Day

As explained in last weeks post, N-24 Awareness Day is almost upon us:

N24 Awareness Day was first organized in 2012 to help raise awareness of chronorhythm disorders – those affecting sleep TIMING – and particularly to increase awareness of one of its lesser known manifestations: Non-24-Hour Sleep-Wake Syndrome.

It is also known as hypernychthemeral syndrome, N24, N-24, or free-running sleep disorder.

It is a severe, chronic and disabling neurological disorder that causes an individual’s “brain clock” to be unable to stay in sync with “nature’s clock,” the 24-hour cycle of light and dark on our planet.

For many years it was believed to be rarer than those of us who live with it know it to be, and to affect only the blind – supposedly the only individuals unable to “rephase to light.” SIGHTED sufferers were excluded from the studies, and are still today.

How can medical science expect to find what they fail to seek?

N24 Awareness Day – or N24 Day – is now observed annually, gathering participants as increasingly more people become aware of sleep timing disorders, recognizing their own sleep-struggles when they read about the symptoms.

Many have been MIS-diagnosed with insomnia, narcolepsy, or “simple” sleep apnea, because MOST doctors, therapists and coaches remain shamefully unaware — unable to recognize clear symptoms of an entire class of sleep disorders: those that are the result of chronorhythm dysregulation.

N-24 Awareness Day is almost upon us

I wonder if I’ll be awake for it?
Don’t laugh – “days” are always a crapshoot

© Madelyn Griffith-Haynie, CTP, CMC, ACT, MCC, SCAC
from the Comorbidities and Sleep & Sleep Disorders Series

Source HERE

Even though I’m scurrying to finish everything I need to do to be able to announce Open Enrollment for the upcoming Group Coaching, I simply must take a bit of a break to let you know of something coming up in less than one week: N-24 Awareness Day.

An Explanation, not an excuse

In addition to my personal Challenges as THE ADD Poster Girl, anyone who knows me well at all knows about my life-long struggles as the result of a bodacious disorder of sleep TIMING.  (If you don’t you can read all about it in JetLagged for LIFE!)

If YOU or someone you love has been known to be “up all night,” sleeping away much of the day, put it on your must read list.

Depending on how closely you can relate, it just might change your life to learn what just might be going on.

Good news on brain-aging from The Nun Study

Healthy Brains for a Lifetime

We really DON’T have to lose it as we age

by Madelyn Griffith-Haynie, CTP, CMC, A.C.T, MCC, SCAC
Reflections on Cognitive Impairment and Dementia Protection

Cognitive decline is NOT inevitable

A quick review before some data that will bring smiles to a lot of worried faces (especially for writers!):

There is still a lot to learn from School Sisters of Notre Dame “Nun” Study — the longitudinal scientific exploration of aging and Alzheimer’s disease originally funded by the National Institute on Aging.  Data, tissue, and genetic material collected in this landmark study will, no doubt, prove invaluable to a great many meta-studies long into the future.

Thanks to the Sisters’ unprecedented generosity of spirit, however, we now know a lot more about how the brain ages than we did, even a few years ago.  We also know more about dementia and what factors seem to be neuro-protective.

©Phillip Martin, artist/educator

The oft-cited study centers on a group of a relatively homogeneous order of 678 Roman Catholic sisters (American, no drug use, little or no alcohol or tobacco, similar housing and reproductive histories, etc.) — which minimizes extraneous variables that may confound other similar research.

Along with, ultimately, hundreds of others in their order, a few brave nuns agreed to volunteer for a long-term study of aging and Alzheimer’s disease, hoping to provide evidence that might be used to teach the rest of us how to escape the worst ravages of this heartbreaking illness.

To repeat a comment from my last article [You don’t HAVE to lose it as you age: Moving Past Mind-Blips and “Senior Moments”]:

Upon autopsy, even some of the individuals discovered to have what used to be accepted as “positive Alzheimer’s identifiers” (senile plaques and neurofibrillary tangles), managed to escape the behavioral devastation of the disease.

Others had only recently begun to exhibit signs of mental decline in the year or two before their deaths (at 80 and beyond), despite brains that would have predicted a significantly earlier onset of dementia.

You don’t HAVE to lose it as you age

Moving Past Mind-Blips and “Senior Moments”

Maintaining & improving your brain’s vitality as you age

by Madelyn Griffith-Haynie, CTP, CMC, A.C.T, MCC, SCAC
Reflections on Cognitive Impairment and Dementia Protection

“A mind equipped with a wide range of
previously formed pattern recognition devices
can withstand the effects of neuroerosion
for a long time.”

~ Dr. Elkhonon Goldberg, PhD, from
The Wisdom Paradox 

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Along with suggestions designed to help, this article begins to debunk the myth of “to be expected” age-related cognitive decline — as it explains the mechanics of memory and outlines the functional trajectory of the healthy brain as time marches on.

In the Memory Issues Series, anyone currently struggling to fit into a neurotypical mold, even if you are GenX or younger, will find a lot of information that will help you develop effective you-specific strategies to work around some of the things that give you fits and shut you down.

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Our Worst Nightmare

Staying in SHAPE as we age (Source HERE)

Most people who have lived with cognitive decline in an up close and personal fashion (in particular, the ravages of any of the dementias in a loved one), frequently report a back-of-the-mind concern that they are looking into a mirror of their future selves.

Time marches on, and we’re all getting older. The first wave of Baby Boomers – that spike in the population statistics once Johnny came marching home from World War II – turned 65 in 2012.

With the third-act aging of more and more of the Boomers, this conversation will become increasingly frequent, as those back-of-the-mind concerns rise to conscious awareness and become the worries of a greater portion of our population.

Take a D-E-E-P breath — you don’t HAVE to lose it as you age!!

Prevention is the better part of valor

You wouldn’t wait until the day before the marathon to train for it, would you? Same thing with healthy brain aging! Don’t wait until decline begins to start doing something about it — if you want to experience the rosy finish you can expect if you begin to employ neuro-protective techniques NOW

Good news for most Boomers –
it’s not too late to start turning things around!

When your Sleep Clock is Broken

N-24 Awareness Day –

November 24

by Madelyn Griffith-Haynie, CTP, CMC, ACT, MCC, SCAC

Because I was not able to make it home in time to make sure this article posted automatically before November 24, 2014, primarily due to the ramifications of my own sleep disorder, it didn’t (groan!)

No matter, really, because the information remains relevant, if not exactly “timely,” posting one day following the official N-24 Awareness Day.

ABOUT Chronorhythm Disorders

As I said in the 2013 article about N-24 Awareness Day, chronorhythm disorders – the various disorders of sleep timing – have long been the unloved step-child of sleep medicine.

ALL OVER THE WEB, and in the sleep disorder literature itself, you will read that “the most common sleep disorders include insomnia, sleep apnea, restless legs syndrome, and narcolepsy.“

That information is only partially correct.

Up all Nite? Sleep away the Day?

by Madelyn Griffith-Haynie, CTP, CMC, A.C.T, MCC, SCAC
ABOUT Chronorhythm Sleep Disorders – Part I

Lazy Mary Will You Get Up?

You’ve probably heard that old nursery rhyme where the first sing-song verse admonishes Mary for being “lazy” because she is still abed, then sing-song Mary responds that, “No, no Mother she won’t get up. She won’t get up today.”

Um, just A BIT black and white perhaps?

As reflected in that early childhood ditty, from the point of view of a great many of the world’s larks, once they themselves are up-and-at-em, not only do they consider those of us still asleep lazy, their assumption seems to be that we intend to remain slug-a-beds FOR THE ENTIRE DAY!

At least that seems to the [lack-of] thinking behind the many ways in which they state their expectations to those of us who “refuse” to toe their normative expectation lines, demonstrated by bounding out of bed with the first rays of the sun, bright-eyed and ready-for-bear.

A little empathy and understanding, please

I’m wondering if their tune might change – even a little bit – if they understood that going to sleep and waking up at an hour the “majority-rules” universe considers decent isn’t as simple as it sounds for those of us with sleep TIMING disorders.

For many of us, adjusting our sleep timing to fit
majority-rules norms is a CAN’T, not a won’t.

Flip things around for a moment

Regardless of how many of you out-vote us on the “decent hours” referendum, we have as much difficulty adjusting to your sleep schedule as many of you seem to have adjusting to ours.

• Many of you say you get too sleepy to remain awake at hours where many of us are highly alert, getting things done, or finally getting into the flow.

Unless it’s New Year’s Eve when you insist on keeping to your truncate-tonight to rise-early-tomorrow schedule, we do our best not to call you names and judge your party-pooper sleep preferences.

I promise it’s no fun, night after night, to be the only person you know who is wide awake once the rest of what seems to be the entire world anywhere near your timezone has toddled off to bed. Life get’s lonely.

And mean. The expectation that we will be awake and alert once YOU have had sufficient sleep is annoyingly inconsiderate, actually.

It’s worse at the other end of the day as you tut-tut-tut yourselves off to bed when we are finally wide-awake and fully alert.

• The rest of you put yourselves to bed “early” with the realistic expectation that you will be able to fall asleep once you get there.

You seem to believe in your heart-of-hearts that little trick would work for us too, with seemingly no awareness of the reality that most of us have failed at our attempts at it many, many, MANY times.

Our brains and bodies are telling us that it is simply the wrong time to sleep!

• What if we insisted that you go to bed in the early afternoon,
  hours before you feel the call to sleep?

A time or two to resolve your sleep-debt might be nice, but beyond that, I’ll bet you wouldn’t fall asleep, stay asleep or get restorative sleep either.

And I’m fairly certain you wouldn’t respond positively to our insistence that you stop in the middle of whatever you are doing to go lie down in a dark room with your eyes closed.

I suppose we could force you to lie there quietly for a solid eight hours —  but you still wouldn’t get a solid eight hours of restorative SLEEP.

Your brains and bodies would insist that it was the wrong time for it!

THEN how would you feel?

How would you feel about life and about us when you opened your eyes in the wee hours of the next day to our scowling faces?  What could you have done wrong in your SLEEP, right?

Would your groggy mind understand this logic? We are angry with you simply because you are not eager to bound happily out of bed when our clock insists that it is time for you to get up!

Would it make you feel any better, about life and about us, if we were to remind you forcefully that you WOULD have had enough sleep if you’d simply shut your eyes and counted sheep or something when we put you to BED!?

If you really tried to imagine yourselves into the scenario above, you’d have to admit that we’re a lot nicer to you about the sleep-timing mismatch than you’d be to us if the shoe were on the other foot!

The sleep-timing mismatch truth to tell, we’re a lot nicer to you than you are to us as it stands NOW – any chance we could improve on that sorry state of affairs?

Maybe if we take a closer look at what’s going on here . . .

November 24 is N-24 Awareness Day

A SHOT at Fixing Broken Sleep Clocks

by Madelyn Griffith-Haynie, CTP, CMC, ACT, MCC, SCAC
Another article in the Sleep Series

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Too many people don’t care what happens
so long as it doesn’t happen to them.”
~ William Howard Taft
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Your chance to step up and make a difference

We have known for DECADES that as many as three quartersof those of us here in “Alphabet City“ ~ 75% ~ have chronic problems with sleep and sleep timing.

Many of us have trouble falling asleep almost every night — until and unless we are, literally, exhausted.

Some of us continue to have trouble letting go of the day even then.

Almost all of us, EVEN when we are well rested, struggle to come to alertness when we awaken, regardless of what time of day that might be — frequently for well over an hour or more after first opening our eyes.

Our eyes may be open, but our brains are still half-asleep
— almost every single “morning” of our lives —

Were you aware that, for longer than the Baby-Boomer generation has been ALIVE, there has been only asmall pocket of concerned individuals — dismissed as mavericks, complainers, enablers, alarmists, incalcitrant slug-a-beds, fringe-scientists — who have been interested enough in the quality of the LIVES of those who were so affected to lobby for efforts to understand why?

As I wrote in materials for the world’s first ADD-specific coach training – back in 1994, almost 20 years ago now – with numbers like 75%, if this were heart disease (or any other population), I’ll bet you that MOST of the scientific and medical community would have been ON it!

By supporting the recently formed non-profit, Circadian Sleep Disorders Network, together we can finally CHANGE that sad reality.

Life, Death, Mental Health & Sleep

by Madelyn Griffith-Haynie, CTP, CMC, A.C.T, MCC, SCAC
Another Article in the Sleep Series – Video below

I’ll Sleep when I’m Dead . . .

That’s how I began Sleep and Cognition,
an earlier article in the Sleep Series.

I went on to say:

In my hurry-up-there’s-so-much-more-to-DO experience of living, almost everything auxiliary to my current attempt to focus frequently seems like a necessary but unwelcomed interruption to what I liked to think of as “life” — as annoying as ants at a picnic.

But I know better now where SLEEP is concerned!

WHY we need sleep

Yes, sleep deprivation makes us drowsy and unable to concentrate.  It feels lousy when we struggle to keep our eyes open. But that’s not the half of it!

A LOT happens during that prone period where it seems to us that nothing at all is going on. We need adequate, high-quality sleep for our nervous systems to work properly.

As science conducts increasingly more sleep studies, it has become clear that sleep deprivation leads to impairment of our memory processes, physical performance, and intellectual prowess (leading, for example, to a proven reduction in the ability to carry out mathematical calculations).

Extreme sleep deprivation leads to hallucinations and an impaired ability to regulate mood.

But that’s not ALL

Animal studies have shown that sleep is necessary to remain physically healthy and, in some cases, to remain alive.

• A rat’s average life span is 2 to 3 years; rats deprived of sleep live for only about 3 weeks.
• They also develop abnormally low body temperatures, along with sores on paws and tails, most likely developed as a result of impairment of the rats’ immune systems.

In humans, it has been demonstrated that the metabolic activity of the brain decreases significantly after 24 hours without sleep. Sleep deprivation results in:

• a decrease in body temperature and an increase in heart rate variability
• a decrease in white blood cell count, which correlates to a decrease in immune system function
• a decrease in the release of growth hormone which, in children and young adults, takes place during deep sleep — and, among other problems,
• a disturbance in the production and breakdown of proteins (in most bodily cells) – normally carried out during the deep sleep phase.

Everything you ever wanted to know about SLEEP

Phillip Martin, artist/educator

EVERYTHING?

Well, everything I’ve already published on SLEEP here on ADDandSoMuchMore.com, anyway —
and that’s quite a lot
(all linked below – scroll DOWN for list)

This is your Brain on Sleep – Stages of Sleep

Cycling through the Sleep Stages
Part of the Sleep Series

© by Madelyn Griffith-Haynie, CTP, CMC, A.C.T, MCC, SCAC

“Sleep is not a luxury or an indulgence but a
fundamental biological need, enhancing creativity,
productivity, mood, and the ability to interact with others.”
~ Russell G. Foster, a leading expert on chronobiology

Gettin’ those Zzzz’s

Until the mid-twentieth century, most scientists believed that we were asleep for approximately a third of our lives — experienced, primarily, in a uniform block of time that was the opposite of wakefulness.

THAT was pretty much it.

Their assumption was that sleep was a homogeneous state.  It’s most salient feature was considered to be the fact that you were NOT AWAKE.  Duh!

The main side-effect of sleep deprivation, so it was believed at the time, was that you got sleepy.  Oh my.

• It was assumed that we needed some sort of down-time to recharge our batteries somehow.
• There was so little curiosity about sleep, very few scientists felt that it was worthy of the time or money for research.

In the 1950s, the breaking news from one of the few sleep labs was that sleep actually consisted of two distinct states:

1. Rapid eye movement sleep [REM], which distinguished dreaming sleep, according to what they knew at the time
2. AND . . . the rest of it!
   (imaginatively referred to as “non-rapid eye movement sleep” [NREM])

You probably already know that REM sleep was so named because it was noticed that the eyes moved quickly back and forth under closed eyelids – rather like they might if the sleeper were speed-reading a teeny-tiny English-language book.

Looking More Closely

In rapid succession, with the advances of electro-physiological studies, new findings were announced.

These findings came about thanks to the use of technology known as an electroencephalogram [EEG].

An EEG measures the brain’s electrical activity and translates these measurements into a pictographic representation of what we now refer to as brainwaves.

With the help of measuring technology, NREM sleep revealed itself to be composed of a series of distinct stages of what was then presumed to be un-consciousness: NREM1, NREM2, NREM3 and NREM4.
(No prizes for nomenclature creativity were awarded!)

This four stage division became the standard in 1968, what is called the Rechtschaffen and Kales (R&K) standardization.

And then there were three

Almost forty years later, in 2007, non-REM sleep was reduced to three stages by The American Academy of Sleep Medicine [AASM], combining stages 3 and 4. You will still see both classification systems in internet articles and older books.

My personal belief is that R&K Stage-4 sleep, distinct from R&K Stage-3 and more specific than the AASM Stage-3, will prove to be important in research on sleep disorders — so I prefer to pay attention to non-REM sleep in the original four categories rather than the relatively recently collapsed three.

Remember – links on this site are dark grey to reduce distraction potential
while you’re reading. They turn red on mouseover
Hover before clicking for more info

An Open Letter to Sleep Sites EVERYWHERE

Asking for a Legitimate Place at the Table

© By Madelyn Griffith-Haynie, CTP, CMC, A.C.T., MCC, SCAC
In support of the Sleep Series

Click to buy this tee-shirt from BuzzyMultiMedia

As requested, in support of the relatively new Circadean Sleep Disorders non-profit, the following letter was sent directly to kjones@sleepfoundation.org — but it COULD have been sent to almost every “official” sleep site on the internet.

So posting it here on ADDandSoMuchMore.com is my answer to the dilemma of how to do exactly THAT.

I have edited and formatted (adding some headings and graphics) to make it easier for ADDers to read on a blog, and making it more relevant for sending to ANY sleep site.

If *you*(or anyone you love) struggles with falling asleep and waking up “at a decent hour,” the information included below could possibly change your experience of living.

I hope someday to be able to say that it is widely available.

Please feel free to reblog (or resend), or to take the time to cannibalize or edit, using primarily your own words — but please DO pass it on.

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“It takes a village to educate a world.” ~ mgh
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Non-Profit Supporting Fractured Sleep Clocks

Chronorhythm Sleep Disorders are SERIOUSLY understudied – overlooked
PLEASE help spread the word about CSDN — reblog, link, talk about it on chatlists ~ thanks!

Stepping into the Void:
The Circadian Sleep Disorders Network

by Madelyn Griffith-Haynie, CTP, CMC, ACT, MCC, SCAC
Another article in the Sleep Series

Broken Sleep Clocks

As many as three quarters — 75% — of those of us here in “Alphabet City” have chronic problems with sleep and sleep timing.

Most of us have trouble falling asleep at night unless we are, literally, exhausted. For some of us, not even then. Almost all of us struggle to come to alertness when we awaken.

Are you aware that, until now, there has been
no concerted effort to understand WHY?

Chronorhythm disorders – the disorders of sleep timing – have long been the unloved step-child of sleep medicine.

A relatively new Non-Profit organization, the
Circadian Sleep Disorders Network
has been formed to change that sad reality.

HIGH Interest Charges on Sleep Debt

You don’t wanna’ have to pay
the interest on Sleep Debt!

by Madelyn Griffith-Haynie, CTP, CMC, ACT, MCC, SCAC
Another article in the Sleep Series

According to the authors of the website Talk About Sleep:

“At least 40 million Americans suffer from chronic, long-term sleep disorders each year, and an additional 20 million experience occasional sleeping problems.

These disorders and the resulting sleep deprivation interfere with work, driving, and social activities.

They also account for an estimated $16 BILLION in medical costs each year, while the indirect costs due to lost productivity and other factors are probably much greater.”

They go on to say that “the most common sleep disorders include insomnia, sleep apnea, restless legs syndrome, and narcolepsy,” which is an indication of how LITTLE research has been done on chronorhythm disorders.

But you don’t have to have a diagnostic sleep disorder of any kind to experience the negative effects of sleep debt. In fact, most of us in industrialized society are chronically under-slept, which means that most of us have racked up sleep debt to a significant degree.

Sleep Timing Disorders & More Laws of Photobiology

More Laws of Photobiology

by Madelyn Griffith-Haynie, CTP, CMC, ACT, MCC, SCAC
Part III of a three-part article in the Sleep Series
Click HERE for Part II

LET’S REVIEW what we learned in Parts I and II:

• Time cues are what keep our body clocks aligned with the rest of our 24 hour world.

• In order for our sleep-wake timing to cooperate with our planet’s day/night cycle, our biological clock seems to need regular environmental time cues — like sunrise, sunset, and/or a stable sleep-wake routine.

• The successful shifting of “native” circadian rhythms to those that coordinate with earth’s 24 hour day is called “entrainment.”

• One of the most important reasons for regulating our sleep schedule is to stabilize the quality of LIGHT to which we are exposed.

• In order for work-arounds (and treatment protocols) for circadian/chronorhythm dysfunctions to be successful, it is helpful to understand and cooperate with what are sometimes referred to as the basic laws of photobiology.

“Photobiology is the scientific study of the interactions of light (technically, non-ionizing radiation) and living organisms.” ~ Wikipedia

• Visible Light Regulates — The therapeutic effects of light depends upon the wavelength transmitted to the brain through the eye’s retina — visible light is the primary regulator of the human circadian response.

• Only light that is absorbed will have an effect — and it matters what kind of light is absorbed when.

Visible light is absorbed through through chromophores in the retina.

It “communicates” with the body through two primary pathways to the brain from the retina to the optic nerve: one that governs visual perception and response, and the other that governs “neuro-behavioral” responses, along with hormonal and circadian functions.

WE LEFT OFF WITH THE FOLLOWING STATEMENT:

• Circadian entrainment is most sensitive to stimulation from light in the blue spectrum, but until 1998, Science had no idea how that happened.

Sleep Timing Disorders and LIGHT

Obeying the Laws of Photobiology

by Madelyn Griffith-Haynie, CTP, CMC, ACT, MCC, SCAC
Part II of a three-part article in the Sleep Series
Click HERE for Part I

The influence of dark-light rhythms on circadian cycles, and related physiology and behavior. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Keep in mind:

Time cues are what keep our body clocks aligned with the rest of our 24 hour world.

In order for our sleep-wake timing to cooperate with our planet’s day/night cycle, our biological clock seems to need regular environmental time cues — like sunrise, sunset, and/or a stable sleep-wake routine.

The successful shifting of “native” circadian rhythms to those that coordinate with earth’s 24 hour day is called “entrainment.”

Although light is not the only factor acting on our circadian rhythms, many researchers consider it to be the strongest cue for entrainment. Its entrainment effectiveness, however, can be altered by a number of other factors.

• Regular exercise, for example, when coupled with appropriately timed light exposure, results in a slightly stronger entrainment response.

• Certain music and supplemental Melatonin (taken at the right time) have also demonstrated a positive effect on entrainment.

• Stress, on the other hand, weakens the entrainment effect, as do some medications, nicotine, alcohol (or sudden withdrawal from either)

In the rest of this article, we’ll focus primarily on the mechanisms of light entrainment.

Owls, Larks and Camels

Normal cuts a Wide Swath

by Madelyn Griffith-Haynie, CTP, CMC, ACT, MCC, SCAC
Another article in the Sleep Series

“Early to bed, early to rise,
makes a man stupid and blind in the eyes”
~ Mazer Rackham (from Orson Scott Card‘s book “Ender’s game“)

 

Normal Circadian Rhythms

Among people with healthy circadian clocks, there are “Larks” or “morning people” who prefer to sleep and wake early, and there are “Owls” who prefer to go to sleep later each night and awaken much later each day.

But whether they are larks or owls, people with normal circadian systems:

• can awaken in time for what they need to do in the morning, and fall asleep at night at a time that allows them to get enough sleep before they have to get up.
• can sleep and wake up at the same time every day, if they want to.
• will, within a few days of starting a new routine that requires their getting up earlier than usual, start to fall asleep at night earlier.

For example, someone used to sleeping at 1 a.m. and waking up at 9 a.m. begins a new job on a Monday, and must get up at 6 a.m. to get ready for work.

By the following Friday, the person has begun to fall asleep at around 10 p.m., and can wake up at 6 a.m. feeling well-rested.

This adaptation to earlier sleep/wake times is known as ‘advancing the sleep phase.’ Healthy people can advance their sleep phase by about one hour each day.

24 hours a day isn’t “normal”

Researchers have placed volunteers in caves or special apartments for several weeks without clocks or other time cues. Without those time cues, the volunteers tended to go to bed up to an hour later and to get up about an hour later each day.

These experiments demonstrated that the “free-running” circadian rhythm in humans is greater than the earth’s 24 hour cycle – anywhere from 24:15 to 25 or so a day].

To maintain a 24 hour day/night cycle, the biological clock needs regular environmental time cues, for example sunrise, sunset, and daily routine.

Time cues are what keep our body clocks aligned with the rest of the world.

Sleep Basics affecting Sleep TIMING

Sleep is a many splendored thing

by Madelyn Griffith-Haynie, CTP, CMC, ACT, MCC, SCAC
Part I of a three-part article in the Sleep Series

Courtesy of artist-educator Phillip Martin

For most of the history of mankind, human beings divided life itself into two parts  — awake and asleep.

Other than cultures who were into dream interpretation in a big way, most people didn’t think much about sleep beyond that idea.

Most of us still don’t think about it much, unless we are forced to do so because we are having trouble sleeping or trouble staying awake.

Early to Bed, Early to Rise

Until the widespread availability of the electric light bulb, only beginning to come to public awareness around the dawn of the 20th century, most humans set their sleep-wake schedules in reaction to the availability of light, truly believing that they had made a pragmatic decision.

Oh sure, way back in the day somebody had to stay awake to protect the sleeping tribe, and many warring tribes chose to attack under cover of darkness, but there wasn’t a whole lot that the others could DO once darkness descended.

So they went to bed.

If they thought about it at all, most people probably believed they fell asleep quickly because they were exhausted from the demands of life in the primarily agrarian lifestyle of most of the human race for centuries. Little did they suspect that the reason sleep came so easily was a factor of what we call “entrainment to the light/dark cycle,” aided by the structure of their regular schedules.

Health, Success and Successful Sleeping

Like Driving on Empty

by Madelyn Griffith-Haynie, CTP, CMC, A.C.T, MCC, SCAC

I’ll Sleep when I’m Dead . . .
That’s how I began Sleep and Cognition, the article before this one. I went on to say:

In my hurry-up-there’s-so-much-more-to-DO experience of living, almost everything auxiliary to my current attempt to focus frequently seems like a necessary but unwelcomed interuption to what I liked to think of as “life” — as annoying as ants at a picnic. 

But I know better now where SLEEP is concerned!

The graphic below, illustrating the effects of sleep deprevation,
takes a closer look at what I meant by that assertion.

Cognitive Impairment and Dementia Protection

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Maintaining Cognitive Vitality

by Madelyn Griffith-Haynie, CTP, CMC, A.C.T, MCC, SCAC

“A mind equipped with a wide range of
previously formed pattern recognition devices
can withstand the effects of neuroerosion
for a long time.”

~ Dr. Elkhonon Goldberg, PhD, from
The Wisdom Paradox 

Our Worst Nightmare

How we hate the idea of losing our
hottie-bodies as we get older!

But that’s not the worst of it.

Probably the most frightening thing — for most of us old enough to truly understand that we will not live forever, anyway — is the idea that we might lose control of our MINDS as we age.

What strikes fear in our hearts is that we’ll lose the links to words, places, our fondest memories, the names of our children — the very things that define our sense of SELF.

Those who have lived with cognitive decline in an up close and personal fashion (in particular, the ravages of any of the dementias in a loved one), frequently report a back-of-the-mind concern that they are looking into a mirror of their future selves.

The first wave of Baby Boomers – that spike in the population statistics once Johnny came marching home from World War II – turned 65 last year.

Wow.

With the third-act aging of more and more of the Boomers, this conversation will become more and more frequent, as those back-of-the-mind concerns rise to conscious awareness.

Take a D-E-E-P breath — you don’t HAVE to lose it as you age!!

Sleep and Cognition

Learning, Attention
& Sleep Struggles

by Madelyn Griffith-Haynie, CTP, CMC, A.C.T, MCC, SCAC
From the Sleep Series

I’ll Sleep when I’m Dead . . .

That’s how I used to think about sleeping when I was a young adult: a huge waste of time in my busy, interesting, already too little time to fit it all in LIFE.

To tell the truth, that’s how I sometimes still think about eating, bathing, going to the bathroom, in fact all of the “maintenance” activities of living.

In my hurry-up-there’s-so-much-more-to-DO experience of living, almost everything auxiliary to my current attempt to focus frequently seems like a necessary but unwelcomed interuption to what I liked to think of as “life” — as annoying as ants at a picnic.

But I know better now where SLEEP is concerned!

Sleep is a very ACTIVE state

While it seems logical to consider sleep some kind of “down time” recovery break — a time-out from our daily activities — research has shown that adequate, high-quality sleep is vital not only to optimize our daily functioning, but also to make sense of our daily activities.

Neural-housekeeping can’t be done until our brains slip into the sleep state.

• That’s when memory consolidation takes place
• That’s when our brains form the links to the information we need to be able to access on demand — to effectively carry out our waking tasks and determine appropriate emotional reactions to the events of our lives.

I like to think of it as the time when our brain’s sleep technicians repair shorts in our “wiring” so that we are ABLE to process effectively in our waking hours.

In an article from the National Science Foundation, neuroscientist Ken Paller says, “I think it’s fair to say that the person you are when you’re awake is partly a function of what your brain does when you’re asleep.”

Related Content: Sleep Struggles and Disorders

Off-Site ADD Comorbid SLEEP Links
ongoing updates – check back for more

compiled by Madelyn Griffith-Haynie, CTP, CMC, ACT, MCC, SCAC
Last update: November 4, 2013 -3:41 pm Eastern

Articles to help keep you busy
between MY posts!

Below is my ongoing attempt (since February, 2011) to organize some links to “related content” to help navigate to articles RELATED to what a reader may be interested in reading – in this case, sleep and sleep disorders.

There’s this wonderful Zemanta application that suggests a few of these guys whenever I write a post for ADDandSoMuchMore.com. As time permits, I will continue to collect them and move them here, categorizing them by title when I have the odd moment to do so. (No guarantees about the quality of the content, however.)

I will eventually get around to reading them all, and will remove ones I don’t agree with or don’t find relevant, or sufficiently info-dense (hey! my list, my mindset!)

• The ones I think are really cool, I pepper around in the posts they “relate” to, and they may no longer appear here as a result. (So if your link’s no longer here, it doesn’t mean you flunked or anything!!)

• There are ALSO links to content I run into as I browse the web, as well as content from some of the blue-bazillian lists I subscribe to.

• Finally, there is content I search for directly as I write, endeavoring to keep the articles here as current as I am able, given time constraints and my need to keep a roof over my head.

JetLagged for Life

Please – take time to read the comments.  We are NOT alone!

(c) Madelyn Griffith-Haynie, CTP, CMC, ACT, MCC, SCAC
Part 1 of the  Sleep Struggles Series – all rights reserved

Living with Jet Lag

A first person account of an ADDer with an atypical
sleep disorder — me.

This Series is excerpted from a book I am writing about disordered sleep architecture.  The content in a chapter of the section on some of the lesser known sleep disorders was written from personal experience, hoping to “put a face” on chronorhythm disorders, – disorders of sleep timing.  

I hope that looking at life and living through the experience of a “coulda’ been a REAL contender” sufferer would describe things better than a list of symptoms and probable causes ever could. ~ mgh

As I explained in the introductory article to the sleep disorders content on ADDandSoMuchMore.com (ABOUT ADD & Sleep Struggles), 75% of us here in ADD/EFD-land have sleep struggles, if not diagnostic sleep disorders.

I am one of them.  Here’s why what I have to say on the topic might interest YOU.

I am also an ADD Coach and trainer, one of the life coaching field’s earliest pioneers, founder of the first coaching school with an ADD-specific training curriculum, and creator of many key terms and techniques used in the ADD Coaching field today.

ABOUT ADD & Sleep Struggles

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Sleeping with ADD

by Madelyn Griffith-Haynie, CTP, CMC, ACT, MCC, SCAC

Did you know that . . .

75% of us here in ADD-land have sleep struggles, if not diagnosable sleep disorders.

That means that those in the fortunate 25% — those of you whose sleep patterns are similar to those of the “vanilla” population — are in the distinct minority!

If you are one of those lucky souls (or parent one), please don’t discount the information you will find in this category as irrelevant. You really want to guard that ability with your life!!

• The concept of “sleep hygiene” is important for you, too – and you are the community most likely to benefit from it.

• ADDers who are more “neurotypical” where sleep is concerned are at high risk for sliding into struggle due to our bizzare relationship to time, our tendency to get trapped in hyperfocus, our ready-fire-aim (oops!) brainstyle – and a whole lot more.  

• In my experience, ADDers are less likely to discount the need for stability in our sleep habits if we understand the rationale behind various flavors of “good advice” — and the extent of the potential consequences if we don’t pay ATTENTION to keeping things on an even keel.