Are You Getting the Sleep You Need? By Dr. Wayne Anderson

Don’t Underestimate the Value of Sleep.  Sleep is one of the cornerstones of optimal health, but its importance is often underestimated.  For many, late nights bleed into early mornings over and over again to the point that a good night’s sleep is nothing but an unachievable dream. A new study published in the Journal of American Geriatrics Society has brought the importance of sleep back to the top of medical conversation. The study linked a lack of sleep and an overabundance of sleep to memory problem in older women.  In a press release connected to the study, study leader Elizabeth Devore said, “Our findings suggest that getting an ‘average’ amount of sleep, seven hours per day, may help maintain memory in later life and that clinical interventions based on sleep therapy should be examined for the prevention of [mental] impairment.”  In fact, the study goes as far as to suggest that undersleepers and oversleepers, when compared to women of the same age that got seven to eight hours of sleep each night, were mentally two years older.  These findings are not yet definitive, but they add to an already large body of knowledge that supports the idea that getting the recommended amount of sleep is critical to your health.

The Chief Medical Editor of the Harvard Health Blog, in his analysis of Devore’s sleep study, summarizes some of the key consequences of lost sleep:  “Previous research has linked poor sleep with higher risks of heart disease and stroke, type 2 diabetes, and depression. How might sleep affect memory? People who are persistently sleep deprived are more likely to have high blood pressure, diabetes, and narrowed blood vessels. Each of these can decrease blood flow inside the brain. Brain cells need a lot of oxygen and sugar, so blood flow problems could affect their ability to work properly.”

Though we are still learning about the far-reaching importance of sleep, we already know that a lack of restorative sleep leads us into a non-sick state prematurely and, like unhealthy eating and a lack of movement, degrades our health.  Sleep is your body’s way of restoring organ function, stabilizing chemical imbalance, refreshing areas of the brain that control mood and behavior, and improving performance. During sleep, your brain replenishes spent nutrients and repairs circuitry, rearranging your experiences much like a computer rearranges data.
To assess the quality of your sleep at a glance, consider the following questions:
Do you…

Wake up tired in the morning?
Need a nap in the afternoon?
Fall asleep watching television?
Find yourself sleepy after lunch?
Have difficulty falling asleep?
Have difficulty staying asleep?
Drink several cups of coffee or energy drinks to stay awake?

If you answered “yes” to many of these questions, don’t worry. You are not alone. In 2006, an
Institute of Medicine report found that between 50 and 70 million people in the U.S. are not getting enough sleep. To help you escape this statistic, here are some quick tips to incorporate into your daily life (reference page 217 of Dr. A’s Habits of Health for a complete guide to revamping your sleep):

Get out of bed when your alarm goes off and limit your in-bed activities to train your mind to always associate sleep with your bed.
Limit your caffeine intake, especially late in the day and within hours of your bedtime.
Decrease stimulation from electronics and other sources of bright light at least 30 minutes prior to trying to fall asleep.
Avoid exercising within two hours of your bed time to help your body’s natural process for releasing the chemicals that induce sleep.
Set a sleep schedule and stick to it all week, including on weekends.

Sleep tight!
About Dr. Wayne Andersen
Dr. Wayne Andersen is a NY Times Bestselling Author, Speaker and Leader in creating Optimal Health.To learn more about this topic or how you can work with Dr. Andersen to create optimal health in your life, email

Breaking Addiction to Missiles to Improve Healthcare

“During the Korean War, the Navy kill ratio was twelve-to-one. We shot down twelve of their jets for every one of ours. In Vietnam, this ratio fell to three-to-one. Our pilots depended on missiles. They lost their ‘dog-fighting’ skills.”*

~ Jester, Top Gun, 1986

I remember seeing the movie Top Gun in the mid-1980’s and how this quote struck me … and believe it or not … it has informed much of my work in healthcare.

Fifty-one years ago (1964) the Hippocratic Oath was rewritten by Louis Lasagna, Academic Dean of the School of Medicine at Tufts University, to include (excerpts):

I will apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures [that] are required, avoiding those twin traps of overtreatment and therapeutic nihilism.

I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon’s knife or the chemist’s drug.

I will remember that I do not treat a fever chart, a cancerous growth, but a sick human being, whose illness may affect the person’s family and economic stability.

… may I long experience the joy of healing those who seek my help.

With this is mind, and in the blog post How a lack of empathy affects our healthcare I made note …

“Thirty years ago, medical schools taught that the most important component of a mental health healing encounter is empathy, human connection, and authentic relationship between a physician and patient.” 

And yet more recently we healthcare leaders have evolved the healthcare delivery system to include:

·         Clinicians triple booked every 15 minutes

·         8 to 12 minute office visits

·         The I-Patient (to borrow from Dr. Abraham Verghese) replacing the actual patient

 

·         Patients being dehumanized and becoming a diagnosis rather than a whole person

·         Clinician focus turning away from the human being before them and toward electronic health records, target organs and test results

·         Technology becoming the solution focus rather than a tool

·         Care teams held to the same productivity standards as clinicians (as noted above) and yet providing less continuity for a patient with “their” clinician

·         A model which rewards excessive tests and invasive procedures

·         Physicians and nurses burningout and worse

We have switched from “dog fighting” i.e. avoiding overtreatment, establishing and ensuring human connection and authentic relationship, and finding joy in healing to “missile dependency” i.e., the “evolved” model described above.

In our effort to make things better we have forgotten why we are here in the first place.  We have sought “missiles” to improve the broken system. We have lost our way. And we are harming those we are honored to serve.

If we truly want to improve the health of our patients, families and communities, it is time to break our addiction to missiles and reconnect with the Hippocratic Oath, what was taught in medical schools thirty years ago, and to our patients, families and communities. 

For only then will we truly innovate healthcare.

It’s not too late and yet long overdue. 

 

 

* As both an animal lover and someone who desires peace this analogy was challenging and yet hopefully lends itself to creating a compelling argument for the need for dramatic change and improvement to our healthcare delivery system.