All I Want from Santa is Sleep

...and why he isn't delivering

I’ve promised you a wide awake look at the insomnia problem but it’s Christmas so I’m doing a sleight of hand and combining these two totally unrelated themes. Starting with a bowdlerized version of T’was the Night Before Christmas, a beloved poem that has become synonymous with Christmas since it was written by Clement Clarke Moore in 1823.

T’was the night before Christmas /and all through the house/not a creature was sleeping/not even a mouse

The sleep masks were put on our faces with care/in hopes that Saint Morpheus soon would be there/The children were nestled all snug in their beds/playing violent video games in their sweet heads

And Mama with her laptop and me with my drink/we couldn’t and wouldn’t sleep nary a wink…

Now that I’ve ruined the feeling of Christmas for you, let me hasten to tell you that there is no need to feel guilty about being a ‘poor sleeper’, never getting the recommended magical eight hours and feeling permanently tired. It’s not you: Western Civilization in the twenty-first century itself is the culprit. Let me unpack that, like a Christmas present under a gleaming tree with Silent Night playing in the background.

There is no doubt that sleeping like a baby is becoming as rare as hen’s teeth to mangle my metaphors. Even people who actually manage to get in a few precious hours of sleep believe that they aren’t sleeping well, no, not at all. Others just stare stupidly at screens, doomscrolling until midnight and then discover that the God of Sleep, Morpheus is displeased and won’t open his arms. Still others are hooked up to rather ghastly masks that force air into their lungs when sleep apnea stops them breathing and they come up gasping. Those masks are fiendishly uncomfortable as well as expensive, so uninterrupted sleep is not easily achieved. And that’s not even considering those whose minds are missing the off button, a condition known as monkey mind that makes you ruminate in the dark about all the things that you can’t or won’t or mustn’t do. Oh dear, postmodern existence has made insomnia as common as smoking once was, and the result is a state of permanent fatigue. You might be awake and working but you don’t feel good at all. Somehow, even sleeping for several nights in a row doesn’t seem to make up for the sleep deficits you’ve accumulated. So it’s not surprising that Insomnia with a capital I is now one of the most studied conditions in the West.

But help is on the way! Let me introduce you to a video by Johnny Harris that makes thinking about and understanding the insomnia problem entertaining as well as informative. It’s a wise and even witty package of story telling about how our cave men brains are not coping with postmodern life woven through with the very latest in scientific research. It’s presented by a handsome dude who uses himself as a typical example of a sleep-disordered human.

Why is insomnia so dreadfully common? As you’ve likely guessed, it’s complicated though once you frame it as a mismatch between our cave man brains and the frenetic cascade of information that requires thousands of decisions every day, it begins to make sense. Take a culture where the lights are always on, the news cycle never stops and your boss might text you at midnight, and you’ve set the stage for a mind that no longer knows how to switch off, how to unwind, how to let go of anxiety. A local psychologist I recently talked to said that before he starts treating anxiety, depression or ADHD, he works on the patient’s lack of sleep. He thinks that sleeping well is the baseline for well being in general and that treatment for other disorders of the mind begins there. Like most doctors, he doesn’t believe in sleeping pills. They only mask the underlying problem of an anxious overstimulated mind and are only prescribed as short term fixes. The most effective tool is Cognitive Behavioural Therapy or CBT. It works, but it takes time and the patient must be willing to learn how to adopt new mental techniques and tools. Sleeplessness is primarily a mental condition. And not everyone has access to a psychologist, especially in Canada where there is a permanent shortage of doctors, period.

Insomnia is also a bad habit. Humans are creatures of habit and good sleeping habits are learned when we’re young. It seems a built in part of our personalities as well; and there is scientific evidence that we are all pre programmed to fall into what’s called Chronotypes, that explain why people have such wildly different sleeping preferences. See the Harris video link for more info on Chronotypes. They explain why some kids are ‘good sleepers’ and others, to the sorrow of their harried parents, are not. Those are the parents that spend every night at the child’s bedside reading not just one but several stories and only leaving on tiptoe when the child finally (!) drops into a fitful sleep but then waking at 2 am to find that child wandering in the hallway or sneaking into bed with them. Those children sometimes grow up to be normal sleepers, but chances are they are the ones who like being awake very late nights and seem to get by on less sleep than anyone else. In short, humans are wired differently for sleep though we need enough of it to clear out the ‘debris’ that accumulated during the day. Sleep is a kind of garbage removal function, clearing the roads for next day’s traffic. If you think of your neural network as a road that needs to be kept free of damaging buildup of things like Glutamate and Adenosine, you’re halfway to understanding the vital importance of sleep to your wellbeing, indeed, your very happiness.

I can recommend the Diary of a CEO for informative conversations with various sleep experts. But overall, I still prefer the Harris video about feeling tired all the time because it puts the entire issue into evolutionary terms. And let’s us all off the hook.

So that’s all folks; it’s Christmas, stay up all night if you want or turn in early and then wake up at 5 am on Christmas Day. It’s all good!

Merry Christmas and see you in the New Year, all caught up on our sleep deficits.