Sleep Debt, Part II
The quality vs quantity angle is super important in analyzing your results when trying to recover from prior sleep loss. In the previous example of my experience, I only realized a decade later my efforts might have been prolonged by the lack of treatment for my unbeknown to me diagnosis of UARS. In other words, in 1986 I was only operating on a sleep quantity model without realizing my mistake.
At the end of six months, still experiencing daytime sleepiness after a seemingly “good” night of 8.5 hours of sleep, it never occurred to me I had another problem. The covert condition was the pervasive sleep fragmentation of UARS that was finally diagnosed and treated in the 1990s.
The question emerges as to whether my sleep loss recovery would have gone any smoother or faster had I been treated for UARS at the time. Moreover, going farther back, how much did the untreated UARS contribute to my sleep loss during the 7 years of medical school/residency training?
I cannot emphasize enough the importance of this distinction between quantity and quality of sleep. Far too many people waste months, years, if not decades presuming there problem is not getting enough time asleep when in reality the larger component of the problem is compromised sleep quality. This sleep quality disruption is almost always due to something physical, and two of the most common factors are sleep breathing and sleep movement disorders.
Attending to the physiology of your sleep is very different than counting the time you are asleep. The latter has its relevance, but former, that is, how well you sleep, usually counts more.
REMINDER THE NIGHTMARE Q & A DISCUSSION IS SET FOR TOMORROW NIGHT, THURSDAY 8 PM EASTERN.
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