Kapiolani
Community College Diamond Journal 2003Fall
Kapiolani
Community College
Diamond Journal 2003Fall
Let’s discuss my health for a minute. In the past six months
I’ve experienced:
- black outs
- slurred speech
- severe nausea
- blurred vision
- depression
- violent outbursts
No, I don’t have a drinking or substance abuse problem (as many have speculated
this, I’m sure, despite the fact that I dabble in neither). I’m what
medical professionals like to call “stupid.” Afflicted “stupid”
people such as myself are not insomniacs, but still don’t get enough
sleep (by pushing themselves to stay up), even though their body is obviously
telling
them:
“Um, hello? Yeah, hi, it’s me, Body. Listen, is Brain still mad at
me for that time we accidentally tripped and he got severely injured while I only
got a few scrapes here and there? I mean, that was like, years ago, and it’s
so childish to be holding grudges. Anyway, I ask because he’s not taking
my calls anymore. I can take a good 15-16 hour daily run, but anything past that,
and I start running into problems. You know, general slowness followed by all
that other fun stuff. I mean, sure the whole ‘second wind’ thing kicks
in once in awhile, but you end up paying for it even MORE later. So yeah, I’ve
been leaving messages on his machine for the past few weeks, ‘Man, c’mon.
It’s 8:00 in the damn morning and I don’t see you slowing down there.
You’ve seen what happens after all night benders like these. Do you REALLY
want a repeat of that time you blacked out for--Oh what the hell. You’re
making a TV dinner now?? That’s costing us another hour at least. Man, c’mon.’
with no response; so I have a feeling he’s still bitter. Or maybe just stupid.
Whatever, just if you can, try and get him to talk to me.” (As you can see,
I exist in three different entities: my body, mind, and elbow. My body was talking
to my elbow just now. He’s the middle man here. I know what you’re
thinking “Aren’t elbows part of the body?” Well you’d
think that, but back in ‘87, my mind and body had a total falling out (long
story short, it involved a botched immigrant smuggling operation), so somebody
had to be the mediator, and that’s when my right elbow volunteered to
be the neutral party. Yep.*)
Anyway, the point is, I don’t have insomnia, and I actually like to sleep,
yet I continue not to sleep because I feel that I am not productive enough during
the day, and as a result continue to push myself for as long as possible when
I’m in “work mode” (which is usually late at night) and thus
cause myself to stay up for inordinate to dangerous amounts of time.
Ever since I learned of the serious health risks lack of sleep caused, I wondered
why more information on this topic wasn’t being circulated. I mean, sure,
you’ll have the occasional report on the news about circadian rhythms and
how lack of sleep messes it up, and that you should get in eight hours or more,
but it’s nothing like the coverage that obesity, drinking and driving, or
drug abuse gets, for example. Granted, you never hear about anyone dying from
“lack of sleep”, but I’m more than willing to bet that a lot
of illnesses (especially viruses), car accidents, and even mental instability
(all things that are popular killers) can be prevented by getting more sleep.
As a Chicago Tribune article about being susceptible to AIDS states: A multitude
of factors can infringe on the body’s ability to protect itself against
disease. They include such things as smoking, alcohol use and old age, drug
use,
malnutrition, even stress or a lack of sleep.
Another article, specifically on lack of sleep, in the Doctor’s Guide website
discusses lack of sleep’s affects on a more specific level: Cutting back
from the standard eight down to four hours of sleep each night produced striking
changes in glucose tolerance and endocrine function-changes that resembled
the
effects of advanced age or the early stages of diabetes-after less than one
week.
The Cleveland Clinic Health System says: Lack of sleep can cause some of the
same symptoms as depression -- lack of sleep alone can cause extreme tiredness,
loss
of energy, irritability, and difficulty concentrating or making decisions.
And a BBC News article reported: Drivers who have been awake for more than
17-18 hours are likely to be significantly slower at reacting and will be increasingly
likely to miss information as the period of sleep loss increases even further.
Because of such findings, I don’t believe lack of sleep to be any less
harmful than health-risk topics that already have lots of exposure.
Back at my old job, many voice-over artists would come and go, as we recorded
lots of radio commercials there. Well, one day during my first week or so there
(when I was still an intern), I met one of the voice-over artists when she
introduced
herself to me, I replied, “Hi, I’m Candace.” To my embarrassment,
I hadn’t gotten much sleep the night before, and apparently I slurred MY
OWN NAME when introducing myself. “Janis?” she questioned, to which
I smiled and said “No, Candace. Sorry about that!” Her: “Janis?”
Me: “Candace.” Her: “Oh okay. Hi Candace! Nice to meet you.”
Maybe she had a slight hearing problem, but I don’t know, I’m pretty
sure I sounded like I had a few drinks before I came in that day. Plus, of all
things, I just HAD to slur MY OWN NAME while introducing myself to a lady that
makes a living speaking clearly and properly. Hoo boy. (This also bothered me,
because I somewhat pride myself on my normally clear speaking voice, and instead,
I came off as some underage booze whore, I’m sure. Oh well.)
The previously mentioned BBC article addresses this issue: Research carried
out in Australia suggests that the effects of sleep loss can be similar or
worse than
the effects of drinking alcohol to excess. And another research site outright
stated that: Lack of sleep will make you slow and slur your speech.
Truth be told, I’ve never been drunk, but judging by that study (and how
many hours I’ve stayed up in my lifetime) I think I have a good idea of
what it’s like. I always tell people that I’m a lack-of-sleep veteran,
because I can almost always relate to the lack of sleep experiences other people
have had. (and scarily there are even a few effects that only I seem to have
experienced,
at least, as far as I know.)
Recently, I’ve actually started to black out during the day, if I’m
THAT sleep deprived. When I say “black out,” I don’t mean fall
asleep or faint, but to actually lose consciousness for a few seconds to minutes,
only to come to with a “Whoa, what the hell just happened???” feeling
all over me. It’s mostly during classes in which there’s little interaction,
and just lecturing. (Author’s note: Don’t worry, it’s not your
class!!), but it’s also happened at home while working on the computer.
The following event happened last semester:
After pulling yet another all-nighter, I dragged my lifeless carcass to school.
I was so, so very incoherent for the first 45 minutes of my first class that
my
notes got progressively messy as the class went on, and I began feeling ill
due to my forced state of consciousness. I stared at my watch and saw that
it was
4:03. My brain started crying at that point because the class wouldn’t be
over for another 27 minutes. I continued listening to the lecture and taking notes,
but I must have finally fallen over the edge a moment later, because the next
thing I knew, I had that “AHHH WHERE AM I???” feeling, and caught
a glimpse of my watch. It read 4:09. I had ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA what happened in
those past six minutes. I know I couldn’t have fallen asleep, because I
didn’t recall opening my eyes, nor rising from a hunched forward or backward
position. Upon doing research for this essay, I came across the term “glazing,”
which is popular amongst Dilbert-like office workers. It means “falling
asleep with your eyes open.” So perhaps this is what happened to me. However,
I’m not positive that I was indeed asleep. After freaking out about those
lost six minutes, I looked at my notebook and saw that I had actually written
notes that I had NO RECOLLECTION OF WRITING AT ALL. They were half coherent, too!
Except for the last sentence I managed to churn out: “The Holocaust was
responsible for the Holocaust.”
Besides these blackouts, I recall having [what I like to think was] REM with
my eyes OPEN back in high school. My reasoning for this, is that I’d sometimes
get to the point where I felt like I could no longer hold myself awake, and then
all of a sudden, my eyes would start DARTING a million miles a second, for a good
30 seconds or so, and then the next thing I know, I’d jolt back to consciousness.
That was rapid eye movement, if I ever saw, or rather experienced, it.
I couldn’t find anything about whether REM with your eyes open is possible
or not, so until I do, I will continue to believe that’s what it was.
(With all this talk of staying up all night, it probably sounds like I actually
have one of those things that everyone has... what’s it called now? Oh
yes, a life. I would like to take this moment to clarify that I do not possess
one
of these things. I spend my nights doing severely antisocial/hermit-like things:
watching TV, reading, working on various art projects, playing video games,
doing
laundry, etc. It is ever so exciting, I know.)
I found this sleep research site by Gary Sturt (http://www.garysturt.free-online.co.uk/indexslp.htm)
to be the most supportive of my lack of sleep-experiences (rather, the results
they achieved were very similar to many of the effects I’ve had: slurred
speech with slow reaction time, but heightened short term memory and sorting powers),
however, I was a little put off by the fact that it was a somewhat disorganized
and unofficial looking site, so while the results interested me, I kept thinking
“Hmm, who made this site, exactly? A real doctor? Some transient with a
love for science and access to the internet through the public libraries? And
what’s up with the fast food sponsorships??”
I’ve been actively trying to improve my sleep habits for, oh, the past 10
years or so, with mixed results. Usually, I’ll manage to get on a good schedule
for a few days to a few
weeks (anything more than that is some sort of scary miracle).
But eventually I’ll revert back (usually for school reasons, but once in
awhile, I’ll just fall back on my own, doing personal projects way past
my “new bedtime”) to under five hours a night, and or sleeping
past 5:00 am, on a regular basis.
I’m sure it comes as no surprise that I wrote this essay over the course
of a few very late nights, and thereby experienced some of the aforementioned
symptoms. The thing is, because I’ve also been reading all these articles
about lack of sleep, my hypochondriac-self has become very suggestive as well,
which is bad. I’m reading all these things about getting “the same
effects as diabetes” and “more chances of getting AIDS” and
“prone to car accidents”, etc. etc. and while I’m pretty sure
I’m not at risk for those things (especially the AIDS and car accident ones,
as I’m not some sort of floozie/heroin addict, and I can’t drive.)
I still worry that my bad habit will catch up to me, and that something bad will
happen. I wouldn’t hesitate to believe that lack of sleep causes excessive
paranoia, too. Now if you’ll excuse me for a second, I need to lie down
and shake uncontrollably with fear for a bit.
Ahh. There we go.
Despite my [hopefully irrational] fears, overall I think I’ll be fine, as
I also came across this little bit of information while researching: Horses can
become sleep-deprived if they’re prevented from lying down and so can’t
achieve deep sleep. But this won’t happen in a day, or even several days;
it takes weeks, research shows.
I usually manage to get a good night’s rest at least once a week (or two),
so I should be A-OKAY, because as we all know, horses are man’s closest
relative, right next to kitties! So I’m sure this would hold true for
humans, as well.***As you can see, lack of sleep also causes INSANITY.
**Lack of sleep does not cause stupidity; I was already this dumb to begin
with.
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