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LIKE YOU, I HAVEN'T BEEN SLEEPING WELL
by Robert Sullivan, Reporting by Anne Hollister
courtesy of Life Magazine, 1998, February, pp.56 - 66. View
Cover
Like you, I can't stand that my nights and days are
ruined. Like you, I want to do something about it. Which is why,
I find myself standing in a small white room on the seventh floor
of New York City's Bellevue Hospital. There's a hole in the wall
with wires protruding, a Naugahyde armchair next to a bed and a
camera mounted in the corner. A technician enters with a fistful
of electrodes.
Welcome to the New York University Sleep Disorders
Clinic, one of the 3,000 such centers that have sprung up in recent
years in response to a national nightmare - an epidemic of sleeplessness.
I and 70 Million other Americans have trouble sleeping.
We can't get to sleep, we can't stay asleep. We kick
our legs and grind our teeth. We are sleepless babies, heavy-lidded
teenagers, dangerously impaired night-shift workers. According to
two recent polls and a congressional study, more than 20 million
of us suffer from apnea or narcolepsy - serious, sometimes fatal,
sleep-related diseases. An additional 50 million are afflicted by
one of 80 other sleep syndromes. We are a nation of zombies-stressed,
depressed, sometimes, even suicidal for lack of sleep.
You don't want to overstate," says Dr Neil Kavey,
director of the Sleep Disorders Center at Columbia-Presbyterian
Medical, also in New York City. But, yes, we have a crisis here."
The cost to us as a society is stunning. Nearly two
thirds of Americans say sleep deprivation affects their work, which
translates into a $70 billion loss in productivity. There are wrecked
careers and wrecked cars. Poor sleep is cited as at least a partial
culprit in the Exxon Va/dez, Three Mile Island and Challenger disasters.
An estimated 38,000 people die each year from the consequences of
sleep apnea, says Dr. William Dement of Stanford University, the
dean of sleep-disorder research. Another 24,000 die in accidents
caused by sleeplessness.
When America has a problem of this size, it usually
demands a solution. Not in this case. TV isn't going off the air
after the late news, and industry isn't giving up night shifts and
24-hour trucking schedules. Moreover, in a culture where those who
complain about sleeplessness are seen as so many weaklings, wimps
and weenies, getting by on too little sleep is considered heroic.
Jay Leno brags he gets only three or four hours a night, Martha
Stewart says she needs only four, and the President can't recall
his last eight-hour night. "Not good role models," says
Dement succinctly.
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