Bill Briggs writes: Light sleepers, insomniacs and groggy zombies of all stripes, take a healthy gulp of your triple-shot espresso and rest easy.
Dr. Jeffrey Ellenbogen knows of what you dream: a full night of slumber uninterrupted by noise. You crave blissful bedtime silence – at least inside your head. And he’s working on it.
Ellenbogen, chief of the sleep medicine division at Massachusetts General Hospital, and a team of researchers believe they have cracked a brain-wave code that predicts how and why some people are more easily stirred from slumber by bumps in the night while others can saw logs through clanking garbage trucks and snoring partners.
In short, he found, if you’re not sleeping well, you can blame your spindles. That’s what doctors have dubbed quick bursts of brain activity that our thalamus gives off every 10 to 60 seconds as we sleep. For years, scientists have theorized that these spindles may be signs that the thalamus, essentially a sleep shield, is working to block sounds or other sensory information, helping to keep us in dreamland.
Ellenbogen’s study, published in Tuesday’s issue of Current Biology, discovered that the more spindles people have, the better they sleep.
Msnbc.com PhotoBlog: Oh, to be able to sleep anywhere, anytime
As we age, we produce fewer spindles. It’s not known why some of us generate more sleep spindles than others. Perhaps its genetics or diet or simply that we grew up in noisy (or quiet) homes.
“But for someone who has insomnia or pain or anxiety or a sleep disorder, when they’re woken they can’t fall back to sleep. They may be up for an hour,” said Ellenbogen, an assistant professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School.
This fresh research, Ellenbogen hopes, could spur future studies into behavioral techniques, drugs or devices that may enhance our sleep spindles. The idea is to try and keep people asleep naturally if they’re confronted with routine nighttime noises – and to let them maintain otherwise healthy sleep, he said.
For the rest of you insomniacs and dozy commuters, think of it this way: You can still count sheep. Because from sheep comes yarn – and yarn is wrapped around spindles. Now sleep tight.
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This needs more research, now!
Hmmm; wonder if I can somehow sign up as a research subject and get paid to sleep?
Well I grew up in a huge and busy family environment, but after I studied medicine, and was on call for 35 years for various surgery and medical teams, well my spindles are limited to be sure!
I try to make my insomnia productive reading a book, doing yoga stretches, quiet singing (to my dog and cat) or even writing letters. I used to try baking, but soemtimes the concoctions were too weird!
We create this in part by out jobs and our own over-extended life as well. At least there is more research than before and they are truly getting soemwhere with it.
I wish I could sleep a full night's sleep most of the week. I am a natural-born night owl and have had problems falling asleep all my life. I could stay asleep except for rainstorms, but falling asleep has always been difficult for me. I can be at my most tired, and it will still take me a half hour to get to sleep. I have to have no noise and no light, lying down in bed, and a sheet or more over me (with the fan on in summer) to be able to get to sleep. I'd kill to be able to sleep sitting up on a couch. I can't have caffeinated drinks too close to bed, can't be overstimulated (I'll go to a baseball game or a wedding reception, but the prolonged noise may keep me up for a while). I've nodded (but not nodded off) at school and at work. The only thing that really helps me is melatonin supplements (non-prescribed), which will put me out like a light (after 15 minutes) if I take one 20 minutes before bed.
Yeah, I know, this column is about staying asleep, but trust me, that's not so much a problem.
My spindles are really messed up!!!! I am nearing 55 and all of a sudden am awake al night, all day for 24 to 48 hours. Then night 3 seem to go into a 12 to 14 hour sleep out.......Do have thyroid problems is this Thymus gland have anything to do with the spindle problem?
ha! a fellow insomniac....getting to sleep is a killer for me as well!
My house-mate and I both have sleep problems. He sleeps with the TV on to get a good night's sleep. I sleep in a different room with a small fan blowing all night. I wake-up 2-3 times a night and turn off the TV in the other room to save electricity.
I am not sure but I seem to have a down side to this discussion. I do not hear dogs barking, partners snoring, or the weather radio when an alert sounds. MY son-in-law says that I could be murdered in my sleep and never know it. Before I retired, I had to set my radio to come on at full blast in the morning, however, on a few occasions, I have not heard the walls rocking for as long as two hours. Yet, I can hear the phone ring. It wakes me up.. Go figure.
I've had trouble falling to sleep / staying asleep for a couple years now. I noticed that sounds, light or movement wake me up so now I sleep by myself in a super dark room and with earplugs. That works most of the time! I can't have caffeine, sugar, or alcohol too close to bedtime or it hampers the onset and quality of sleep. If i were smart, I would cut those out altogether since I always sleep best when I stop intake of those three things for any length of time.
Wow... poor people. I can fall asleep any time, anywhere, under almost any circumstances. I sleep all night, I don't wake up for anything and have no problem waking up in the morning and feeling rested if I have had at least 8-9 hours. I literally can fall asleep anytime during the day if I just lay down and close my eyes. My wife on the other hand is one of these spindle addicts... she wakes up when a leaf rolls over outside.
Like Beth-389911 above, I too am a natural night owl. Doesn't matter how tired I am sometime around 9p.m. I am WIDE awake. I could clean house, bake, watch a movie, go out with friends! Anything but sleep. I have to wear myself out before bed just so I can sleep. But once I get to sleep, that's it! I'm out for the count. Dead to the world is what my husband and I call it. I sleep so deeply that we joke that a house fire would take me with it for sure. But it's probably true.