In August I blogged about research that found that it’s better to sleep on your side than on your back or stomach, because it enables the body to more easily remove waste that accumulates in the brain during the day. Click here for that!
Insomnia, of course, is a problem for many Parkies.
This week’s New Yorker has a funny article about various products you can buy that claim to help you fall asleep and stay asleep. Here’s a quote from the article that ties it to my August post:
Many scientists have come to believe that while we sleep the space between our neurons expands, allowing a cranial sewage network—the glymphatic system—to flush the brain of waste products that might otherwise not only prevent memory formation but muck up our mental machinery and perhaps eventually lead to Alzheimer’s. Failing to get enough sleep is like throwing a party and then firing the cleanup crew.
The oxymoronic aspect of this article is that it’s the opposite of a soporific. It’s so funny and upbeat that you end up feeling not drowsy but ready to put on roller skates.
Example:
It’s 2:49 A.M., more or less my bedtime, and I’m about to put on my Sleep Shepherd hat, a device designed to help the wearer go gentle into unconsciousness ($149.99). The hat is a stretchy black beanie, but where you might normally find a pompom there’s a plastic box the size of a Triscuit. If I were an alien, this would be the port through which I’d receive my instructions from the mother ship. The box has an on-off switch, and I’m going to turn it on so that the mechanism can commune with my head.
The hat measures activity in my cerebral cortex through three sensors sewn into the fabric—one covering each ear and a third handling the forehead. There are also built-in speakers that emit pulsing tones mimicking the frequencies of my brain waves. Gradually, the rhythm will slow down and, supposedly, so will my brain, entrained as if by a hypnotist. The noise sounds like the tone you’d expect to hear before a nuclear disaster. It’s supposed to be soothing, and, truth be told, I don’t mind it. The hat was invented by Michael Larson, a mechanical engineer at the University of Colorado. Larson told me, over the phone, that he came up with it to treat his daughter, who had an autoimmune disease that prevented her from getting enough deep sleep. The contraption apparently did the trick.
In my case, it’s hard to say whether it was the hat or causes non-millinery that ushered me into dreamland each of the nights I wore it: I always woke up to find the hat on the floor. But I don’t really have insomnia. Every so often, I will resort to counting sheep—actually, I count divorced couples I know, and sometimes, at 5 A.M., couples who should get divorced—but, in general, I do not want to fall asleep ever. I have spent my life staying up later than I should.
Hmmm…
In my case, I seem to have conquered my sleep issues. As long as I exercise four-five times a week and take my nighttime meds (nortriptyline and clonazepam), I’m fine. I still need to sleep on my left side so that my right hand can clench a balled-up T-shirt and rest palm side down on the mattress. If I sleep on my right side, my right hand keeps rising up off the mattress like a zombie.
Like a zombie…hmm…
You can stop reading now, or continue to read a complete-but-short (just one paragraph) fairy tale recorded by the Grimm brothers (and presented in another New Yorker article, this one about fairy tales, titled “Once Upon a Time“).
Warning: this is rough stuff! Venture below the line only if you dare!
Once upon a time there was a stubborn child who never did what his mother told him to do. The dear Lord, therefore, did not look kindly upon him, and let him become sick. No doctor could cure him and in a short time he lay on his deathbed. After he was lowered into his grave and covered over with earth, one of his little arms suddenly emerged and reached up into the air. They pushed it back down and covered the earth with fresh earth, but that did not help. The little arm kept popping out. So the child’s mother had to go to the grave herself and smack the little arm with a switch. After she had done that, the arm withdrew, and then, for the first time, the child had peace beneath the earth.
I guess that wouldn’t put you to sleep, either! So much for fairy tales before bedtime!
