BUFFALO, N.Y. (WBEN) Who better to talk about sleep solutions than a news correspondent who has worked early mornings, the graveyard shift, is a working mom, and former insomniac?
"It's such a common problem," said Diane Macedo,of ABC News and author
of 'The Sleep Fix'. She admits she struggled for years trying to get a good night's sleep and decided to attack the problem as a journalist, interviewing sleep experts from all over the world to get to the bottom of what is keeping so many of us from sleeping, and how to fix it.
"We often think of insomnia as the biggest problem, but it surprised me to find out how common other sleep disorders are," said Macedo.
Restless Leg Syndrome, Sleep Apnea and Narcolepsy are often thought of
as affecting a small group of people. But she said it's actually very common
and it's possible to have any of these conditions and not know it.
"Getting a good night's sleep is not a matter of following a set of rules to fall
asleep in five minutes. The key," she said, "is to find out what is keeping you awake." Chapter one is all about identifying the problem.
"When I was struggling with my own sleep problems, I was trying every sleep tip I could find and getting frustrated that they weren't helping me. That frustration made it even harder to fall asleep," she added.
One of the biggest myths is that everybody needs eight hours of sleep every night. "The idea that we all need the same amount of sleep is like saying we
all need the same amount of food. It's just not true," said Macedo.
"Rather than focus on the number of hours of sleep we're getting, it's more
about how we feel. There are a lot of people walking around right now with Sleep Apnea or Restless Leg Syndrome, or something else, and they think they couldn't possibly have a sleep disorder because they got their eight hours. What they don't realize is that their sleep has been disrupted all night long," she said.
If you feel you need a nap all day, or if you fall asleep in a waiting room or when you're watching TV in the middle of the day, those are signs that something is wrong. Macdeo said you should get it checked out.
On the flip side, if you wake up and have good energy levels all day, then you're probably getting enough sleep, even if it's not the recommended eight hours.
Many people go to bed watching a screen on a device. Macedo says screens emit blue light. Blue light is similar to daylight which tells your brain it's time to be awake. "You don't want that at night." Still, she says screens are a way to unwind at night and that we get a little too caught up in thinking that screens are killing our sleep. "Screens can provide a distraction to people who worry about their sleep.
What the screens are being used for, may be a bigger factor. Macedo suggests lowering the brightness of the blue light on the screen. And she said passive activity, such as watching a show, is better than something more mentally stimulating, such as responding to email, scrolling social media or playing video games.
There's also the grayscale trick. "Go to the colored filters setting on the device and change it to grayscale. Everything looks exactly the same, but the screen is now black and white. There's something in that that makes it less enticing to stay on the device, and do mindless scrolling for hours and hours."
Macedo says imagine calling in sick to work because you didn't get enough sleep? Society is not to that point yet. But she thinks there has been a societal shift where sleep used to be something for lazy people. Now, she says people are prioritizing sleep a little more.
"For me, as an insomniac, it was very frustrating to constantly hear about how valuable sleep was, because I was trying to get it, I just wasn't able to. I wrote the book for the people who are trying to sleep, and are unable to because they can't fall asleep or something is disrupting their sleep without them realizing it.
Macedo says there need to be other systemic changes such as having every dentist check for obstructive Sleep Apnea when they go in for a teeth cleaning. "There are often signs in the mouth that can indicate that someone has Sleep Apnea. But we don't get checked for things like that by our primary care physician or the dentist," she said. "If these things were detected sooner, it could literally save lives."
'The Sleep Fix' is published by HarperCollins.
