The paperback  In Pursuit of Sleep: The Origins of Insomnia and What to do about it is now published and available on Amazon. The digital version will be available in a week or two. –David Sheppard

You are not going to believe this. Last night I slept for 13 hours.

You read that right. I went to bed at 10:30 and woke up this morning at 11:30. I got up to go to the bathroom at 04:00, but went back to sleep immediately. I did wake, or at least entered hypnopompia, a couple of times following REM, but went back to sleep quickly. I did have to use the Coastal Transition Trek a couple of times, but I never got much past the beach. The time I spent in hynopompia, I was ruminating over a pleasant dream about a girl I was interested in (seems I was quite a bit younger), but I didn’t linger there. I believe I spent much of the time in deep sleep, which in light of yesterday’s post concerning deep sleep and Alzheimer’s, is a really good thing.

What enabled me to have such an amazing night?

I attribute some of it to not sleeping well the night before. However, I did well enough during the day, so it wasn’t as if I was really in trouble. As a matter of fact, I did have something hanging over my head that could have contributed to troubled sleep but didn’t. I found a problem with the graphics in In Pursuit of Sleep that may delay publication for a couple more days. I had converted the Illustrator files to jpgs because of a problem getting them to size right in the InDesign document. Not the thing to do. The illustrations are pale and when examined closely show pixilation. So I was worrying about that when I went to bed, but by using the Coastal Transition Trek, I was able to get to sleep quickly anyway. I woke fully only the once.

Of course, getting so much sleep can drag down the sleep propensity curve and cause me to not sleep very well in the nights ahead. We’ll see.

Very interesting article today on NPR. Seems that deep sleep may help ward off Alzheimer’s. Here’s the opening sentence, and it is a shocker:

There’s growing evidence that a lack of sleep can leave the brain vulnerable to Alzheimer’s disease.

But that is only part of the story, and for some people may not even be the most important part. At the end of the article, we get the following statement:

A lot of the sleep aids don’t particularly focus on driving people to deep sleep stages.

We have all read articles of people on hypnotic drugs like Ambien sleep waking, binge eating, and even driving their cars while sleeping. I am convinced that most people do not need to be drugged to get to sleep and stay there. That’s why I wrote In Pursuit of Sleep. Publication coming within the next couple of days.

Publication of In Pursuit of Sleep will occur in the next couple of days. Final edits are in the system with approval pending and should occur within 24 hours. The paperback will appear on Amazon within the next couple of days. The eBook will be published a week or two later. Lots of work ahead to get it into shape.

Here’s a perfect description of the modern insomnia problem: Maybe I Don’t Need Sleep. Lisa Katz says:

I cope with broken sleep. I have truly overwhelming exhaustion by three in the afternoon and the compulsive desire to be in my pajamas by 6PM… or really maybe 4PM.

I have been there. So have many of us. Lisa goes on to say:

I have tried a plethora of methods to help “clear my thoughts” in the middle of the night. There is a pen and notepad nestled by my bedside. There are Post-It Notes waiting to be peeled away from their cube should a thought pop into my head. Of course all of this is done in complete darkness. Light is the enemy if you think there is even a remote possibility of falling back asleep.

This is so familiar and so sad. I have a way through all this, one that will get you to sleep reliably every night, every time you wake, so that even though you may have a bad day, it won’t be because you didn’t get enough sleep.

Help is coming soon. In Pursuit of Sleep will be published in early January 2016.

Interesting article in the Huffington Post concerning using melatonin as a sleep aid. I took it myself for a month or so in hopes of warding off insomnia, but it didn’t seem to do anything to me at all. Turns out taking melatonin can be harmful. Here’s a quote from the article:

According to Dr. Wurtman, melatonin supplements may work at first, but soon “you’ll stop responding because you desensitize the brain. And as a consequence, not only won’t you respond to the stuff you take…you won’t respond to the stuff you make, so it can actually promote insomnia after a period of time.”

I have quit taking all substances that are supposed to help cure insomnia. I now use a mind directed approach to pursue sleep, and it works much better than any medication I’ve ever taken. I’ll divulge this little secret when I publish In Pursuit of Sleep in early January 2016.

Interesting article on NPR titled, “As Aging Brain’s Internal Clock Fades, A New Timekeeper May Kick In.” Here’s the operative paragraph:

We all have a set of so-called clock genes that keep us on a 24-hour cycle. In the morning they wind us up, and at night they help us wind down. A study out Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that those genes might beat to a different rhythm in older folks.

These clocks are instrumental in providing us with the propensity to sleep. All this will be explained in my new book In Pursuit of Sleep to be published in early January 2016.

This article in the New York Times addresses the issue of whether “sleep” obtained through sleeping pills does us any good at all. And here’s the shocking answer:

Dr. John Weyl Winkelman, a sleep disorders expert at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, said if a patient asked him whether medicated sleep was restorative, “I’d say: ‘You tell me.’”

So why are doctors writing so many prescriptions for sleep medication? It should come as no surprise that there’s a lot of money in selling pills to make people unconscious at night. People are desperate to get the proper amount of sleep so they can function efficiently the next day. No one knows if the pills actually provide any benefit to the person taking them. They sure help pay the bills for the pharmaceutical companies though. Couple this with the fact they doctors know little about how we go to sleep, and you get a good picture of the unfolding disaster for those suffering from insomnia.

Hopefully In Pursuit of Sleep will help those afflicted with insomnia get to sleep every night without medication. And the sleep you get by using the Transition Trek method provided in In Pursuit of Sleep is guaranteed to be restorative because it is nature sleep and not drug induced. Publication is set for early January 2016.

All the graphics are  complete, and we are now in the final stages of editing In Pursuit of Sleep. Should receive a review copy from the printer next week. Publication still scheduled for early to mid January 2016.

In this interview with Adele in the New York Times titled, “Adele on Love, Fame, Ego and ‘25’”, Adele says the following:

“I have trouble sleeping. When the lights go out and I’m left to my own mind, my mind goes to the worst places ever. When I’m left with my thoughts and my thoughts only, the smallest thing evolves into the biggest thing, so I get quite worried. So I go to bed when I’m tired, when I need to fall asleep. Otherwise I can make the biggest deal out of the tiniest thing. It’s like a fear of being left on my own in the dark.”

This is quite descriptive of the problem so many of us have getting to sleep. But after you read In Pursuit of Sleep you will no longer be left alone with your insomnia. You’ll have a method of getting rid of it by pursuing sleep instead of letting your mind “make the biggest deal out of the tiniest thing.” You will no longer be on your own.