Are you tired of waking up tired? You are not alone. We may have become super-productive in our fast-paced, always-connected, 24/7 society, but in exchange we lost something precious: our harmonious connection to sleep, a natural biological function integral to our overall health, wellness, and well-being.
The new and unraveling science of sleep tells us that sleep impacts everything from anxiety and creativity to productivity and longevity. We also now know it’s an essential pillar of health—perhaps even more important than nutrition and exercise.
Dr. Abhinav Singh is a physician with a keen interest in preventive medicine, and he firmly believes that better sleep equals better health. No matter your age, this book will help you revolutionize your patterns on a daily basis and support you on a renewed journey toward better sleep, better health, and ultimately a better life—not just for tonight but for a lifetime.
No matter your goal—better sleep, losing weight, or simply feeling more patient around loved ones—it is never too late for a sleep reboot. Based on scientific research and 15 years of clinical experience from a double board-certified sleep physician who has taught the art of sleep to more than 7,000 patients, SLEEP TO HEAL will forever reshape the way you think about sleep, and give you the strategies and tools you need to transform your life from the inside out—one peaceful night at a time.
REFRESH, RESTORE, AND REVITALIZE YOUR LIFE TODAY!
Are you tired of waking up tired? You are not alone. We may have become super-productive in our fast-paced, always-connected, 24/7 society, but in exchange we lost something precious: our harmonious connection to sleep, a natural biological function integral to our overall health, wellness, and well-being.
The new and unraveling science of sleep tells us that sleep impacts everything from anxiety and creativity to productivity and longevity. We also now know it’s an essential pillar of health—perhaps even more important than nutrition and exercise.
Dr. Abhinav Singh is a physician with a keen interest in preventive medicine, and he firmly believes that better sleep equals better health. No matter your age, this book will help you revolutionize your patterns on a daily basis and support you on a renewed journey toward better sleep, better health, and ultimately a better life—not just for tonight but for a lifetime.
No matter your goal—better sleep, losing weight, or simply feeling more patient around loved ones—it is never too late for a sleep reboot. Based on scientific research and 15 years of clinical experience from a double board-certified sleep physician who has taught the art of sleep to more than 7,000 patients, SLEEP TO HEAL will forever reshape the way you think about sleep, and give you the strategies and tools you need to transform your life from the inside out—one peaceful night at a time.
REFRESH, RESTORE, AND REVITALIZE YOUR LIFE TODAY!
Sleep to Heal: 7 Simple Steps to Better Sleep
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Sleep to Heal: 7 Simple Steps to Better Sleep
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Overview
Are you tired of waking up tired? You are not alone. We may have become super-productive in our fast-paced, always-connected, 24/7 society, but in exchange we lost something precious: our harmonious connection to sleep, a natural biological function integral to our overall health, wellness, and well-being.
The new and unraveling science of sleep tells us that sleep impacts everything from anxiety and creativity to productivity and longevity. We also now know it’s an essential pillar of health—perhaps even more important than nutrition and exercise.
Dr. Abhinav Singh is a physician with a keen interest in preventive medicine, and he firmly believes that better sleep equals better health. No matter your age, this book will help you revolutionize your patterns on a daily basis and support you on a renewed journey toward better sleep, better health, and ultimately a better life—not just for tonight but for a lifetime.
No matter your goal—better sleep, losing weight, or simply feeling more patient around loved ones—it is never too late for a sleep reboot. Based on scientific research and 15 years of clinical experience from a double board-certified sleep physician who has taught the art of sleep to more than 7,000 patients, SLEEP TO HEAL will forever reshape the way you think about sleep, and give you the strategies and tools you need to transform your life from the inside out—one peaceful night at a time.
REFRESH, RESTORE, AND REVITALIZE YOUR LIFE TODAY!
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781630062347 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Humanix Books |
| Publication date: | 06/27/2023 |
| Pages: | 275 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.00(d) |
About the Author
After receiving his medical degree, Dr. Singh completed an internship and residency in Internal Medicine through the University of Illinois in Chicago at St. Joseph Hospital. He then completed a fellowship in Sleep Medicine at Northwestern University. Prior to residency, he served as Research Assistant at the Center for Narcolepsy and Sleep Research at the University of Illinois at Chicago for four years.
Currently, Dr. Singh serves as Medical Director at the Indiana Sleep Center, accredited by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. He also is a Clinical Assistant Professor at Marian UniversityCollege of Medicine, where he developed and teaches a Sleep Medicine rotation to medical students, and a preceptor and mentor of the Nurse Practitioner program at the University of Indianapolis. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and a member of the American College of Physicians, as well as the American Medical Association.
Dr. Singh’s research focuses on (but is not limited to) all kinds of sleep disorders, including excessive daytime sleepiness, narcolepsy, sleep apnea, and chronic snoring. Dr. Singh is an editor for Sleep Watchers, a quarterly newsletter from the Indiana Sleep Center, and a peer reviewer for the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, Sleep Health (journal of the National Sleep Foundation), and the Journal of Sleep Disorders: Treatment and Care.
Dr. Singh has spoken at global conferences and written for several research publications, consulted for the NBA team the Indiana Pacers, and has been a part of many clinical trials relating to his specialty. He also serves on multiple advisory boards, including the prestigious National Sleep Foundation, and has been widely quoted in the media, including Martha Stewart Living, HuffPost, Washington Post, CNET, MSN, Yahoo! Life, Healthline, and other popular consumer lifestyle websites. Dr Singh lives & works in the greater Indianapolis metro area.
CHARLOTTE JENSEN is a writer and editor specializing in technology, marketing, business, and the arts. For more than a decade, Jensen worked as senior writer, articles editor, and executive editor for Entrepreneur magazine, where she took a leading role in shaping editorial content and direction for the award-winning national consumer magazine and its readership of 1.2 million.
Jensen’s work has been featured in HuffPost, AOL Small Business, and a variety of small-business websites, and she is currently a copy editor for luxe lifestyle brand RH (Restoration Hardware), a contributing writer to The Forecast by Nutanix, and a copy editor for publications by Segerstrom Center for the Arts, a world-class performing arts center in Orange County, California. She has also provided first-draft edits for several nonfiction books, including Fight Cancer With Vitamins and Supplements: A Guide to Prevention and Treatment (Healing Arts Press). Jensen has a B.A. in Journalism from California State University, Long Beach. Jensen lives & works in the San Francisco metro area.
Read an Excerpt
TABLE OF CONTENTS to SLEEP TO HEAL: 7 Simple Steps to Better Sleep by Dr. Abhinav Singh with Charlotte Jensen
Foreword by Bill Buffie, MD
Introduction
Part I: Unlocking the Secrets of Sleep
- Sleep: An Enduring Mystery
- The Hidden Truths of Sleep Loss
- The Sleep-Success Connection
Part II: The Rx Factor: Sleep Is Medicine
- The Best Kind of “Brainwashing”
- 50 Ways Sleep Makes You Happy
- The ABCs of Zzzs: Children’s Health and Sleep
- Aging, and Sleeping, Gracefully
Part III: What Does Better Sleep Look Like?
- While You Were Sleeping . . . during the Pandemic
- Fall in Love with Sleep Again
- The Easy Sleep Reset
- Cash in Your 13.5 Million
Sleep Lexicon
Notes
Acknowledgments
Index
About the Authors
INTRODUCTION to SLEEP TO HEAL: 7 Simple Steps to Better Sleep by Dr. Abhinav Singh with Charlotte Jensen
When people think of a sleep physician, the image that comes to mind isn’t of someone who steps through crowded city streets, knocking on strangers’ doors. But in some kind of wonderful and destined way, that’s exactly how I started out on this fascinating journey—and ultimately what led me to where I am today, as one of only around 2,000 sleep specialists in the United States granted fellowship in the American Academy of Sleep Medicine.
Back in the late 1990s, not long after Bombay became officially known as Mumbai, I was a young medical student with no direction yet in which field to specialize. Surgery? No, that didn’t interest me. Cardiac? Not my thing. All my peers at Topiwala National Medical College, Nair Hospital, were fascinated by complex diseases and anatomy, but me, not as much. My draw to medicine came from somewhere else: For one thing, I could be the first doctor in my family. That was appealing. But even deeper than that, this idea of health tugged at me more than disease. Public health—not just here in Mumbai, or even India, but globally. I wanted to find a way to bring health to the world.
This realization didn’t begin to take shape until, as part of my training, I worked to help vaccinate the city’s population against polio. In India, preventive medicine finally makes its way into the medical school curriculum in a student’s final year, and for me, that coincided with a huge campaign to achieve mass immunity. Polio was eradicated in the United States in 1979, but when I was still a student in India, this important milestone had yet to be reached. In fact, it didn’t even happen until years later, in 2014.
And so in 2001, I found myself with a few other medical students winding my way through narrow alleyways and streets, stepping over garbage, and knocking on doors in the poorest neighborhoods of Mumbai. My hope was that the concerned mothers who opened those doors, clutching their babies and with curious faces peeking out from behind their saris, would give me a chance and hear what I had to say. They all conveyed the same worries: “Why should I let you do this? What is this?” It was not lost on me how immensely important this job was and that I must calm their fears. Not just so that I could squeeze some life- giving drops into hundreds of little mouths but because if I could explain polio vaccination to every mother effectively, in a way she could understand, she would then tell her family, and then they would tell their families, and so on.
One patient at a time is not an efficient way of improving public health. But what if there could be a domino effect, with this one tiny spark of awareness spreading exponentially? I got really excited thinking about this idea of eradicating polio and making the whole society healthy! I call this 360 degrees of awareness, a philosophy I’m passionate about and that you will learn more about in this book.
Awakening to Sleep
By the time I made my way to the United States in the fall of 2002 to get my master’s in public health at the University of Illinois at Chicago, sleep medicine as a specialty still hadn’t crossed my mind. I had no idea the subject could be so fascinating. Medical schools hardly even touch it—we had just two lectures on sleep, and the second one I ducked out of because it was the “easy, boring one” that everyone just skipped. (Yes, I am laughing at my young self right now.)
I also didn’t know until I arrived on campus that in just a couple of weeks after stepping off the plane at O’Hare, my first bill for $16,000 in tuition would be due. What?! My medical school in India had been basically free! I had taken out a loan to buy my plane ticket, and here I was running dangerously low on the remainder.
My sister, who worked in tech locally, advised me to look for a research assistant position that might help me pay some bills and maybe even some tuition. I scrambled and printed 80 resumes and slid them under various faculty office doors. (Job hunting was still done the old-fashioned way at this time.) A few places called; most didn’t. I desperately needed something, but nothing panned out.
Until the sleep lab at the Center for Narcolepsy, Sleep, and Health Research called me back.
And so, with three days left to find a way to earn some money, I found myself sitting across from a prominent researcher who asked me point-blank, “What do you know about sleep?”
I paused for a few seconds, knowing I had to ace this answer. I had a $110,000 degree to pay for. On the wall behind her was some framed artwork depicting the human brain, and as I stared at it, I realized that my brain knew very little about sleep. But surely I couldn’t tell her that! If only I had attended that sleep lecture back in medical school.
I said, “Not much . . . but I know we all need it.” I couldn’t give the answer she was looking for, but it was the truth. The confidence I conveyed hid my feelings inside, and I envisioned my chances for a scholarship and my dream life in America slowly slipping away.
She smiled and said, “Using your medical background, would you be interested in helping us recruit patients with sleep disorders?”
“Yes!”
“Great! We will be able to take care of your grad school fees this semester.”
I thought, Wait a second: What exactly does “take care of” mean? Stunned and filled with joy, I had no words. My mind scrambled, trying to convert dollars into rupees: 16,000 × 50 is . . . how much exactly?
Concerned I had said nothing and thinking it might not be enough for me, she added, “How about we add a stipend of $800 a month for 20 hours a week?
”Coming back to my senses, I realized I had just hit a giant jackpot. “Wow! That is so kind!” I said. We shook hands, and she asked me to show up at the sleep research center later that week for orientation.
And so began my first baby steps into this enchanting universe of sleep. I learned a ton and spent long hours reviewing polysomnograms (sleep studies that gather data from your brain and body during sleep) and patient sleep questionnaires and interviewing thousands of patients with sleep disorders for the center’s research. My work there meant my entire tuition for the next three years would be paid for in full—except that I almost blew the whole thing a few months later . . . when I fell asleep on the job in front of my boss and the patient in the sleep lab because I was so sleep deprived. (In my defense, the 20-minute sleep study was happening in a dark room while I had to relax in a recliner. But still!)
Here’s the thing about sleep: Just as I answered in my interview, we do all need it. Each and every one of us. As you will see throughout this book, but especially in chapter 2, depriving your body and mind of sleep can mean any number of negative consequences—including falling asleep at the exact wrong time.
As for me, I walked out of the lab that day with the heaviest heart. Here I was, finally living my dream. I’d stepped inside my own real-life version of Chicago Hope, my favorite TV show when I lived in India. And now my sleep deprivation was on the verge of depriving me of my biggest dream. I probably would have lost everything had I zonked out while working in any other specialty: Neurology. Anesthesiology. Emergency room medicine. You name it.
But I didn’t. My boss at the time was very understanding. He tapped me on the shoulder to wake me and suggested I should probably go to my next class so I wouldn’t be late. He knew I was this young, busy medical student exhausted by the university–sleep lab–study–library cycle. But that’s when I realized for myself that something had to change. I could never make that mistake again. I had also begun to understand firsthand, in my work from interviewing our sleep subjects, how sleep disorders could really capsize people’s lives. But I also saw how the right treatments led to incredible transformations. And so I took protecting my sleep seriously and to heart from that point on. Something I hope you, too, take away from this book.
I knew sleep was my calling when I got the golden opportunity to join one of the nation’s finest sleep medicine fellowship training programs at Northwestern Universityunder the direction of my mentor, Phyllis Zee, MD, PhD. An internationally recognized researcher, Dr. Zee is a prominent thought leader in the field of sleep medicine and a physician with a passion for teaching. My final year of training convinced me: This is it! Sleep medicine is my dream career!
13.5 Million Minutes
As we continue to make exciting discoveries in the field of sleep science, I see an awakening dawning for all of us as the idea that better sleep equals a more fulfilling life becomes more widespread. You don’t need to be suffering from a sleep disorder to benefit from this book—although if you are, you will. All of us can revitalize our health and happiness simply by optimizing the quality and quantity of our sleep. Optimal sleep is like installing guardrails before a disorder has a chance to creep in. It’s your head-to-toe invisible armor that always works to protect you from ill health. Sleep will not just prevent a multitude of ailments, both mental and physical, but also assist in healing, and in ways we don’t fully understand. It’s so magnificent to think about how every cell of your body gets a “car wash and detail” while you sleep. (More about this in chapter 4.) And that’s just the beginning.
In my speeches, I like to talk about this idea of sleep as a mutual fund, where the goal is to deposit 13.5 million minutes ($13.5 million) over the years of your life and reap health dividends. That number, 13.5 million, is the magic number of minutes we should all hopefully sleep in an average lifetime of around 80 years.
You can think of it another way too: What if sleep was like a hotel you check into every night? You can check into the $500-per-night five-star hotel (500 minutes = 8.3 hours) or the $250-per-night two- star motel (250 minutes = 4.1 hours). Which hotel would you rather sleep in? If you’re like most of us, the $500-per-night hotel looks more comfortable. It’s the fancier one with a better bed, fluffier pillows, and softer sheets, in the prime part of town. It’s the one that ensures a beautiful night’s rest. Although $500 adds up to a little more than eight hours per night of sleep, don’t even think about shaving off a few dollars (or minutes) here: It’s your tip for good service!
This book will change not just the way you sleep but also the way you think about sleep. Part of that is accomplished through the two dozen case studies I share in the chapters to follow—success stories from my actual patients (names have been changed) with sleep challenges similar to those you might face now. You’ll meet real people suffering from sleep disorders both rare and familiar—including snoring, insomnia, and sleep apnea—and learn how I came to help them when they had almost given up all hope.
Patients like Audrey, the concert violinist who taught at a prestigious university’s school of music, who had suffered from insomnia for years and taken increasing amounts of prescription medications with no consistent success. Or Sam, the otherwise healthy general surgeon working long hours who came to see me because his snoring was so thunderous, his wife had relegated him to the couch. Or Vivienne, whose strange behavior of unknowingly shopping in her sleep—for $7,000 pairs of designer shoes that were not even in her size (!)—was brought on by the high doses of sedatives she took to correct her insomnia. The expensive problem was depleting both her sleep bank and her bank account!
And I’ll never forget Mark—an electrician who hadn’t slept well for 15 years after being diagnosed with severe obstructive sleep apnea and fitted with a CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) device (which he hated, by the way). After seeing three sleep doctors, participating in three sleep studies, and even undergoing a few difficult surgeries to correct the problem, he was still struggling when he showed up in my office. Thankfully, I was finally able to help him (you will learn how in chapter 9)—and he now sleeps peacefully for the first time in over a decade. These are just a few of the many examples I share with you in this book.
Those of you with a history of difficult sleeping may have a hard time looking forward to bedtime. I get it, and I see that in my patients all the time. With that in mind, I also aim to transform the way you feel when those first rays of early morning sun stream in through your window. This book will help you embrace (and dare I say love?) sleep again and show you how to form positive associations with night settling in. It will give you a new appreciation for sleep, which is available for free to all of us.
No matter your age, this book will help you revolutionize your patterns on a daily basis and support you on a renewed journey toward better sleep, better health, and ultimately a better life—not just for tonight but for a lifetime. This is especially relevant now that we’ve experienced the COVID-19 pandemic, when professional and personal stressors negatively impacted our sleep, thereby throwing off our sleep rhythms and weakening our immune systems, leaving us even more vulnerable to the virus. (Turn to chapter 8 for more on the pandemic’s global impacts on sleep.)
And so here I find myself yet again “knocking” on doors (in a way) with this book, hoping to bring preventive health awareness to my readers, educate the masses, push the field to more prominence, and inspire the next generation of bright minds. Except this time, instead of evangelizing the benefits of polio eradication, it’s sleep. For me, it always comes back to sleep.
You have 13.5 million shots at an amazing transformation. Are you ready to really sleep . . . and wake up to your dream life?
Dr. Abhinav Singh
Sleep Vigilante
from CHAPTER ONE to SLEEP TO HEAL: 7 Simple Steps to Better Sleep by Dr. Abhinav Singh with Charlotte Jensen
PART I: UNLOCKING THE SECRETS OF SLEEP
Chapter 1 Sleep: An Enduring Mystery
Sleep Vigilanteism: Show me something with better terms and conditions for the consumer than sleep.
Transforming Night Into Day
No one realizes it at the time, but at precisely 3 o’clock on September 4, 1882, one of sleep’s greatest enemies bolts into the world.
That enemy, we now know, is artificial light. When Thomas Edison hit the switch for his Pearl Street power plant that late summer day, lighting up a single square mile in Manhattan for the very first time, he forever altered the way we live, work, travel, dine, entertain … and sleep.
Electric lighting now powers economies, illuminates cities, and lets us shoot hoops late into the night if we want to. But this dazzling invention also has a dark side (as enemies do): It suppresses melatonin, upends our circadian rhythm, and robs our body of sleep, one of the most precious life-giving biological processes we have. Except we didn’t really know that until recently. We spent generations discounting sleep until around 2000 or so, when scientists finally clued into how essential sleep is to our brain health, to our hearts, to our overall health and well-being. We are still learning more every day.
In the past, people usually slept a predictable set of hours, unencumbered by glowing screens and bulbs. Before the dawn of billboards and blinking TVs, most of humanity lived and slept by the natural rhythm of a rising and setting sun. People woke and stretched at dawn and turned in after dark. President Abraham Lincoln (who reportedly had trouble sleeping, especially during the Civil War) probably suffered from insomnia and worked late into the night by dim candlelight. The universal lack of light placed limitations on what we could accomplish in a day. And so our modern ancestors—post Industrial Revolution, and pre the discovery and mass commercialization of artificial light—generally luxuriated in an hour or more of sleep per night than we get now. (That’s 365 more hours of sleep per year.)
Every single day, I witness the detrimental effects of artificial light on my patients. We work so hard every day to raise our family and find success in our work, that before we know it, we have exchanged sleep for productivity and entertainment—but at a terrible cost.
Meet James, one of my patients, a talented jeweler and watchmaker. People don’t usually seek out help from a sleep doctor like me until they’ve tried everything, they’re desperate, and nothing seems to work. And so often it’s because somebody complains that they snore—as was the case with James.
Every night, James would go to bed at 10 p.m., but he’d toss and turn, miserably awake, staring at the clock until 2 or 3 a.m., only for the alarm to jolt him up at 6. He logged just three hours of sleep a night, and the severe lack had started to take its toll. When he came to me, he felt crummy all the time. He was constantly tired, but not sleepy. (There’s an important distinction to be made here, between tired and sleepy, which I will discuss more in this book.) James was anxious, depressed, and diagnosed with ADD. He had chest pains and popped a cocktail of meds prescribed by his doctor to try to alleviate the whole host of health issues invading his body.
I soon learned why sleep evaded him night after night. You see, James worked with a high-end clientele, and the labor to produce and repair fine jewelry requires meticulous manual work that must be done by hand. Although his store closed at 7 p.m., in order to have the pieces ready the next day, he spent the last hours of his workday toiling under bright lights and peering through magnifying glasses. Instead of winding down when the sun set, he beautified sparkling rings and necklaces—and put immense strain on his eyes and brain. You simply cannot prepare your body for sleep when you spend your evening hours soaking up artificial light and straining your eyes.
After breaking it down together and rethinking his nightly pattern, we were able to reset his sleep routine once and for all, much like the plan you will learn about in Chapter 10. He followed my advice and is doing so much better now. Once he rediscovered his body’s natural ability to sleep, his health improved—and he got off a majority of the meds. The moral of the story is we all need sleep to heal, and your body will let you know if that daily essential healing is not taking place.
If you are holding this book in your hands, you know that high-quality, healthy sleep is in short supply. You also probably neglect it more than you should; we all do. For most of our lives, working instead of sleeping has been glorified. Resting instead of living was deemed lazy. Every single day we make culturally accepted choices that negatively impact our sleep. And those choices then cement into habits. Read emails until midnight? Of course. Watch movies till 2? Sure. Pull an all-nighter in The City That Never Sleeps? Can’t wait!
Setting aside 8-10 hours every night for sleep feels old-fashioned, doesn’t it? How will we get anything done if we sleep all the time? Even Edison, who was awarded more than 1,000 patents in his lifetime, reportedly referred to sleep as “a heritage from our cave days,” according to bestselling author James Maas in his book Power Sleep. Edison kind of had a point: On its surface, anyway, sleep doesn’t really make sense. Until you look deeper.
Table of Contents
TABLE OF CONTENTS to SLEEP TO HEAL: 7 Simple Steps to Better Sleep by Dr. Abhinav Singh with Charlotte JensenForeword by Bill Buffie, MD
Introduction
Part I: Unlocking the Secrets of Sleep
- Sleep: An Enduring Mystery
- The Hidden Truths of Sleep Loss
- The Sleep-Success Connection
Part II: The Rx Factor: Sleep Is Medicine
- The Best Kind of “Brainwashing”
- 50 Ways Sleep Makes You Happy
- The ABCs of Zzzs: Children’s Health and Sleep
- Aging, and Sleeping, Gracefully
Part III: What Does Better Sleep Look Like?
- While You Were Sleeping . . . during the Pandemic
- Fall in Love with Sleep Again
- The Easy Sleep Reset
- Cash in Your 13.5 Million
Sleep Lexicon
Notes
Acknowledgments
Index
About the Authors
Preface
When people think of a sleep physician, the image that comes to mind isn’t of someone who steps through crowded city streets, knocking on strangers’ doors. But in some kind of wonderful and destined way, that’s exactly how I started out on this fascinating journey—and ultimately what led me to where I am today, as one of only around 2,000 sleep specialists in the United States granted fellowship in the American Academy of Sleep Medicine.
Back in the late 1990s, not long after Bombay became officially known as Mumbai, I was a young medical student with no direction yet in which field to specialize. Surgery? No, that didn’t interest me. Cardiac? Not my thing. All my peers at Topiwala National Medical College, Nair Hospital, were fascinated by complex diseases and anatomy, but me, not as much. My draw to medicine came from somewhere else: For one thing, I could be the first doctor in my family. That was appealing. But even deeper than that, this idea of health tugged at me more than disease. Public health—not just here in Mumbai, or even India, but globally. I wanted to find a way to bring health to the world.
This realization didn’t begin to take shape until, as part of my training, I worked to help vaccinate the city’s population against polio. In India, preventive medicine finally makes its way into the medical school curriculum in a student’s final year, and for me, that coincided with a huge campaign to achieve mass immunity. Polio was eradicated in the United States in 1979, but when I was still a student in India, this important milestone had yet to be reached. In fact, it didn’t even happen until years later, in 2014.
And so in 2001, I found myself with a few other medical students winding my way through narrow alleyways and streets, stepping over garbage, and knocking on doors in the poorest neighborhoods of Mumbai. My hope was that the concerned mothers who opened those doors, clutching their babies and with curious faces peeking out from behind their saris, would give me a chance and hear what I had to say. They all conveyed the same worries: “Why should I let you do this? What is this?” It was not lost on me how immensely important this job was and that I must calm their fears. Not just so that I could squeeze some life- giving drops into hundreds of little mouths but because if I could explain polio vaccination to every mother effectively, in a way she could understand, she would then tell her family, and then they would tell their families, and so on.
One patient at a time is not an efficient way of improving public health. But what if there could be a domino effect, with this one tiny spark of awareness spreading exponentially? I got really excited thinking about this idea of eradicating polio and making the whole society healthy! I call this 360 degrees of awareness, a philosophy I’m passionate about and that you will learn more about in this book.
Awakening to Sleep
By the time I made my way to the United States in the fall of 2002 to get my master’s in public health at the University of Illinois at Chicago, sleep medicine as a specialty still hadn’t crossed my mind. I had no idea the subject could be so fascinating. Medical schools hardly even touch it—we had just two lectures on sleep, and the second one I ducked out of because it was the “easy, boring one” that everyone just skipped. (Yes, I am laughing at my young self right now.)
I also didn’t know until I arrived on campus that in just a couple of weeks after stepping off the plane at O’Hare, my first bill for $16,000 in tuition would be due. What?! My medical school in India had been basically free! I had taken out a loan to buy my plane ticket, and here I was running dangerously low on the remainder.
My sister, who worked in tech locally, advised me to look for a research assistant position that might help me pay some bills and maybe even some tuition. I scrambled and printed 80 resumes and slid them under various faculty office doors. (Job hunting was still done the old-fashioned way at this time.) A few places called; most didn’t. I desperately needed something, but nothing panned out.
Until the sleep lab at the Center for Narcolepsy, Sleep, and Health Research called me back.
And so, with three days left to find a way to earn some money, I found myself sitting across from a prominent researcher who asked me point-blank, “What do you know about sleep?”
I paused for a few seconds, knowing I had to ace this answer. I had a $110,000 degree to pay for. On the wall behind her was some framed artwork depicting the human brain, and as I stared at it, I realized that my brain knew very little about sleep. But surely I couldn’t tell her that! If only I had attended that sleep lecture back in medical school.
I said, “Not much . . . but I know we all need it.” I couldn’t give the answer she was looking for, but it was the truth. The confidence I conveyed hid my feelings inside, and I envisioned my chances for a scholarship and my dream life in America slowly slipping away.
She smiled and said, “Using your medical background, would you be interested in helping us recruit patients with sleep disorders?”
“Yes!”
“Great! We will be able to take care of your grad school fees this semester.”
I thought, Wait a second: What exactly does “take care of” mean? Stunned and filled with joy, I had no words. My mind scrambled, trying to convert dollars into rupees: 16,000 × 50 is . . . how much exactly?
Concerned I had said nothing and thinking it might not be enough for me, she added, “How about we add a stipend of $800 a month for 20 hours a week?
”Coming back to my senses, I realized I had just hit a giant jackpot. “Wow! That is so kind!” I said. We shook hands, and she asked me to show up at the sleep research center later that week for orientation.
And so began my first baby steps into this enchanting universe of sleep. I learned a ton and spent long hours reviewing polysomnograms (sleep studies that gather data from your brain and body during sleep) and patient sleep questionnaires and interviewing thousands of patients with sleep disorders for the center’s research. My work there meant my entire tuition for the next three years would be paid for in full—except that I almost blew the whole thing a few months later . . . when I fell asleep on the job in front of my boss and the patient in the sleep lab because I was so sleep deprived. (In my defense, the 20-minute sleep study was happening in a dark room while I had to relax in a recliner. But still!)
Here’s the thing about sleep: Just as I answered in my interview, we do all need it. Each and every one of us. As you will see throughout this book, but especially in chapter 2, depriving your body and mind of sleep can mean any number of negative consequences—including falling asleep at the exact wrong time.
As for me, I walked out of the lab that day with the heaviest heart. Here I was, finally living my dream. I’d stepped inside my own real-life version of Chicago Hope, my favorite TV show when I lived in India. And now my sleep deprivation was on the verge of depriving me of my biggest dream. I probably would have lost everything had I zonked out while working in any other specialty: Neurology. Anesthesiology. Emergency room medicine. You name it.
But I didn’t. My boss at the time was very understanding. He tapped me on the shoulder to wake me and suggested I should probably go to my next class so I wouldn’t be late. He knew I was this young, busy medical student exhausted by the university–sleep lab–study–library cycle. But that’s when I realized for myself that something had to change. I could never make that mistake again. I had also begun to understand firsthand, in my work from interviewing our sleep subjects, how sleep disorders could really capsize people’s lives. But I also saw how the right treatments led to incredible transformations. And so I took protecting my sleep seriously and to heart from that point on. Something I hope you, too, take away from this book.
I knew sleep was my calling when I got the golden opportunity to join one of the nation’s finest sleep medicine fellowship training programs at Northwestern Universityunder the direction of my mentor, Phyllis Zee, MD, PhD. An internationally recognized researcher, Dr. Zee is a prominent thought leader in the field of sleep medicine and a physician with a passion for teaching. My final year of training convinced me: This is it! Sleep medicine is my dream career!
13.5 Million Minutes
As we continue to make exciting discoveries in the field of sleep science, I see an awakening dawning for all of us as the idea that better sleep equals a more fulfilling life becomes more widespread. You don’t need to be suffering from a sleep disorder to benefit from this book—although if you are, you will. All of us can revitalize our health and happiness simply by optimizing the quality and quantity of our sleep. Optimal sleep is like installing guardrails before a disorder has a chance to creep in. It’s your head-to-toe invisible armor that always works to protect you from ill health. Sleep will not just prevent a multitude of ailments, both mental and physical, but also assist in healing, and in ways we don’t fully understand. It’s so magnificent to think about how every cell of your body gets a “car wash and detail” while you sleep. (More about this in chapter 4.) And that’s just the beginning.
In my speeches, I like to talk about this idea of sleep as a mutual fund, where the goal is to deposit 13.5 million minutes ($13.5 million) over the years of your life and reap health dividends. That number, 13.5 million, is the magic number of minutes we should all hopefully sleep in an average lifetime of around 80 years.
You can think of it another way too: What if sleep was like a hotel you check into every night? You can check into the $500-per-night five-star hotel (500 minutes = 8.3 hours) or the $250-per-night two- star motel (250 minutes = 4.1 hours). Which hotel would you rather sleep in? If you’re like most of us, the $500-per-night hotel looks more comfortable. It’s the fancier one with a better bed, fluffier pillows, and softer sheets, in the prime part of town. It’s the one that ensures a beautiful night’s rest. Although $500 adds up to a little more than eight hours per night of sleep, don’t even think about shaving off a few dollars (or minutes) here: It’s your tip for good service!
This book will change not just the way you sleep but also the way you think about sleep. Part of that is accomplished through the two dozen case studies I share in the chapters to follow—success stories from my actual patients (names have been changed) with sleep challenges similar to those you might face now. You’ll meet real people suffering from sleep disorders both rare and familiar—including snoring, insomnia, and sleep apnea—and learn how I came to help them when they had almost given up all hope.
Patients like Audrey, the concert violinist who taught at a prestigious university’s school of music, who had suffered from insomnia for years and taken increasing amounts of prescription medications with no consistent success. Or Sam, the otherwise healthy general surgeon working long hours who came to see me because his snoring was so thunderous, his wife had relegated him to the couch. Or Vivienne, whose strange behavior of unknowingly shopping in her sleep—for $7,000 pairs of designer shoes that were not even in her size (!)—was brought on by the high doses of sedatives she took to correct her insomnia. The expensive problem was depleting both her sleep bank and her bank account!
And I’ll never forget Mark—an electrician who hadn’t slept well for 15 years after being diagnosed with severe obstructive sleep apnea and fitted with a CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) device (which he hated, by the way). After seeing three sleep doctors, participating in three sleep studies, and even undergoing a few difficult surgeries to correct the problem, he was still struggling when he showed up in my office. Thankfully, I was finally able to help him (you will learn how in chapter 9)—and he now sleeps peacefully for the first time in over a decade. These are just a few of the many examples I share with you in this book.
Those of you with a history of difficult sleeping may have a hard time looking forward to bedtime. I get it, and I see that in my patients all the time. With that in mind, I also aim to transform the way you feel when those first rays of early morning sun stream in through your window. This book will help you embrace (and dare I say love?) sleep again and show you how to form positive associations with night settling in. It will give you a new appreciation for sleep, which is available for free to all of us.
No matter your age, this book will help you revolutionize your patterns on a daily basis and support you on a renewed journey toward better sleep, better health, and ultimately a better life—not just for tonight but for a lifetime. This is especially relevant now that we’ve experienced the COVID-19 pandemic, when professional and personal stressors negatively impacted our sleep, thereby throwing off our sleep rhythms and weakening our immune systems, leaving us even more vulnerable to the virus. (Turn to chapter 8 for more on the pandemic’s global impacts on sleep.)
And so here I find myself yet again “knocking” on doors (in a way) with this book, hoping to bring preventive health awareness to my readers, educate the masses, push the field to more prominence, and inspire the next generation of bright minds. Except this time, instead of evangelizing the benefits of polio eradication, it’s sleep. For me, it always comes back to sleep.
You have 13.5 million shots at an amazing transformation. Are you ready to really sleep . . . and wake up to your dream life?
Dr. Abhinav Singh
Sleep Vigilante