May/June 2001
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SLEEPING SOUNDLY:
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Sleeping and waking are inextricably linked. Symptoms of sleep disorders often show up in the daytime. People with sleep problems and even some physicians may fail to make the connection between nighttime events and daytime symptoms, so a disorder's diagnosis may be missed or delayed. To improve sleep, Ambrogetti says, people often must modify their daytime behavior. A physician with a special interest in sleep and respiratory medicine, Ambrogetti directs the sleep disorders center at the Royal Newcastle Hospital in Newcastle, Australia. His book begins with a discussion of the sleep cycle and the techniques used to study sleep in the laboratory. Drawings of the brain, photos of a subject wired for a night's study, and printouts of brain waves enhance the explanatory text. In a chapter on sleep-related disturbances of breathing, Ambrogetti notes that one in five people snore almost every night, men four times as often as women. Snoring on its own is mainly a social problem, he says; women are more likely than men to complain of their bedpartner's snoring. For those found to have sleep apnea--pauses in breathing that may occur dozens, even hundreds of times a night--weight reduction is an important treatment, but difficult to achieve. In discussing insomnia, Ambrogetti emphasizes that it is a symptom, not a disease, and that treatment needs to focus on insomnia's causes, not simply on troubled sleep. He discusses both psychological and medical causes. The latter include asthma, heart failure, chronic back pain, and other common illnesses, as well as the medications used to treat these illnesses. A useful table lists some of these medications. In other chapters, Ambrogetti reviews other common sleep disorders including the restless legs syndrome, narcolepsy, sleepwalking, sleep terrors, bruxism, and sleep problems in children. He also discusses jet lag, shiftwork, and other activities that disrupt the timing of sleep, and the adverse impact of sleep disorders on driving. Finally, he reviews current understanding of the functions of dreams. This conversationally written book is a good introduction to sleep and its disorders at a level suitable for high school students and others with little knowledge of the field. |
Copyright (c) 2001
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