LOSS: Lack of Sleep Syndrome

I had this inspiration on New Year's Day, in California, a morning after yet another night of interrupted sleep. There was no real explanation for it, except maybe stress. Sometimes I just can't sleep. When it was happening to me more frequently I tried many things to remedy it. I'll list those at another time. Right now I just wanted to introduce this blog and the inspiration that came from that groggy morning. As I lay in bed thinking of the sleep-deprived day ahead of me, I thought about all the symptoms I would probably experience and it popped into my head that the experience should have a name, something like Loss Of Sleep Syndrome...hey, that spells LOSS...how clever...surely this already exists; I can't have just made it up? So as soon as I got up I checked the mighty Internet, and I found nothing known as Loss of Sleep Syndrome or LOSS. And of course, you know, if it's not on the Internets it must not exist...so voila! A new quasi-medical term was born, and apparently I get credit for it. Of course it was ironic that I thought of this in a sleep-deprived state. Sometimes interesting things can happen in this state. Usually though, it is just a drag.

So. What is this blog for? I want to talk about all the effects of LOSS. There are many different causes of sleep deprivation and a lot of discussion out there on these different conditions and their symptoms and treatments. However, since I don't appear to have a specific condition that causes these bouts of sleeplessness, I'm interested more in talking about the results of those bouts. I have a few reasons for doing this, but mainly I don't think there is enough out there on the subject. I think many people suffer from sleep deprivation, even deprive themselves of sleep deliberately, and shrug it off as no big deal. I am here to posit that it is a big deal. It is bad for the health, it is dangerous, and at the least it is inconvenient for those around us who deal with the aftereffects.

I will go into more details about these symptoms in later posts. For now, I just want to open this blog and state of course that I am not a medical professional and anything posted here will be purely my own opinion (unless of course I cite someone else); that I do not have advice to give and most of the contents will be of my own personal experience and mostly be ramblings on this topic and not conclusions or solutions. That said, I will welcome any contributions or suggestions along this topic. That would be the topic of sleep deprivation, it's symptoms and effects. I'm not really interested in specific sleep disorders or treatments. Although I will at some point list the various things I have tried to remedy lack of sleep-more for amusement and sympathy (if you've been there too) rather than as advice. If it helps you in doing your own research, great, but I know there is no magic bullet or cure and I think that every person has a different solution or combination of solutions that will work for them.

That being said, I will go so far as to highly recommend one book: Healing Night: The Science and Spirit of Sleeping, Dreaming and Awakening by Dr. Rubin Naiman. This is the single most useful and interesting book I have read about sleep and it significantly helped me to change my attitude about sleep problems, which I believe makes a huge difference. For me anyway.