Sleep And Madness Linked
By Mark O’Brien
It may well be that many of the mental disorders that are diagnosed and for which drugs are prescribed for are just a result of poor sleeping habits.
The impact of sleep deprivation is only recently been questioned by researchers who are challenging long-held beliefs about mental illness.
Previously it was considered that sleep problems arose from mental illness, that people could not sleep if they were depressed, not the other way around.
Adults diagnosed with depression are five times as likely as others to have trouble breathing while asleep, while between 25-50% of children diagnosed with ADHD suffer from sleep related problems, compared with 7% of non ADHD kids.
Doctors are concerned that many psychoactive drugs are being prescribed to people, including children, who not only do not need these drugs but who simply need a good night’s sleep.
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This is a another example of the result of private funding for medical research.
There are no profits to be made, no chairs in university faculties to be endowed, from sleep, so naturally the last place researchers look is in the simple things, like sleep habits.
Sometimes it is the most obvious thing.
A story of my father, a country GP, springs to mind, whereby an obese woman came in and spoke of her lack of success with diets.
After many questions and answers that failed to find a cause, Dad asked her how many spoons of sugar she had in her tea. The answer was three. How many cups of tea a day did she have? 30.
90 spoons of sugar a day would make it very hard to lose weight.
It is often fairly simple.
In terms of kids having sleep problems, nobody talks about the caffeine and sugar consumed via Coke or other soft drinks.
Nor is the amount of time spent in front of a screen, TV or computer games, getting hyped up endlessly from one adrenaline pump to the next, ever mentioned.
Adults also often consume excessive caffeine just to stay sharp and load themselves up with far more commitments and time hungry activities than ever before.
In this kind of discussion and research the elephant in the living room is never mentioned, which makes you wonder about the integrity of researchers.
The elephant?
People are not coping with the stresses of modern society, with the incessant media driven demand for more and more.
Our society is in trouble, the way in which we live our lives under a serious cloud, and yet we continue along as if nothing is happening, putting band-aids wherever needed, just to keep us going.
Adapted for byronbodyandsoul.com by Mark O’Brien
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