To Sleep, Perchance to Analyze Data – NYTimes.com [
For a very long time I have been having trouble sleeping. With the help of Wikipedia, I determined that I am experiencing acute onset insomniawith occasional nocturnal awakenings. At first I believed my sleep issues to be mostly an issue with the unhealthy alteration of my sleep cycle. I used to go to bed at anywhere between 2330 to 0030 hours. With time, that slipped into the early AM hours. Currently, I go to bed at around 0230, occasionally as “early” as 0330. I wake up anywhere between 1130 and 1230. On a good day, that makes it something like 9 or so hours of sleep (factoring in time to fall asleep). Yet when I wake up I don’t feel refreshed at all. I often emerge from a deep slumber with grogginess, feeling as though I hadn’t slept at all. Throughout the day, I feel neither awake nor asleep.
In regards to data, all I’ve got are rough guesstimates, and I am certainly not qualified to diagnose myself. It could very well be, as Wikipedia pointed out, a shift in my circadian rhythm. But I have neither the time nor inclination to see a specialist (not to mention I still don’t have health insurance). That’s where the Zeo Personal Sleep Coach comes in. I first read about it in the New York Times and I do intend to get one. It’s a little pricey, and I don’t think I can really afford to get one at the moment, but I’m thinking that in a couple of months this will be sitting peacefully next to my head at night.How does it work? The short of it is that the Zeo will be able to scientifically (and accurately, I think) detect when you fall asleep and can monitor your sleep patterns through the “brain waves” that it can detect via the wireless headband you don prior to going to sleep.I used to dream a lot…and for a long time now I haven’t been dreaming. If I remember correctly, and I could very well be wrong, dreams are sign of REM sleep, which means you’ve gotten into a pretty good deep sleep. So it could mean that my lack of dreams is my lack of good quality sleep. But anyway, I’ll be mulling over this expensive decision.
