Treating a sleepless nation: More than 50 million toss and turn

Adequate sleep and good health go hand-in-hand, but patients should be cautioned not to panic over an occasional bad night.

By Susan J. Landers, AMNews staff. Aug. 20, 2007.

The quest for a good night's sleep brings many patients to their physicians' offices. As well it should. Sleep's virtues have long been known. Consider Shakespeare's lines from Macbeth:

Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleave of care,
The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great Nature's second course,
Chief nourisher in life's feast.

Sleep is all that and more.

Science has delved into its mysteries in recent decades and found that sleep is essential to survival. Some experts believe sleep allows the body to repair itself. Many cells increase protein production during this time and important biochemical and physiological processes also take place, according to the National Sleep Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit group.

"We now have a lot of data that tell us that sleep is important for good health," adds Michael Sateia, MD, director of the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center Sleep Disorders Center in Lebanon, N.H. Beyond the all-too-familiar mental blur that overtakes the drowsy and affects job performance, interpersonal relationships and driving skills, a lack of sleep can cause physiological distress, said Dr. Sateia, a former president of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine.