Sleep to Heal: 7 Simple Steps to Better Sleep - Hardcover

Singh M.D. M.P.H. F.A.A.S.M., Abhinav

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1630062340 ISBN 13: 9781630062347

Publisher: Humanix Books, 2023

Synopsis

Humanix Books

About this title

About the Authors

DR. ABHINAV SINGH is a physician with board certifications in sleep medicine and internal medicine, and specializes in comprehensive care of all aspects of sleep health. He also has a Master’s in Public health and a keen interest in preventive medicine and promoting health, and firmly believes that Better Sleep = Better Health. Dr. Singh’s special focus includes sleep physiology and all aspects of sleep as it pertains to health and various disorders. He is focused on improving health by improving sleep. He is passionate about patients who have been diagnosed with sleep disorders to make sure that they are receiving the best treatment plan and succeeding with therapy.

After receiving his medical degree, Dr. Singh completed an internship and residency in Internal Medicine through the University of Illinois in Chicago at St. Joseph Hospital. He then completed a fellowship in Sleep Medicine at Northwestern University. Prior to residency, he served as Research Assistant at the Center for Narcolepsy and Sleep Research at the University of Illinois at Chicago for four years.

Currently, Dr. Singh serves as Medical Director at the Indiana Sleep Center, accredited by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. He also is a Clinical Assistant Professor at Marian University College of Medicine, where he developed and teaches a Sleep Medicine rotation to medical students, and a preceptor and mentor of the Nurse Practitioner program at the University of Indianapolis. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and a member of the American College of Physicians, as well as the American Medical Association.

Dr. Singh’s research focuses on (but is not limited to) all kinds of sleep disorders, including excessive daytime sleepiness, narcolepsy, sleep apnea, and chronic snoring. Dr. Singh is an editor for Sleep Watchers, a quarterly newsletter from the Indiana Sleep Center, and a peer reviewer for the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, Sleep Health (journal of the National Sleep Foundation), and the Journal of Sleep Disorders: Treatment and Care.

Dr. Singh has spoken at global conferences and written for several research publications, consulted for the NBA team the Indiana Pacers, and has been a part of many clinical trials relating to his specialty. He also serves on multiple advisory boards, including the prestigious National Sleep Foundation, and has been widely quoted in the media, including Martha Stewart Living, HuffPost, Washington Post, CNET, MSN, Yahoo! Life, Healthline, and other popular consumer lifestyle websites. Dr Singh lives & works in the greater Indianapolis metro area.

CHARLOTTE JENSEN is a writer and editor specializing in technology, marketing, business, and the arts. For more than a decade, Jensen worked as senior writer, articles editor, and executive editor for Entrepreneur magazine, where she took a leading role in shaping editorial content and direction for the award-winning national consumer magazine and its readership of 1.2 million. 

Jensen’s work has been featured in HuffPost, AOL Small Business, and a variety of small-business websites, and she is currently a copy editor for luxe lifestyle brand RH (Restoration Hardware), a contributing writer to The Forecast by Nutanix, and a copy editor for publications by Segerstrom Center for the Arts, a world-class performing arts center in Orange County, California. She has also provided first-draft edits for several nonfiction books, including Fight Cancer With Vitamins and Supplements: A Guide to Prevention and Treatment (Healing Arts Press). Jensen has a B.A. in Journalism from California State University, Long Beach. Jensen lives & works in the San Francisco metro area.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

from CHAPTER ONE to SLEEP TO HEAL: 7 Simple Steps to Better Sleep by Dr. Abhinav Singh with Charlotte Jensen

PART I: UNLOCKING THE SECRETS OF SLEEP

Chapter 1 Sleep: An Enduring Mystery

Sleep Vigilanteism: Show me something with better terms and conditions for the consumer than sleep.

Transforming Night Into Day

No one realizes it at the time, but at precisely 3 o’clock on September 4, 1882, one of sleep’s greatest enemies bolts into the world.

That enemy, we now know, is artificial light. When Thomas Edison hit the switch for his Pearl Street power plant that late summer day, lighting up a single square mile in Manhattan for the very first time, he forever altered the way we live, work, travel, dine, entertain … and sleep. 

Electric lighting now powers economies, illuminates cities, and lets us shoot hoops late into the night if we want to. But this dazzling invention also has a dark side (as enemies do): It suppresses melatonin, upends our circadian rhythm, and robs our body of sleep, one of the most precious life-giving biological processes we have. Except we didn’t really know that until recently. We spent generations discounting sleep until around 2000 or so, when scientists finally clued into how essential sleep is to our brain health, to our hearts, to our overall health and well-being. We are still learning more every day.

In the past, people usually slept a predictable set of hours, unencumbered by glowing screens and bulbs. Before the dawn of billboards and blinking TVs, most of humanity lived and slept by the natural rhythm of a rising and setting sun. People woke and stretched at dawn and turned in after dark. President Abraham Lincoln (who reportedly had trouble sleeping, especially during the Civil War) probably suffered from insomnia and worked late into the night by dim candlelight. The universal lack of light placed limitations on what we could accomplish in a day. And so our modern ancestors—post Industrial Revolution, and pre the discovery and mass commercialization of artificial light—generally luxuriated in an hour or more of sleep per night than we get now. (That’s 365 more hours of sleep per year.)

Every single day, I witness the detrimental effects of artificial light on my patients. We work so hard every day to raise our family and find success in our work, that before we know it, we have exchanged sleep for productivity and entertainment—but at a terrible cost.

Meet James, one of my patients, a talented jeweler and watchmaker. People don’t usually seek out help from a sleep doctor like me until they’ve tried everything, they’re desperate, and nothing seems to work. And so often it’s because somebody complains that they snore—as was the case with James.

Every night, James would go to bed at 10 p.m., but he’d toss and turn, miserably awake, staring at the clock until 2 or 3 a.m., only for the alarm to jolt him up at 6. He logged just three hours of sleep a night, and the severe lack had started to take its toll. When he came to me, he felt crummy all the time. He was constantly tired, but not sleepy. (There’s an important distinction to be made here, between tired and sleepy, which I will discuss more in this book.) James was anxious, depressed, and diagnosed with ADD. He had chest pains and popped a cocktail of meds prescribed by his doctor to try to alleviate the whole host of health issues invading his body.

I soon learned why sleep evaded him night after night. You see, James worked with a high-end clientele, and the labor to produce and repair fine jewelry requires meticulous manual work that must be done by hand. Although his store closed at 7 p.m., in order to have the pieces ready the next day, he spent the last hours of his workday toiling under bright lights and peering through magnifying glasses. Instead of winding down when the sun set, he beautified sparkling rings and necklaces—and put immense strain on his eyes and brain. You simply cannot prepare your body for sleep when you spend your evening hours soaking up artificial light and straining your eyes.

After breaking it down together and rethinking his nightly pattern, we were able to reset his sleep routine once and for all, much like the plan you will learn about in Chapter 10. He followed my advice and is doing so much better now. Once he rediscovered his body’s natural ability to sleep, his health improved—and he got off a majority of the meds. The moral of the story is we all need sleep to heal, and your body will let you know if that daily essential healing is not taking place.

If you are holding this book in your hands, you know that high-quality, healthy sleep is in short supply. You also probably neglect it more than you should; we all do. For most of our lives, working instead of sleeping has been glorified. Resting instead of living was deemed lazy. Every single day we make culturally accepted choices that negatively impact our sleep. And those choices then cement into habits. Read emails until midnight? Of course. Watch movies till 2? Sure. Pull an all-nighter in The City That Never Sleeps? Can’t wait!

Setting aside 8-10 hours every night for sleep feels old-fashioned, doesn’t it? How will we get anything done if we sleep all the time? Even Edison, who was awarded more than 1,000 patents in his lifetime, reportedly referred to sleep as “a heritage from our cave days,” according to bestselling author James Maas in his book Power Sleep. Edison kind of had a point: On its surface, anyway, sleep doesn’t really make sense. Until you look deeper.

Edition details

• Publisher: Humanix Books
• Publication date: 2023
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1630062340
• ISBN 13: 9781630062347
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 275