Mens Health Blog. Medical Blog

In 1953, Dr Natheniel Kleitman, Professor of Physiology at the University of Chicago, made a major discovery about the nature of sleep. He was studying sleep in small babies, and made round-the-clock observations of them. He noticed recurrent rapid movement of the eyeballs beneath the eyelids of these babies. The eyeballs moved for a few minutes, then rested. This recurred nearly every boar. He then started to investigate if this also occurred in adults. He was joined by William Dement, a medical student at that time. They started the first electrical measurement of eyeball movement during sleep. They attached electrodes to the skin at the corners of the eyeballs to pick up potential changes when the eyeballs moved. This kind of eye movement recording is called an electro-oculogram or EOG. Dr William Dement is now the director of the Sleep Disorder Centre at Stanford University, California, and also the Professor of Psychiatry in its medical school. He remains a world authority on sleep.

Kleitman and Dement observed that, when a person is sleeping, there is rapid eye movement in both eyes and this recurs periodically about four to five times each night. If these people are awakened during one of these periods of rapid eye movement, 95 per cent report that they are dreaming, compared with 7 per cent at other times of awakening. The duration of the dreams they recall appear to correlate with the length of the period of the rapid eye movement. This rapid eye movement sleep is now abbreviated to REM sleep. REM is pronounced like the word ‘gem’.

During REM sleep, the person is dreaming, his mind is active, and his eyes are moving rapidly back and forth under closed eyelids. The EEG recording is very similar to that of the awake state, like a very irregular saw tooth, and nothing like that of the four stages of sleep described previously. Contrary to what we expect, when the person is dreaming his body is not moving at all, but is in complete relaxation—paralysed. Some people call this REM sleep the paradoxical sleep. This is because the mind is active and dreaming, but, paradoxically, the body is totally inactive and motionless. It is thought that this complete body rest during REM sleep is essential for the refreshing feeling the person feels in the morning. This is because no matter how tense a person is, during REM sleep his muscles are all relaxed It is also thought that this complete body paralysis during dreaming prevents the dreamer from acting out his dream physically when he is asleep. It looks like there is some form of jamming mechanism that disconnects the brain activity from the muscular system of the body.

Michael Long, in a 1985 edition of National Geographic, reported that, in Minneapolis, at the Hennepin County Medical Centre, a Dr Mahowald and a Dr Schenck interviewed over 30 people who somehow bypassed this jamming mechanism during REM sleep and acted out their dreams. This is of course extremely dangerous, but fortunately also extremely rare. During dreaming all sorts of fantasies, angers, and frustrations are acted out. Those people with no jamming mechanism can endanger not only themselves but also those sleeping beside them. It was reported that some of these violent dreamers beat their wives up repeatedly, smashed windows, punched holes in the walls, and displayed remarkable strength and agility. Fortunately most of us have this jamming mechanism which prevents us from acting out our dreams; otherwise our beds would look very different, with restraining belts to lock our bodies and limbs to the bed, to prevent us from running wild destroying things in the house when we are having a nightmare.

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Comments (0) May 08 2009

Man has evolved to what he is today through hundreds of thousands of years of insecurity. In fact, it would seem that we function best when we feel that we are not completely secure.

At work there is always insecurity. We may lose our job, or if we are self-employed, our business may fail. If this insecurity reaches a certain degree we become tense and anxious. The sensitive are among the first affected, and those who are less gifted, less competent, and less well trained soon feel the strain. The situation is always worse when aggression is aroused. Because of our insecurity, our aggression has to be controlled at work, and as a result is likely to be displaced on to our wife and children at home.

A conscientious worker in a large industrial concern had been promoted to works manager. He now found that he had lost the fellow-feeling and security of being one of the men, and in addition he had to face pressures from both top management and union leaders. He broke down with chronic tension, depression, and sleeplessness. Relaxation helped him, and he was able to carry on; but when last seen he was still unable to attain real ease of mind, as he had really been promoted into a job beyond his emotional capacity.

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Comments (0) Apr 29 2009

Anxiety is often one of the symptoms of depression and when it is part of an overall depressed picture, it appears that St John’s Wort will help the anxiety along with the other symptoms of depression. Some people, however, suffer from anxiety without exhibiting any symptoms of depression and so far there have been no research studies to determine whether these people will benefit from St John’s Wort. It would not be surprising if the herb did prove to be of some value in anxiety since many other antidepressants have been found to be helpful in the treatment of anxiety disorders. There certainly seems little harm in trying the herbal treatment for a month or two if you are anxious and determining for yourself whether it is helpful to you, but you may want to start with a low dosage and increase it slowly since anxious people may be more susceptible to the symptoms of restlessness reported by some people on St John’s Wort.

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Comments (0) Apr 29 2009