Harvard Medical School Sleep Study
A recent article in Wired covers a discovery by Harvard sleep researchers that shows some people have a built-in mechanism for blocking noise and other environmental factor that would wake most normal people. What happens is that the Thalamus, a region of the brain that acts as a sort of switch board for sensory information such as sound and vision information, turns into a filter by creating special waves the researchers call “spindles” that block out sensory stimulae. This is an amazing discovery! But before you go buying the next hyped device that acts as a “Thalmus Spindle Activator” or something similar, remember that the researchers just discovered this, they don’t know how it is caused.
These types of discoveries highlight a couple of important concepts for those who have trouble with sleep. First, there are two varieties of sleep issues: falling asleep, and poor quality sleep (often because of waking up at night, and being unable to fall back asleep). It also highlights the issues that we are most keen to discuss: Which sleep problems are medical, which are caused by environmental factors, and which are caused by behavior.
Our philosophy is that the best way to address sleep issues is take care of the environmental factors, such as noise or light in your sleeping area, then begin to address any behavioral factors such as diet, exercise and an overactive mind. The medical component is important, as sleep is a complicated process of the brain with new discoveries happening frequently. We’re encouraged to see this, and it helps with filling out the picture of the variety of causes of sleep issues. To the sleep doctors – keep it up!
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