Karen

“At 10.30 in the evening, the protocol commences. For the next twenty-four hours, every thirty minutes the patient is allowed to try to go to sleep, with electrodes attached to their scalp. After twenty minutes, if they do not fall asleep, they are asked to get up. But if they do fall asleep, as proven by their brainwaves, after three consecutive minutes of sleep they are woken. By the end of the 24-hour period, they have had forty-eight opportunities to fall asleep. In theory, by the end of the protocol, they are so sleep-deprived that they fall asleep as soon as they are allowed. The conditioned response between bed and sleep has been re-established. This technique sounds like something straight out of Guantanamo Bay, but results from”
― Guy Leschziner, The Nocturnal Brain: Nightmares, Neuroscience, and the Secret World of Sleep

“One peculiarity of REM sleep is that, unlike every other moment of our lives, the mechanisms that regulate our body temperature fail us. While for the rest of the time our body temperature is kept absolutely stable, in REM, it drops. This is actually a highly dangerous state for us to be in. Even small fluctuations in temperature can result in our brains not working properly, or heart rhythm abnormalities. I will occasionally see patients in the intensive-care”
― Guy Leschziner, The Nocturnal Brain: Nightmares, Neuroscience, and the Secret World of Sleep

“Whatever the true nature of this relationship, it highlights the need for psychiatrists and sleep physicians to think holistically, to not simply focus on the problem that they are most familiar with, to approach these patients without the blinkers of having been trained in one particular specialty.”
― Guy Leschziner, The Nocturnal Brain: Nightmares, Neuroscience, and the Secret World of Sleep

“Most alarmingly, there is growing evidence that points to hypnotic drugs, particularly benzodiazepines and related drugs, increasing the risk of subsequent dementia.”
― Guy Leschziner, The Nocturnal Brain: Nightmares, Neuroscience, and the Secret World of Sleep