I have not slept all night for about two years. I can often (not always) get to sleep reasonably quickly, but I will invariably awaken at about 2 a.m. If I just lay in bed after that, I will not get back to sleep. I apply all of the rules of sleep hygiene -- consistent bed time, dark room, no screens before bed, room temperature around 68F, exercise during the day (not near bed time), little or no caffeine throughout the day (and none in the 6 hours or so before bed time), and no eating for 3 hours before bed time. I also use a white noise (or Brown noise) machine. I'm sure that if I backed off on any of these, things would get much worse, but I'm still up every night at around 2.
I remember the good old days when I would eagerly go to bed at 11 p.m., fall right to sleep, and wake up refreshed at 6 a.m. -- seven hours later. Those days are long gone.
I have tried some meds. My neurologist recommended trazadone, but that wrecks my already struggling sense of balance. Belsomra and Ramelteon help some, but the insurance company won't cover more than one prescription per year. I can afford some Ramelteon at the cash price, but Belsomra is $1,400 for a 3 month supply. (No thank you.) And I'll still wake up. I will, however, feel like I slept more soundly when I did sleep and feel better during the day. Neither of these drugs disturbs my balance, and I have not experienced any rebound when stopping them. If fact, after taking these for a couple of days, my sleep after discontinuing them seems better than before I started. Most importantly, I feel rested all day and not wanting to take a nap.
For the last year, I've been a little satisfied by simply accepting that I won't sleep, and getting out of bed soon after I awaken. I'll be up for about an hour and a half, and it's likely (not guaranteed) I can get back to sleep after that. If I get to bed at 9:15, I would often finally get up at 7 or sometimes 8. So I would need to dedicate 10 or 11 hours of my day to sleep. But sometimes I would be completely unable to get back to sleep. This would lead to a pretty nasty day.
But it's not quite as bad as it would seem. Before things started to go badly on my sleep (perhaps a little more than two years ago, maybe more), I would normally begin my day with an hour and a half or so of Bible reading and prayer. So now I do this during the time when I am up in the middle of the night.
Over the past year of so, I've been reading and hearing from friends and family that meditation can help with sleep. My wife's long time friend, now in her 80s, tells Amy that she had had a lot of success with meditation in improving her sleep. My mother and some of my siblings have similar stories. A lot of people have stories about how melatonin helps with their sleep, but the best research says that it's primarily a placebo. Dr. Matthew Walker allows that it's a particularly powerful placebo. I've taken a lot of melatonin, but it's never done a thing for me. (We discussed melatonin back in March 2021.) So is meditation another placebo that works for some but wouldn't work for a skeptic like me?
When we think of meditation, we often think of Eastern religions. There is someone sitting in the lotus position, singing "Ouuuuuuuummmm...." The person focuses on a secret word, and tries to empty their mind. Is that what people are talking about when considering meditation that will help with sleep? Maybe not.
My mother sent me this research report on meditation and sleep from the journal Frontiers in Neurology. I also found this report from the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease which explicitly addresses a beneficial effect for Alzheimer's disease.
Why would meditation help with Alzheimer's disease? Especially in diet, much of what we do to fight the disease is to reduce inflammation in the brain, and apparently meditation can help with that. At least according to these studies.
While Yoga and meditation are related as artifacts of Eastern religion, they are not the same thing. In the HABIT study we discussed in Beating the Dementia Monster, the only domain they evaluated that produced positive results was Yoga. My guess is that Yoga may also influence inflammation.
So is the meditation in these studies the same as the meditation of Eastern religions? Does this practice of meditation also involve trying to empty the mind?
According to the Bible, Jews and Christians are to meditate on the Bible day and night. Some of us interpret that to mean to select brief passages for repetitive reading or memorization. Gregorian chants recall this.
And according to the study my mother sent me, the goal is not to empty the mind. There is no secret word, but the practice does involve finding something to focus on repetitively: a word, a thought, breathing, a sound, or a short prayer. Their full prescription goes like this:
1. Comfort: Sit easily in a chair or on the floor.
2. Quiet: Be alone in a spot where you will not be disturbed, i.e., no texts, emails, cell phones, etc., while eliciting the relaxation response.
3. Tool: Focus on a word, thought, breathing, sound, or short prayer.
4. Attitude: When other thoughts enter your mind, re-focus on your tool to the exclusion of everything else for 10 to 20 minutes twice a day.
Amy's friend has focused on her breathing, and she says that it has really helped her. She also said that it didn't help right away; it took some time.
So what about me? For months before I read this, I had been making a point of counting my breaths as I tried to go to sleep. This seemed to be the same sort of thing, but maybe not. But after reading the research report, I began to try to meditate more deliberately and in keeping with their formula.
So what "tool" do I use? Sometimes in our liturgy at church we use this chant based on Psalm 102. The chant was originated by the Taizé Community, a French religious order, and this rendition of the chant is performed by a Catholic church in Canada. To me, it's stunningly beautiful.
I was discussing with my wife the distinctions that I see between this kind of meditation and the meditation of Eastern religion ... at least as understood by American popular culture. The report states explicitly that the goal is not to empty the mind. For me, I am emptying my mind of a lot of clutter and replacing it with something beautiful. Especially when I use good quality headphones.
So how is this working out for me? I've been at it for several weeks, and I can't say that it has produced overnight results. Amy's friend said that it took a while before she had results, and I've been having trouble making sure that I do it consistently twice a day.
But subjectively, at least, I am doing better. I still wake up at 2 or 3 (or 12), but I feel that I have slept more soundly than before, and I don't get sleepy during the day. Where I would sometimes need until 8 a.m. to get a full night sleep, I'm consistently up around 6:30, feeling well rested throughout the day. And I've still had my devotional time during the night.
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