A Message for Melania
In his book “Think like a Billionaire” Donald reveals that he is “Not a big sleeper”. He says “I toss, I turn, I beep-de-beep, I want to find out what’s going on.”
An overactive mind at bed-time is not unusual. I have worked with many insomniacs over the years, who found it hard to pull the plug on their tumultuous night-time thoughts.
Their minds were too active – jumping from one thing to another – they had too much ‘stuff’ going on – they were replaying the events of the day or thinking ahead to tomorrow or to next week.
What Donald may not realize is that “Insufficient sleep on a regular basis is related to long-term health consequences, including conditions, like heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes and that these conditions may lead to a reduced life expectancy” (Harvard Medical School).
“People start to hallucinate and go a bit crazy," when they are sleep deprived, says Atul Malhotra, the Director of Sleep Medicine at the University of California, San Diego.
The National Sleep Foundation (Updated Guidelines, 2015) advises that seniors aged 65 and older need 7 – 8 hours of sleep per night. For those aged 26 – 64 the requirement is 7 – 9 hours and younger adults aged 18 – 25, also need 7 – 9 hours.
Sleep Deprivation and Alzheimer’s disease
Alzheimer’s is a progressive, irreversible neurological disease that affects over five million Americans. By 2050, this figure is expected to rise to sixteen million.
Harvard Medical School reports that “Research has begun to show an association between poor sleep and a higher risk of accumulating beta-amyloid protein plaques in the brain, one of the hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease.”
How Amyloid Proteins Form in the Brain
Amyloid proteins build in the brain during wakefulness and are thought to be a type of neurotoxic waste resulting from the energy used when brain cells interact with each other.
Amyloid Protein Removal
Experts report that during slow wave sleep, excess beta-amyloid proteins are cleared from our brains. Slow wave or deep phase sleep is that part of sleep during which memories are consolidated. During an average, eight-hour sleep, we may enter the slow-wave phase, during hours two, four, six, and seven.
Too Little Sleep
In Think Like a Billionaire, Donald says “I usually sleep about four hours per night.” “I like three hours, four hours.”
By getting just four hours sleep or less each night, Donald may be reducing the amount of time he spends in deep phase sleep, thereby allowing amyloid proteins to build and form plaques in his brain tissue.
Scientists believe that it is likely that Alzheimer’s related damage to the brain, starts a decade or more before symptoms like memory loss and other cognitive problems appear.
“During this preclinical stage of the disease, abnormal deposits of proteins form amyloid plaques and tau tangles throughout the brain and once-healthy neurons stop functioning, lose connections with other neurons, and die.”
A Simple Test to Show if Donald is Sleep Deprived – The Sleep Onset Latency Test
To do the test Donald needs to go to bed in the middle of the afternoon to find out how quickly, if at all, he goes to sleep. He will need a watch, a metal spoon and a metal tray.
To take the test, he lies on the bed, with the spoon in his hand, with the tray placed on the floor underneath. He checks the time then closes his eyes. When he falls asleep the spoon should hit the tray, bang and wake him up.
If he falls asleep after 15 minutes he is OK. If he drops off to sleep after 10 minutes, he is sleep- deprived; if its 5 minutes or less, he may have severe sleep deprivation.
To make the experiment more effective, it may be best to get Donald to do the test without explaining what the different ‘drop off’ times mean, as an explanation could adversely affect the outcome.
A Cure for Alzheimer’s Disease
Hopefully a cure will be soon found for the millions of people world-wide, who suffer from the debilitating effects of this dreadful disease.
Bill Gates has recently donated fifty million dollars to Alzheimer’s research. He has said that the donation is personal for him, as men in his family have suffered from the disease.
Preliminary evidence found by scientists at LA JOLLA–Salk, Institute, that tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and other compounds found in marijuana, can encourage the cellular removal of amyloid beta, is promising.
However this finding may be of little interest to Donald who is very anti-drug use “I say [recreational marijuana legalization] is bad. Medical marijuana is another thing, but I think it’s bad, and I feel strongly about it.”
To reduce the likelihood of Donald developing Alzheimer’s disease Give Donald the Gift of Sleep this Christmas
To access a copy of the book, follow the amazon link Sleep Book for the Perfect Night’s Sleep
Books by Bernadette M. Farrell Psychologist
