In the past I have had short term periods in my life where my sleep was disturbed for short periods – with a new born baby, jet lag etc.

However, it wasn’t until recently that I experienced the debilitating effect of long term sleep deprivation. My neighbour started a new job that meant 3 consecutive nights a week she leaves for work at 3.50am, on another two nights she either arrives home around 11pm or 2am.

Her car has quite a noisy exhaust/muffler system, as as she climbs or descends down the steep driveway alongside my bedroom it would take the drunkest or deepest of sleepers not to be woken.

The real killer is the 4am starts – by this time one has had sufficient sleep, to find going back to sleep not quite so easy, and insufficient sleep [assuming a normal bedtime of 10.30pm] to carry out the day with a clear head and energetic bounce.  It normally takes me until around 5am-5.30am to get back to sleep, only to have to wake up at 5.45-6am to allow for a workout before departing for the office.

After three nights, the body has somewhat adjusted to awakening at this ungodly hour, and so it takes a couple of nights to get my sleep pattern back, all the while not quite knowing whether tonight will be disrupted at 11pm or 2pm

 …..the overall impact of four weeks of this is hellish. I still manage to get a couple of workouts done, my eating habits have declined as I am too tired in the evening to cook a proper dinner, this is leading to some gastric disturbance at night, making it even harder to get to sleep.  I have found myself lacking focus when driving, making silly mistakes with my work or home tasks and generally feeling very fuzzy headed.

My attempt to resolve the situation with earplugs, soft playing music [white noise], adapting my bedtime, chamomile tea etc have not been entirely successful [actually not at all!!]. As a last resort I phoned my neighbor and asked if she would consider leaving her car up the top of the drive on those early morning starts. Her response was “I will give it some thought”, which translates into “go to hell!”

• I feel like crap
• I look like crap
• I resent my neighbor – and we know anger is destructive both physically and mentally
• My general tolerance of everything is now very low – including my neighbors daughter, whose radio that blares out her window all weekend [they are not content to destroy my sleep all week - they also insist on destroying my chance to relax in peace or catch up on work in the weekend]

It is incredible how selfish and inconsiderate some people can be, and how much one action can snowball in impact on overall health and mental wellbeing.

I can certainly understand how individuals take aggressive actions towards others, beyond what they ever thought they were capable. Lack of sleep is indeed a killer – of your own life, and for those who are pushed too far, the lives of others.

So, I live in hope that my neighbor will at some stage feel some feeling of consideration, or lose her job!!!! Yeah!

All this aggression – just from lack of sleep.

So if you find yourself demotivated, stressed, depressed, not able to exercise, not bothering to cook proper foods, snappy or anything else described above – take a look at your sleep habits. If you are not getting 6-8 hours sleep at least 6 nights a week, your health is suffering.

Zapper

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This entry was posted on Thursday, October 25th, 2007 at 11:23 pm and is filed under Fatigue, Sleep Disorders. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.