Chronic Monday: National Sleep Awareness Week, March 3-9

I've had the drop dead stomach flu this week, complete with fever, chills, cramps, nausea and diarrhea. So my hard drive sits on the floor in much the same position it was in last week. Today is the first day since last Tuesday when I came down with the crud that I've been able to eat real food or do anything productive at all. So the Sleep Study scan remains inaccessible. But the Gods have smiled on me and made this week National Sleep Awareness Week. What a perfect lead in to the actual study next week! I know, I know, kind of anti-climactic, but what else can I do? I will tell you that the study showed that I got no - that is zero - Stage 4/delta sleep in the 6.5 hours that I slept. Stage 4/delta sleep is the deep, restorative sleep where the body rejuvenates itself.

The NFA page on Sleep Awareness Week says:

It is estimated that 90-95 percent of people with fibromyalgia experience disordered sleep. In addition, non-restorative sleep was cited as one of the most severe symptoms experienced by FM patients, following pain, in a recent online epidemiological survey by the National Fibromyalgia Association.

National Sleep Awareness Week® (NSAW), is a public education and awareness campaign presented by the National Sleep Foundation (NSF), that coincides with the return of Daylight Saving Time, the annual "springing forward" of clocks that can cause Americans to lose an hour of sleep. This end of Daylight Savings Time causes me severe misery when I am working. I start preparing for it months in advance, sneaking my alarm up earlier and earlier but very slowly, so that by the time the actual day to change the clocks comes, I am really only getting up fifteen minutes earlier. It's still painful and it feels like I am just starting to get used to it when we change it back again. It makes me think seriously of moving to Arizona where they don't choose to participate in the Daylight Savings Time program.

Also from the NFA page on NSAW:

The theme for the 2008 weeklong health promotion event is Sleep: As Important as Diet and Exercise (Only Easier!) Among the campaign’s many components are quizzes, sleep tips and the results of the annual Sleep in America poll. New this year is a two-week NSF Sleep Diary.

People with FM, correct me if you don't agree, but if getting eight to nine hours of replenishing sleep were easy, WE WOULDN'T HAVE A PROBLEM! Maybe FM wouldn't even exist!

Here's an interesting appliance from the NSF that might work for me, a clock that literally jumps onto the floor and runs away so you have to get up and find it to shut it off!


There are also a bunch of sleep quizzes I'm going to have to check out,


and last but not least, we have the Great American Sleep Challenge. I feel stressed just reading the directions. I'm not much of an online gaming person. Poker, Second Life, that's about it. Let me know if you win a bed, though!