The Australian Medical Journal says that between 13 per cent and 33 per cent of Australians suffer regular, long-term sleep problems … and that’s another thing to worry about at 3.30am! In gathering some ideas (often referred to as research) I came across repeated confirmation that various forms of insomnia become more prevalent as we age, and it’s true. I can remember as a young bloke going to bed at the crack of sunrise and sleeping solidly until it was dark again.
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My kids were the same when they were teenagers. Trying to get them mobile before 11am on a Saturday and Sunday was almost impossible. We feared that had contracted some African mosquito-borne sleeping disease.
These days I try to get to bed about mid-evening and seem to sleep well until about midnight or 1am … when the oily, sneaky little thoughts start oozing their way to the surface and I start thinking and worrying about 427 stupid and probably impossible things.
Thoughts at 3.30am should be banned. They are always nonsense and dawn wipes out their validity. What happens if I forget to pay the car rego? Did I turn off the light in the office? What’s the square root of 718? What was the name of my Grade 6 teacher? Am I having a heart attack? Or was it the cup of Milo? It is sooooo annoying, and I certainly agree with many researchers who say long-term buggered about sleep can cause waking problems, such as poor concentration and knock-on health issues.
The real trouble is there are as many experts as there are people experiencing sleep problems. I can point you to experts who say exercise causes sleep problems and others who insist exercise solves them. Alcohol can cause it, but stopping drinking may worsen it. Caffeine and nicotine can cause it. Yet when I was a callow youth I smoked like Black Saturday and guzzled toxic black coffee – and slept half my life away.
I could be having a stroke, or a heart attack, or have a deviated nasal septum, or rheumatoid arthritis, or bipolar disorder, or restless leg syndrome, or brain lesions, or elevated nighttime levels of circulating cortisol and adrenocorticotropic hormone. It COULD be a tumor!
At 3.30am they are ALL possible, as well as 75 other mental or physical disorders. You try to block out this torrent of stupidity, but it slides back behind your eyes and starts its evil whispering over again. In our house, after a lot of research, I have isolated one very real cause for my sleeplessness. It’s formal name is: Pat.
PatTheCat to use its long form. She’s a terror at demanding attention, games, food, mischief at any time of the day or night and putting her outside is no solution. She taps and scratches on doors and windows like a teenager with a new smart phone.
If that fails to get attention, she picks a brawl with Boof, the big black male cat who’s as stupid as a roofing nail, but rather lovely. They’ll go at it for a minute or so and then the Corgis leap into life to try to restore order with the use of maniacal barking.
And at that stage, I say quietly: “You awake, dear? Like a cup of tea?” She always says she does and an hour or so later, we try to woofle our way back down to where sleep lives until the morning magpies start up outside our bedroom window.
Another day is confronted and in the bathroom mirror there’s a distressed looking grey-haired old bloke with bloodshot eyes, hunched shoulders quickly checking the electronic calendar in case it was accidentally Saturday. It seldom is.
WAYNE GREGSON
