Drop Dead Healthy

The Inside of the Eyelid

The Quest for the Perfect Night’s Sleep

I ENVY DOLPHINS. Not so much for their grace or power, but because of the way they sleep. Dolphins sleep one half brain at a time. When the right side of their brain is asleep, the left side is awake. And vice versa. They developed this skill because they need to be conscious enough to return to the surface every few minutes for a gulp of air.

Why couldn’t evolution have come up with this system for us? It’s so frustrating. Think of all we could do while half asleep. All the bills I could pay, the Esquire meetings I could sit through, the Dora the Explorer concerts I could attend.

Instead, we’re stuck with this absurd, eyes-shut, openmouthed, dead-to-the-world system. I hate sleep. I’m wasting one-third of my life drooling on my pillow.

Julie, on the other hand, is a huge fan. Sleeping is her favorite hobby. She talks about a good night’s sleep in rapturous tones, like a jazz lover talks about a Miles Davis solo at the Blue Note. She could sleep for fourteen hours a day.

She’s so fixated, she blames any health problem our family confronts on lack of sleep. Cold, flu, infection, sore elbow—you just need more sleep, she’ll say.

Sadly for me, she’s not far off. More and more studies show undersleeping’s deadly sway. It contributes to heart disease and hypertension. It hobbles our immune system. In the United States, one hundred thousand sleep-related car crashes occur every year. It impairs our cognitive function, effectively lowering our IQ and our ability to pay attention. It costs the U.S. economy an estimated $63 billion a year.

I sleep about six hours a night, and spend a lot of my day exhausted, as if there’s a twenty-pound weight pressing down on the top of my head.

Here’s how tired I am: Several times in the last few weeks, I fell asleep while reading books to my sons. I’m proud to say that these naps didn’t stop me from finishing the book. It’s just that the plots took on a more Dadaist tone.

I’m not sure what the phrase “three-alarm cabinet” means, but when I heard myself utter it while reading a Corduroy the bear story, I knew I’d dozed off. I jolted myself awake. Then fell asleep again.

Maybe I’d be more enamored of sleep if I were good at it. I just don’t have Julie’s talent for it. I snore, I go to sleep too late, and I can’t fall asleep when I’m finally in bed. These are the dragons I have to slay.

Noisy Night at Home

Julie has always told me that I snore at leaf-blower levels. Plus I thrash around like I’m having a seizure. And I tend to illegally occupy her mattress territory, even if we’re at a hotel with one of the fourteen-foot-wide dictator-size beds.

This has resulted in our marriage’s shameful secret, which I’ll reveal here. I hope you won’t judge: We don’t sleep together often. I’m not talking having sex together. I’m talking going through REM cycles in the same room.

About five years ago, she told me she’d had enough. Whenever possible, I should find another place to sleep. Ever since, I’ve been spending most nights in the home office.

A couple of months ago, The New York Times ran an article about separated-at-night couples. We’re part of a trend. A survey by the National Association of Home Builders says 60 percent of custom houses will have dual master bedrooms by 2015.

It’s still a bit taboo, though. Too Victorian for modern tastes. Me, I’m happy to come out of my separate closet. Julie was more reluctant but has fessed up to it in recent years. We both think it has advantages. She doesn’t have to listen to my snoring, and I can go to bed whenever I want without worrying about disturbing her.

So I’m not sure whether we’ll ever return to sleeping in the same bed. But regardless, I need to fix the original cause of the nocturnal separation: the snoring.

Snoring is linked to a host of horrible problems: fatigue, of course, but also heart disease, depression, and car accidents. Snoring occurs when your airways are obstructed. It could be the tongue falling back into the throat, or lack of air through nasal passageways, or fatty tissues in the throat—any number of things.

Snoring could also be a symptom of sleep apnea, a more serious condition in which the air passages are blocked and the sleeper stops breathing altogether for several seconds, if not minutes.

I visit Dr. Steven Park, antisnoring crusader and author of Sleep, Interrupted in his midtown office. He wants to take a look at my airways. I wince as he pokes a probe up my nose and down my throat.

He sits on a stool and breaks the news to me. My nose has a deviated septum, says Dr. Park. Very deviated, zigzagging this way and that like San Francisco’s Lombard Street. “It’s a really complicated curved septum,” he says. “There’s complex geometry.” He also calls me a mouth breather, which I try to remind myself is a diagnosis, not an insult.

“I can tell you right now, there’s no simple fix,” Dr. Park explained. “For the average snorer, it’s a journey.”

Over the course of the next two weeks, I try no fewer than twenty remedies. A handful of highlights include:

The Tennis Ball Cure

Snoring is most severe when you sleep on your back. The tongue collapses down toward your throat and blocks the air. It’s better to sleep on your side. One classic remedy is to sew a tennis ball into the back of your pajamas. I’m not much with needlework, but I do know how to use duct tape, so I taped a Wilson U.S. Open ball to my T-shirt.

The problem is, I slept on my back despite the ball. Apparently, if I were a damsel in that fairy tale with the pea and the mattress, I’d never be allowed to marry the prince. I’m too comfortable in uncomfortable positions.

The Pillow

I ordered Brookstone’s Anti-Snore memory foam neck pillow for seventy dollars. It keeps my head elevated and my chin out, which helps the airways stay open. It’s like sleeping on a giant Gummi bear.

The neck pillow worked a bit. I’ve been tape-recording myself every night, and listening back in the morning. (Which is kind of creepy. I feel like I’m invading my own privacy.) But Julie’s not lying. I am loud. The good news: I noted about a 10 percent drop in snoring. Progress!

Tongue Exercises

I started a regimen of antisnoring exercises meant to firm up the tongue and throat muscles (though the scientific evidence on them seems flimsy). At night I do ten minutes in front of my computer: pucker-hold-smile-hold, then flick your tongue from corner to corner. Julie spots my tongue-flicking. “What kind of websites are you looking at?” she wants to know.

The Didgeridoo

There are studies by actual accredited scientists, including one published in the British Medical Journal, that say that playing this Australian aboriginal instrument strengthens the throat muscles and helps cure snoring.

I order one over the Internet. My didgeridoo arrives in a skinny cardboard box. It is brown with red stripes.

The didgeridoo, I learn from the instruction manual, is the world’s oldest wind instrument, made when termites hollow out a eucalyptus branch.

It takes me a day to figure out how to position my lips to get the low, droning foghornlike sound. When I do, my kids think it’s hilarious, as it’s vaguely flatulent. I also played a deep version of “Happy Birthday” for one of my friends, which she pretended to appreciate.

Is the didgeridoo helping? Hard to say, but my friend Shannon pointed out that it keeps my neighbors up, preventing them from snoring. So that’s something.

Breathe Right Strip

This is the tape that you strap over your nose to widen the nostrils. I try it that night. “You look angry,” says Julie, pointing to my flared nostrils. But I love the rush of air I get from the strips. It gives me such a boost of energy, I’m worried I won’t be able to fall asleep. But I do. I listen to my digital tape recorder. There’s wheezing, but much less outright snorting. More progress!

The Sleep Clinic

If I want to stop snoring altogether, I have to take more serious measures. Dr. Park suggests I make a visit to New York’s renowned Sleep Disorders Institute for an overnight study.

I show up, and a technician leads me to a room with bare, white walls and a bed. The most colorful things in my sleep chamber are the wires that a staffer spends forty-five minutes taping to my head, chest, and legs. The wires are yellow, green, red, purple, and orange, making me look like a convicted murderer at a festive execution. I also have tubes up my nose and in front of my mouth.

The doctors monitor everything: heart rate, oxygen, brain activity, and nasal exhalations. I toss and turn for two hours before I finally fall asleep, then wake up feeling grimy and do a walk-of-shame-like trip back to my apartment. Dr. Park calls a couple of days later.

I woke up a few times.

“How many?” I ask.

“A hundred eighty-five,” Dr. Park says.

I don’t know how to respond. That’s 180 more than what I would have guessed.

Dr. Park’s voice remains calm. Actually, he says, it’s not too bad. Patients with severe sleep apnea wake hundreds of times. But I do have a “mild case” of sleep apnea.

At one point, I stopped breathing for forty-two seconds, sending my oxygen level down. Which is worrisome, to say the least. Sleep apnea is a big problem, a contributor to heart disease, fatigue, and brain damage.

The best cure for sleep apnea is something called a CPAP machine (short for Continuous Positive Airway Pressure). You put a mask on your face attached to a hose that shoots air down your nose and mouth to keep the airways open.

I return to the institute for another night to get fitted. My technician this time, Alison—a petite but tough former paramedic—straps the mask on my nose and turns on the air hose. I feel like a golden retriever with my head stuck out of a car window.

I’m supposed to sleep like this?

“You’ll get used to it,” she assures me, then turns out the light.

I toss. I turn. Alison comes in. “You’re flip-flopping like a fish,” she says. “You really have to pick a position and stay with it.” I recognize the tone of voice. It’s the one I use on my twins when they’re throwing Play-Doh.

She takes my water away, and moves my iPhone so I can’t check the time.

Finally, I drift off for about three hours of sleep. The results come in the next day: It worked. If I wear a CPAP machine, it virtually eliminates my snoring. Clearly, I’m going to need one eventually.

But can my combo-pack of pillows and nasal strips buy me a few years’ time before I order it? I need another test to see. I promise to make an appointment.

Falling Asleep Faster

I am watching Dr. Oz, as I do nowadays during those interminable minutes when I’m brushing and flossing. The man makes a good point. He says the phrase “falling asleep” is a misleading one. It makes it sound too passive. You have to work at going to sleep. Strategize. You have to attack the task. Maybe “jumping asleep” would be a better phrase.

I call up Dr. Michael Breus—a sleep specialist and author of the book Good Night—to get some tips. He had plenty—a shower, because it briefly raises your body temperature, leading to a postshower drop that signals to your brain that it is time to sleep. Tart cherry juice, as it has melatonin, a chemical that regulates sleep. I should impose a curfew on myself, and turn off all TVs and computers an hour before bedtime.

But the sleep trick that worked best? Doing third-grade math problems. When I’m lying there, waiting to go to sleep, my mind usually resembles one of those shirtless perps on Cops, running all around, ranting and raving. A few years ago, I tried counting sheep, but it doesn’t work. A 2002 Oxford study showed counting sheep actually delays the onset of sleep. It’s just too dull to stop us from worrying about jobs and spouses.

Dr. Breus told me to try counting backward by three. I did. And in just a few seconds (400, 397, 394 . . .), I felt a gear in my brain click to neutral.

Counting backward by threes is just challenging enough that it keeps my interest, and boring enough that it puts me to sleep. In a couple of minutes I’m out. I’m hoping it lasts, and that my mind doesn’t become immune, like the morphing supergerms I keep reading about.

Sleeping Longer

There’s also this sophisticated secret: I go to sleep earlier.

I’d always thought I could train myself to sleep six hours, wean myself off the seven and a half hours I need to feel rested. That I failed and was always exhausted, I blamed on my own laziness.

Dr. Breus let me off the hook. He says everyone has a built-in sleep requirement. Usually from seven to nine hours, though one World War I veteran was famous for needing only one hour.

You can’t change your limit. It’s not like playing golf or drinking vodka. It doesn’t become easier with practice. If you don’t get your allotted time, you’re damaging your health and job performance.

I moved my bedtime from 1 a.m. to 11:30 p.m. It was an act of trust. I had to trust my future self that he would be more efficient tomorrow if I went to sleep now. I had to convince myself that sending postmidnight e-mails was counterproductive. Turns out I didn’t trust myself too well. Most nights I was still up at 12:30 a.m.

I got better at sticking to my new bedtime after buying a gadget called the Zeo Personal Sleep Manager for $199. This is a DIY version of the sleep clinic featured in Tim Ferriss’s book. You strap on a relatively unobtrusive headband before turning in. It measures your brain waves, and figures out how long you slept, and how well (the ratio of REM to light to deep sleep). Then the Zeo’s algorithm calculates your nightly grade, or ZQ.

What the pedometer did to my walking, the Zeo did to my sleeping—it turned it into a game. I got competitive with myself. My first ZQ score was 44 (terrible), and after a week, I got it up to 68 (not bad). In good news for the publishing industry, reading a nonelectronic book for seven minutes before turning off the light seemed to boost my score, helping me go to sleep faster and deeper. Anecdotal, but still. Our industry needs all the help it can get.

Julie borrowed the Zeo and notched up 99 her first night. Nearly two hours of restorative deep sleep! I’ve never seen her so pleased with any accomplishment. “I knew I was a great sleeper,” she said. “I need to enter a sleep competition.”

Her mother nodded proudly. “She was the only baby in the world who slept through the whole night ever since she got home from the hospital.”

Checkup: Month 19

Weight: 159

Average hours of sleep per night: 7.5

Average hours sedentary per day: 4

Chest press: 185 pounds (15 reps)

Health blogs read daily: 6

I’m doing okay, but my grandfather isn’t. I brought Lucas and Zane to visit, and as soon as we enter, I can tell his health had gone south.

He is sitting in his recliner, his mouth more ajar than usual, his skin looser, his body more immobile. Without help, he can barely shift position.

“Is he frozen?” Lucas asks.

I blush. I try to recover by pretending Lucas was asking about the temperature, “No, he’s not cold. The heater is on. I’m sure he’s warm.”

“He looks frozen,” Lucas repeats.

Thank God my grandfather is hard of hearing.

My grandfather looks over and lights up, just a little. “What are you writing nowadays, A.J.?”

I tell him about the health book, again. Lucas picks up a green balloon in the corner. My aunt Jane tells me the physical therapist gave it to Grandpa. He’s supposed to bat it around to keep limber.

“Put it back, Lucas. It’s for Great-Grandpa.”

“No, he can play with it,” says Jane. “Play with Great-Grandpa.”

Lucas swats the balloon to his great-grandpa, who swats it back. They thump the balloon back and forth, Lucas laughing, my grandfather smiling.

It’s a trope that people become like children in old age. But there’s nothing quite like seeing it happen firsthand. My grandfather’s daughters—he has five, and one is always on hand—wipe his chin with a napkin when he drools. When his eyelids start to droop, they ask, “Who’s a tired boy?”

Old age is a long, slow loss of control.

Infancy has no control either. I’ve always found it odd when people say “happy as a baby.” Really? Sometimes it’s fun, like when you get to see your parents do something witty, such as rip a piece of paper in half. But other times, babyhood seems terrifying. You’re so reliant on others. You have to howl and thrash and pray the mashed bananas will appear. The saving grace is, babies don’t know what independence feels like. Old people know what they’re missing.