Over the Counter Natural Cures (12 page)

NATIONAL UNREST

Americans are not rested. Studies done by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reveal that nearly 70 percent of adults don't get adequate sleep. Researchers also found that more than 70 million people suffer from constant sleep loss or sleep disorders. That means almost a fourth of the U.S. population have become “waking addicts”—people in need of serious sleep intervention.

“It's important to better understand how sleep impacts people's overall health and the need to take steps to improve the sufficiency of their sleep,” says Lela R. Mcknight-Eily, PhD, a behavioral scientist for the CDC. I couldn't agree more, but this message is rarely heard in the mainstream because corporate America can't profit from healthy, natural sleep.

My investigation into the science of sleep began ten years ago. As a fledgling graduate student, I was being escorted over new scientific terrain. I didn't want to miss any of it. I spent long days in the lab and late nights in the library. I would average five or six hours of sleep per night.
Sleep deprivation was done in an effort to make more time for research. I was attempting to selectively control the synthesis of three-dimensional, amino acid conformations. Don't let the science jargon get you hazy.

Most amino-acid chemistry synthesis resulted in a mishmash of right-and left-handed molecules. (Remember, we are in three-dimensions.) In medicinal chemistry, you can only use one. To reduce the excess junk, I wanted to design a process that would allow the production of one type, not both. My research would eventually be used in an area of chemistry known as peptide mimetics, which serves as a novel tool for modulating most any biological event like cancer, obesity, and even pain.

Every discovery amplified my previous one. This kept me in the lab and out of my bed. For my chemistry work, I was named graduate student of the year at Northern Arizona University. I thought I could carry this work ethic into my professional life. But as time passed, I learned some hard lessons about sleep deprivation. My health began to tailspin.

For me, working for Big Pharma was like living in permanent lockdown. You always had to be seen. If you weren't present, people started asking questions. “Where were you when I came in this morning?” my peers would ask. “When did you get back from lunch?” my boss would enquire. “What time are you leaving?” my lab partners would wonder. “Would you mind typing up a report outlining your last six months of chemical reactions?” the CEO would request twice a year. Add to this the security and surveillance that comes from an insecure industry trying to hide dirty secrets, and you feel like you're reporting to the state penitentiary. To play the game, I deprived myself of sleep. That seemed to be the only way I could keep up.

My wake-up call came unexpectedly one day. First there was work, followed by a quick trip to the gym, and then all the usual family things—fixing dinner, taking care of kids, and putting them to bed.
With this behind my wife and me, it was time to do what adults do, make love—or so I thought. The fast pace was leading to some embarrassing outcomes.

My wife seductively motioned to the bedroom. I sat motionless in front of the television. I thought about it and then sighed, “I don't know. Maybe you could rub up against me, and we'll see what happens.” Insulted, she gasped. I was in trouble. But I was just too damn tired for sex. I had only been married a few years, and my sex drive had begun to evaporate.

This wasn't like my usual testosterone-fueled self. What happened to my sex drive? Had my testosterone plummeted to that of a thirteen-year-old girl? Nothing gets a man thinking faster than when he questions his testosterone levels. Upon reflection, I had whittled my slumber down too far. I was dragging ass, rather than getting some.

This was so eye-opening that I vowed to get to the bottom of it all. I plunged deep into sleep-deprivation research. It didn't take me long to learn that trimming hours off of my sleep schedule was costing me more than a few love-making sessions; it was bringing me closer to my expiration date.

ARE YOU SUFFERING FROM HORMONAL IGNORANCE?

I don't study health at the “symptom level.” I start my research at the body's most fundamental level, the cell. This gives me a vantage point by highlighting the biological mechanisms underlying the cause of symptoms before they develop. Monitoring cell function offers insight into our “health trajectory.” That's far better than relying on shoddy studies bought and paid for by Big Pharma that simply study symptoms and the statistical associations that come with them.

Like mapping the flight path of an asteroid and predicting its location years from now, monitoring cellular function helps identify big health problems years or even decades before they start. Studying cellular function under sleep deprivation, I was able to map the health consequences of not getting enough sleep far before they manifested into more detrimental outcomes, like losing my libido. I uncovered some surprising results.

During normal waking hours, all cells are damaged, particularly the powerhouse of the cell known as the mitochondria.
⁷³
As the cellular engine, it keeps cells operating at full capacity. It helps them produce energizing ATP molecules, neurotransmitters, hormones, and lots more. When the mitochondria are damaged, these vital cellular functions cease to operate at full capacity. When we sleep, our cells undergo repair or are replaced by newly generated, healthier ones so that the vital functions operate efficiently. If you don't conk out for eight hours or more, this antiaging mechanism ceases to exist. Our health tailspins due to “hormonal ignorance.”

Hormones are chemicals—made by cells—that elicit certain responses in the body. They induce sleep, alertness, fat burning, muscle growth, and anything else you could imagine. At their most basic, they teach cells how to function and communicate among each other. Ultimately, this helps guarantee proper organ function. At their most complex level, hormones are the spark of life and work by triggering receptors found on the outer membrane of cells and within them. This triggering determines how our genetic material—DNA—expresses itself. While we are graced with genetic material from both parents, our hormones play a big role in how those genes are expressed.

Proper hormone output and function is one of the most sophisticated systems of the body. Our total health—whether we live sick, or
live young—is dependent on “hormone intelligence.” This intelligence exists only when the body is fully rested. Otherwise, we experience hormonal ignorance.

Hormonal ignorance is characterized by rises and drops in levels of hormones that kill and those that heal. Our fat-storing hormone, insulin, rises. The hunger-inducing hormone ghrelin heightens. The libido and muscle-inducing male hormone testosterone sinks. The antiaging hormone hGH (human growth hormone) dissipates. Our brain's chief, free-radical scavenging hormone melatonin falls rapidly. Our fat-melting hormone leptin crashes. We essentially feel as though we have one foot in the grave. We become pissed off, fat, hungry, and depressed. This is just the beginning.

As hormonal ignorance continues, our health trajectory takes a crash course toward poor immunity, obesity, cancer, insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes, and heart disease. Those who don't get enough shut-eye feel the early signs of this ignorance with excess stress, anxiety, and naturally, fatigue. For some, these feelings ignite a desperate quest for rest that ends in prescription drug use.

THE DESPERATE QUEST FOR REST

What if you're like the millions of Americans who actually want to sleep a healthy eight but can't? Hopefully, you don't fall into the prescription-drug sleep trap like Mark did. It ensnares millions. If you thought insomnia was bad, try insomnia with a drug addiction.

Mark is a nocturnal desperado. It's been more than nine years since he has had a decent night's sleep. He would do anything to sleep like a drunken bum. He tried six different types of mattresses. He cut back on coffee and gulped down gallons of chamomile tea and warm milk. He underwent clinical hypnosis to “reprogram his mind.” He gulped down
the overrated 5-HTP sleep supplement. He got cracked a million wacky ways by his chiropractor. Not one attempt helped him get a wink of sleep.

At forty-two years old, Mark was a restless child at night. While others slept, he was up in the middle of the night, wandering around the house, reading, watching television, and rummaging through the fridge until he finally collapsed back into bed. His days were a dreamlike blur. To avoid nodding off at the wheel during the day, he said he “pulled hard on his beard hairs” and “played his iPod at deafening levels.” It made being a real estate agent very hard.

Most times at work, his crushing waves of fatigue led to anxiety. Fear of failure washed over him. “It's a helpless feeling knowing that you have a 9:00 a.m. meeting to show a property. I've tried everything I can think of to get to sleep, and it doesn't work,” he told me in his desperate quest for rest.

Mark's quest for rest drove him to gulp down Ambien (zolpidem). His family doctors tossed him some Ambien samples. With close to 10 million people now using a prescription to get sleep, this scenario is becoming far too common. This was just the beginning of Mark's problems.

Prescription drugs work by blocking or triggering a target switch within the body. Unfortunately, no drug is selective for just one switch, and side effects ensue. Worse, messing with one switch usually disrupts others, causing our biological wiring to get short circuited. The drug company Sanofi-Aventis's knockout pill Ambien is no exception. It attempts to mimic sleep by switching off our central nervous system (CNS).

Scientists don't know everything about sleep. But they do know much of it is controlled by a family of switches known as GABA receptors. Switch these off, and the lights of our central nervous system go out. Three generations of sleep pills are based on this knowledge, and Ambien is among the most popular.

The body switches off the CNS naturally with its own molecule—gamma-amino butyric acid (hence the corresponding GABA receptor). By turning off the entire cluster of GABA switches, our natural molecules shut the lights out for natural sleep.

Ambien merely dims the lights. It triggers only a switch or two, while ignoring the other CNS switches in the family. Ambien elicits sedation, while our natural compounds induce restful, relaxing sleep. While you might get shut-eye with Ambien or other sleep pills, you're not getting adequate sleep required to prevent hormonal ignorance. You're getting artificial sleep at best or a mental vasectomy at worst.

A mental vasectomy occurs when your sleep-inducing molecules are cut off from their corresponding switches. Your brain is short-circuited. A portion of the CNS is switched off, while other areas are switched on. There is a thin line between reality and sleep. Ambien users, like Mike, take part in daily tasks, but eerily, are sleeping at the time.

Although Mark initially got a couple of good nights of sleep while taking Ambien, the honeymoon quickly ended and gave way to buyer's remorse. Commenting on her husband's mental vasectomy, Mark's wife said:

 

Almost immediately, I noticed a severe change in his demeanor. He started experiencing tremendous mood swings, delusions, cursing rage, paranoid and aggressive thoughts, sleepwalking, and other activities while he was still asleep! One night he got up and ate a whole box of Hostess cupcakes and left the wrappers strewn around the house. Another time he got out of bed, walked down the street in his underwear, and started looking through the bushes in our neighbor's yard. When I caught up with him and asked him what he was doing, he said he was looking for our
cat, which I knew was still in our bedroom. When he would wake up in the morning, he wouldn't remember a thing.

 

By severing his nervous system from reality, Mark wasn't sure whether he was coming or going, waking or sleeping. The vasectomy had cut off his brain's ability to respond and react to his naturally occurring sleep molecules. “I had no idea how much that single event of the doctor giving me the free samples of Ambien would change my life,” Mark later said.

Manufacturers of drugs like Ambien downplay the potential for serious problems that their drugs can cause. Patients are not adequately informed about the severe side effects and imminent possibility of becoming addicted when doctors mumble a few cautionary words memorized from the
Physicians' Desk Reference
as they hand over their prescriptions.

OTHER JAW-DROPPING SIDE EFFECTS

If you think Mark's experience is unique, or that this type of drug-induced mayhem is peculiar to Ambien, you're already on too many drugs. The sleep pill Lunesta (eszopiclone) is quickly making a name for itself as Lunatic-esta.

With its maker Sepracor spending nearly $300 million last year on consumer advertising for the drug, you couldn't miss the ads featuring the glowing, green moth gently fanning people to sleep. That's supposed to represent Lunesta. But after reading what this drug is really about, you're going to run to Wal-Mart and buy some mothballs to surround your bed.

Lunesta's side effects are as loony as they get. Perhaps this is how the name was derived? There's no hiding them. Here they are, direct from the maker's website:

• Getting out of bed while not being fully awake and doing an activity you do not know you are doing.
  
• Abnormal thoughts and behavior. Symptoms include more outgoing or aggressive behavior than normal, confusion, agitation, hallucinations, worsening of depression, and suicidal thoughts or actions.
  
• Memory loss
  
• Anxiety
  
• Severe allergic reactions. Symptoms include swelling of the tongue or throat, trouble breathing, and nausea and vomiting. Get emergency medical help if you get these symptoms after taking Lunesta
  .
  

And you thought street drugs were dangerous. While these side effects are impressive, Sepracor barely even mentions the addiction that many users experience. An addicted Lunesta user comments on what can happen when you try to stop taking the loony med: