Customer Reviews

Sleep: The Complete Guide to Sleep Disorders and a Better Night's Sleep (Your Personal Health)

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As is implied by the title, this book is an informative guide to a subject many people have a problem with: Sleep. It's written by a family physician, and often points are laid-out using real-world examples.

Writing Style

Overall, I thought it was an informative book. I actually began reading it for a more technical/scientific explanation of sleep. The book did not go into the scientific detail I was hoping for, but still helped me understand sleep and many of the problems associated with it. It used layman's terms, simple yet effective physical descriptions, and personal stories to help me understand the phenomenon as well, or in many cases, better than I would have from a more technical-oriented book.

The book is very much for the casual reader. The author is a family physician in a small town, so he has experience working with people of all age groups, and likely has close bonds with his patients. Many of the examples, such as those for sleep apnea and changing sleep schedules to accommodate shift work, are pulled from personal experience with patients. His writing style is very personal-he constantly refers to the reader as "you", and makes the subject and conditions as relatable as possible. This writing style gives the reader the feeling that they have just stepped into the office of their family doctor, and he's going to give them the rundown of what might be bothering them.

What's in the book

The book's main purpose is to provide a simple explanation for what sleep is and how your body reacts to sleep, both in dreamland and when you're awake and out and about. The important thing about the book is that it did not just necessarily discuss sleep, but rather how what happens in sleep affects your behavior when you're awake, a discussion that is far more practical in the real world.

The book discusses in-depth, common sleep-associated problems. These include snoring, sleep-apnea, insomnia, sleep-walking, narcolepsy, and muscle-cramping. Each chapter then has a short list of steps one can take to help prevent those problems.

Each issue is discussed with the friendly air of your local doctor. No subject is abnormal, and concepts and problems are explained easily and clearly, sometimes with personal examples to make the reader feel less self-conscious about their own problems.

Each chapter also usually includes short page-long tidbits. These bits of information can range from fun pieces of trivia about, say, midnight snacking or the influence of a dream on an inventor, to more serious information, including a very short checklist to help prevent SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome) and newborn sleeping tips (He goes a little more into SIDS in the same chapter. Unfortunately, though, not much can be said as the cause of this disorder is still unknown).

What I got out of it

I'd read the book with a particular interest in learning about the stages of the sleep cycle for a college course. For being a guide more focused on medical problems, the book was fairly informative about the entire sleep cycle. Dr. Caldwell was not too specific when it came to the official lingo (I don't think I can talk to my professor about the "Twilight Zone" stages of sleep), but, like the rest of the book, the cycle was laid out in an easily-relatable manner. Each stage, stages I and II ("Twilight Zone stages"), stage III ("deep sleep") and REM (Rapid Eye Movement-the state most vivid dreaming occurs in), were all described not with the rather bland, "your mind makes this brainwave" lingo I was used to about the subject, but rather with the thoughts, sensations, and feelings the reader would experience during each stage.

A section of the book I personally enjoyed was the discussion of what constitutes a healthy sleep schedule, and how altering it drastically affects you. As a college senior, I'm intimately familiar with my sleep schedule changing, shortening, reversing, doing back-flips, etc., so this section particularly struck a chord with me.

First off, he uses his physician academia background to mention a study in which two researchers cut themselves off completely from the outside world in order to determine their natural sleep cycle, without any of the time cues ("zeitgebers") we normally use (they even went so far as to stay in a cave, where they could be devoid of the most powerful zeitbgeber of all-sunlight). They found that their natural sleep cycle was slightly longer than 24 hours-normally 25 or 26. While this was just the example of two individuals, this explains why some people can easily stay up later night after night-their sleep schedules are slightly out of sync with the world around them.

I must admit, the part of me that remembers being a teenager and being scolded for staying up late every night was pleased. Moreover, that entire section made me feel more relaxed about my current sleep habits. Dr. Caldwell discusses "larks vs. owls" (morning people vs. evening people), and I have discovered that I am definitely an owl. Thus, being so out-of-sync with the 8-to-5 world can sometimes be distressing. Though there is little to be done to alleviate the problem, unless one can arrange for work to fall more in the afternoon and evening time, just knowing that I was not alone in my late-night wakefulness was reassuring.

Synopsis

Despite being informative, this book is still a guide. Most chapters are 20 pages or less, and the specific conditions described in them, like sleep apnea, are even shorter. If you want a comprehensive all-in-one guide to a specific condition you are suffering from, this book will not be too helpful. It will help you scratch the surface of the topic, and give you a few tips that may help alleviate some of the symptoms, but it is no substitute for a more in-depth book specifically about the problem. Or, better yet, consulting your physician.

If, however, you want a simple list of conditions and their symptoms that you can glance at, than this book is for you.

What factors influence sleep? What are the effects of shift work, yet lag, and common sleep disorders, and how can they be overcome? Dr. J. Paul Caldwell's Sleep covers the science of sleep as well as the common disorders which prevent it. Case studies, diagrams and sidebars of information accompany a review of facts.