On the future of too much and the power of rest

 

Great quotes by Thomas Merton about rest.

The Joy of Quiet

by PICO IYER, nytimes.com
December 29th 2011

ABOUT a year ago, I flew to Singapore to join the writer Malcolm Gladwell, the fashion designer Marc Ecko and the graphic designer Stefan Sagmeister in addressing a group of advertising people on “Marketing to the Child of Tomorrow.” Soon after I arrived, the chief executive of the agency that had invited us took me aside. What he was most interested in, he began — I braced myself for mention of some next-generation stealth campaign — was stillness.

A few months later, I read an interview with the perennially cutting-edge designer Philippe Starck. What allowed him to remain so consistently ahead of the curve? “I never read any magazines or watch TV,” he said, perhaps a little hyperbolically. “Nor do I go to cocktail parties, dinners or anything like that.” He lived outside conventional ideas, he implied, because “I live alone mostly, in the middle of nowhere.”

Around the same time, I noticed that those who part with $2,285 a night to stay in a cliff-top room at the Post Ranch Inn in Big Sur pay partly for the privilege of not having a TV in their rooms; the future of travel, I’m reliably told, lies in “black-hole resorts,” which charge high prices precisely because you can’t get online in their rooms.

Has it really come to this?

In barely one generation we’ve moved from exulting in the time-saving devices that have so expanded our lives to trying to get away from them — often in order to make more time. The more ways we have to connect, the more many of us seem desperate to unplug. Like teenagers, we appear to have gone from knowing nothing about the world to knowing too much all but overnight.

Internet rescue camps in South Korea and China try to save kids addicted to the screen.

Writer friends of mine pay good money to get the Freedom software that enables them to disable (for up to eight hours) the very Internet connections that seemed so emancipating not long ago. Even Intel (of all companies) experimented in 2007 with conferring four uninterrupted hours of quiet time every Tuesday morning on 300 engineers and managers. (The average office worker today, researchers have found, enjoys no more than three minutes at a time at his or her desk without interruption.) During this period the workers were not allowed to use the phone or send e-mail, but simply had the chance to clear their heads and to hear themselves think. A majority of Intel’s trial group recommended that the policy be extended to others.

THE average American spends at least eight and a half hours a day in front of a screen, Nicholas Carr notes in his eye-opening book “The Shallows,” in part because the number of hours American adults spent online doubled between 2005 and 2009 (and the number of hours spent in front of a TV screen, often simultaneously, is also steadily increasing).

The average American teenager sends or receives 75 text messages a day, though one girl in Sacramento managed to handle an average of 10,000 every 24 hours for a month. Since luxury, as any economist will tell you, is a function of scarcity, the children of tomorrow, I heard myself tell the marketers in Singapore, will crave nothing more than freedom, if only for a short while, from all the blinking machines, streaming videos and scrolling headlines that leave them feeling empty and too full all at once.

The urgency of slowing down — to find the time and space to think — is nothing new, of course, and wiser souls have always reminded us that the more attention we pay to the moment, the less time and energy we have to place it in some larger context. “Distraction is the only thing that consoles us for our miseries,” the French philosopher Blaise Pascal wrote in the 17th century, “and yet it is itself the greatest of our miseries.” He also famously remarked that all of man’s problems come from his inability to sit quietly in a room alone.

When telegraphs and trains brought in the idea that convenience was more important than content — and speedier means could make up for unimproved ends — Henry David Thoreau reminded us that “the man whose horse trots a mile in a minute does not carry the most important messages.” Even half a century ago, Marshall McLuhan, who came closer than most to seeing what was coming, warned, “When things come at you very fast, naturally you lose touch with yourself.” Thomas Merton struck a chord with millions, by not just noting that “Man was made for the highest activity, which is, in fact, his rest,” but by also acting on it, and stepping out of the rat race and into a Cistercian cloister.

Original Page: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/opinion/sunday/the-joy-of-quiet.html?src=me&ref=general

Shared from Read It Later

this constitutes a huge even epic social engineering/experimentation because of the rapidity of change in family dynamics

Surging Internet Use Cutting Into Family Time

By Amanda Gardner
HealthDay ReporterThu Jun 18, 11:49 pm ET

THURSDAY, June 18 (HealthDay News) -- American kids and their parents are now spending more hours huddled alone around computer screens and cell phone displays, seriously eroding the amount of time families spend together.

That's according to a new report that found the time per week that families interact as group has fallen by nearly a third between 2005 and 2008. ( this Incredibly dramatic  Change In a very short period of time. Functions as a wide scale societal intervention.)

"Family face-to-face time has decreased in a substantial way. There's been a fairly abrupt drop in family time, a process which is usually glacial," said Michael Gilbert, a senior fellow at the Center for the Digital Future at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication. "Families are the social building blocks of virtually every society, and this can't be a good thing."

In a new survey from the center, researchers found that in 2008, 28 percent of people said that being wired has resulted in them spending less time with family members, a threefold increase from the 11 percent reported just two years ago, in 2006.

"We wanted to put a little alert out about this," Gilbert said. "Technology isn't all good."

This is certainly not the first time researchers have sounded an alarm about Internet use and even "Internet addiction." Other studies have suggested that online usage has significantly disrupted the lives of millions of Americans.

"In the last two decades, there has been an erosion in family dinners together that take place without gadgets," Gilbert said. "There's reduced cohesion, reduced communication."

And the Internet is vastly different from television, which drew (and still draws) people together -- watching, say, Johnny Carson, the 1969 moon landing, or American Idol.

In contrast, "the Internet is one-to-one and so demanding. The key distinction of the Internet is interactivity," Gilbert said. "You have to sit and respond."

The annual survey, part of the Center's Digital Future Project, involved contacts with 2,000 American households. In 2005, the survey found that the amount of time family members spent together averaged about 26 hours a month.

That shared time had dropped precipitously to just under 18 hours per month by 2008, slashing overall time spent together by 30 percent. (then there is the multitasking time that is spent, where the family is present, but engaging any electronic activity like texting. This probably erodes meaningful social times as well )

Women seem to be bearing the brunt of this Web-linked isolation, with more than 49 percent reporting feeling "sometimes" or "often" ignored by other family members, compared with only about 39 percent of men reporting the same.

Meanwhile, in 2000, 11 percent of people surveyed said younger people (under 18) were spending "too much time" online, vs. 28 percent in 2008.

This trend toward decreased family time dovetails with the emergence and rapid growth of online social communities, the researchers noted.

"Social networks such as Twitter and Facebook exploded in 2007. At that time, more than half of people online said this online community was as important as their offline community," Gilbert said. "Many technology issues are pulling on the family which, in the modern world, has enough pressures."

Where might all this lead?

"Certainly a lack of collective experience and face-to-face time will lead to a breakdown in communication, decreased opportunities to experience the world together, increased alienation of children," Gilbert said. "Family breakdown leads to destructive behavior."

In response, some families are beginning to budget time for Internet use, setting curfews or proclaiming no Internet on weekends.

"There are ways we can put little fences around our involvement with the Internet," Gilbert said. "We need to remember how valuable it is to spend time together and experience the world together. Nothing can substitute for face-to-face time."

For all the potential damage involved in Internet usage, there are also numerous benefits, said Dr. Harold Koplewicz, director of the Child Study Center at New York University Langone Medical Center.

"Kids have the opportunity to learn, play, socialize and participate in social life. It's communication besides pleasure," he said. "It may look as though they're wasting time, but spending time online is essential. Kids can participate in culture and connect with others with similar interests."

But, Koplewicz added, "Parents need to counter the trend towards decreased family time. While there are benefits to Internet usage, it doesn't mean you can let the machine take over."

Parents need to consciously plan family time, which can include playing computer games together, doing online projects together, having regular family meal times and participating in regular outings. They also need to monitor their children's use of the Internet, including having access to a history of sites visited, he said.

"The more involved parents are in their teen's life, the more valued teens feel. It's a myth that teens do not want their parents in their life," Koplewicz said.

More information

Find out more at the Center for the Digital Future.

On postpartum depression take away message its common almost 10% in the first 9 months, it last longer than the first few weeks after delivery, it affects mom child bonding, and has vicious cycle effects on mom's feeling of adequacy as a parent. What may be underestimated is low levels of depression not quite reaching clinical depression and anxiety overlay , which think is substantially more common.

Scientific American Mind -  March 20, 2008

Postpartum Depression Epidemic Affects More than Just Mom

A deep despair mars the first year of motherhood for as many as one in five women. Without treatment, postpartum depression can weaken critical bonds between a mother and her child

By Katja Gaschler

The psychologist smiles at Manuela, a new mother in her late thirties. “Please play with your baby for two minutes,” the therapist instructs her and then leaves the room. Two video cameras film Manuela (which is not her real name) and her three-month-old daughter. In the next room, a split-screen monitor shows the mother’s profile on the left and her infant in a baby chair on the right.

At first, Manuela appears to be at a loss for what to do. Then, her face noticeably stiff, she begins to talk softly to her baby. Her baby fidgets, briefly makes eye contact and then turns away. Manuela eventually stops talking and stares into the distance, unsure again how to act. She absentmindedly strokes her baby’s foot with one hand. The psychologist knocks on the door; the videotaping is over. The new mother is now on the verge of tears.

Manuela is undergoing therapy at the Clinic for General Psychiatry in Heidelberg, Germany, for postpartum depression, an ailment that has strained her relationship with her baby. Although the vast majority of mothers experience periods of crying and irritability along with concen tration lapses and exhaustion, these so-called baby blues disappear within a few hours or days of delivery. But 10 to 20 percent of women in the U.S. develop, in the first year after childbirth, the more disabling despair that afflicts Manuela. These mothers succumb to a deep sadness that, if untreated, may persist for months to years.

Manuela frequently feels exhausted and emotionally empty. When her baby cries, she sometimes wants to flee or hide. She is wracked with guilt because she cannot show love to her daughter. Mothers with symptoms of postpartum depression [see box on page 70] are often overwhelmed by the feeling that they might harm their babies. Although they rarely cause any outright harm, depressed mothers may have difficulty caring for their infants—and that fact can heighten their distress.

These emotional problems plague women worldwide. A 2006 review of 143 studies in 40 countries documents that postpartum depression is especially common in Brazil, Guyana, Costa Rica, Italy, Chile, South Africa, Taiwan and Korea, with prevalence rates as high as 60 percent in some countries.

The causes of the disorder are not fully known, but the dramatic hormonal fluctuations that occur after delivery may contribute to it in sus ceptible women. A bout of previous depression is a huge risk factor for the postpartum variety, new research shows. Whatever its cause, depression can weaken the nascent bond between a mother and her child, studies suggest, and thereby make a toddler more passive, insecure and socially inhibited—although a child’s intellectual development usually remains unimpaired.

Thus, in addition to treating the mother’s depression, psychologists and psychiatrists increasingly focus on strengthening the relationship between the mother and her child—for example, by using a video camera to record and analyze their interactions. “We need to change the unfavorable behavioral patterns that develop between mother and child during depression,” says University of Heidelberg psychologist Corinna Reck.

Hormonal Havoc
Women seem to be particularly vulnerable to depression during their reproductive years: rates of the disorder are highest in females between the ages of 25 and 45. New data indicate that the incidence of depression in females rises, albeit modestly, after giving birth. In the October 2007 American Journal of Psychiatry, epidemiologist Patricia Dietz of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and her colleagues reported that 10.4 percent of 4,398 mothers had been depressed in the nine months following childbirth, compared with 8.7 percent in the nine months before pregnancy and 6.9 percent during pregnancy. More than half of the women with postpartum depression had also been depressed during or before pregnancy, suggesting that a previous occurrence of depression may be the biggest risk factor for acquiring the illness postpartum.

But the hormonal changes that occur in a new mother’s body are also thought to contribute to postpartum depression in some cases. During pregnancy, a woman experiences a surge in blood levels of estrogen and progesterone. Then, in the first 48 hours after childbirth, the amount of these two hormones plummets almost 50-fold back to normal levels. This chemical seesaw could contribute to depression just as smaller hormonal changes before a woman’s menstrual period may affect her moods.

Of course, hormonal flux does not fully explain postpartum depression. After all, this biochemical oscillation occurs in all new mothers, and yet only a small proportion of them become depressed. In addition, studies have shown that pregnancy hormone levels in a woman do not predict her risk of depression.

Nevertheless, the rapid rise and fall of female sex hormones may buffet the emotions of a subset of women who are predisposed to depression and thus may be acutely sensitive to the hormones’ effects. In 2000 endocrinologist David R. Rubinow, then at the National Institute of Mental Health, and his colleagues reported that simulating the hormonal ebb and flow that occurs during pregnancy and childbirth in 16 women precipitated depressive symptoms in five of the eight women with a history of postpartum depression but not in subjects who had no such history.

The demands of motherhood very likely play a role as well. Many women feel exhausted from a baby’s broken sleep and become overwhelmed by new child care duties. Some may lament the loss of the life they led before having the baby or of their former figure. Women who must endure such stresses on top of marital problems, a complicated birth, job loss or lack of support from family and friends are more likely to succumb to depression.

Broken Bonds
The consequences of depression inevitably reach beyond the mother. In a fog of sadness, a mother often lacks the emotional energy to relate appropriately to her baby. Overwhelming grief prevents her from properly perceiving a child’s smiles, cries, gestures and other attempts to communicate with her. Getting no response from mom, the child quits trying to relate to her. Thus, three-month-old infants of depressed mothers look at their mothers less often and show fewer signs of positive emotion than do babies of mentally healthy moms.

In fact, infants of depressed mothers display something akin to learned helplessness, a phenomenon University of Pennsylvania psychologist Martin E. P. Seligman and his colleagues described in the 1960s. In Seligman’s experiments, an animal would conclude that a situation was hopeless after repeatedly failing to overcome it—and then remain passive even when it could effect change. A similar passivity characterizes depression. “Sometimes the infants mirror their mother’s depressive behavior,” Reck says.

Such reciprocal withdrawal can start to fray the critical emotional bond between mother and child, especially if the depression occurs early in the baby’s life. Other work has shown that infants develop essential social skills in months two through six, building relationships with their mothers as well as other people. In a 2006 study of 101 new mothers, psychiatrist Eva Moeh ler, Reck and their Heidelberg colleagues found that maternal depression strongly diminished the quality of a mother’s bond with her child at two weeks, six weeks and four months postpartum—but not at 14 months. Thus, depression during the first few months after birth may be particularly perilous for a child’s social development.

A child of a depressed mother may even become more introverted and face a greater risk for social phobia, an extreme fear of social situations, among other emotional difficulties. In 2007 Reck, Moehler and their colleagues reported that in the same 101 mother-infant pairs, postpartum depression at six weeks, four months and 14 months after birth tended to make a 14-month-old toddler more fearful and inhibited as compared with same-age toddlers of healthy moms. Other work suggests that postpartum depression may produce behavioral problems and negativity in children.

Postpartum gloom usually does not have a long-lasting impact on children’s cognitive development, however. In a 2001 study psychologists Sophie Kurstjens and Dieter Wolke of the University of Munich tested the intellectual skills of 1,329 children (92 of them born to mothers who had depression) at various ages from 20 months to eight years. The researchers generally found no cognitive deficits among the children of depressed mothers as compared with those of healthy mothers. They did find cognitive problems, however, in boys of low socioeconomic status who had chronically depressed mothers as compared with children whose mothers had less severe depression.

Nursing Mom
Despite the devastating fallout from postpartum depression, many mothers shy away from getting help—in some cases, out of shame for emotions they cannot justify. Manuela, for example, was initially afraid to talk about her feelings and fears. She felt no one would understand why she was sad after the birth of a healthy, beautiful baby. Eventually, however, at her breaking point, she sought treatment at the Heidelberg clinic.

Many new mothers require medication to take the sting out of their sadness. A doctor may prescribe an antidepressant such as Prozac and, in some cases, may recommend taking a hormone such as estrogen as well. In addition, a small 2007 study by Yale University psychiatrists Ariadna Forray and Robert B. Ostroff suggests that electroconvulsive therapy can ameliorate postpartum depression and its more severe cousin, postpartum psycho sis, in women who do not respond to drug therapy.

Psychotherapy for the mother’s depression may also be beneficial. One proven approach is cognitive-behavior therapy, in which a therapist tries to correct distorted and negative ways of thinking either by discussing them openly or by asking the patient to practice more adaptive behaviors.

But treating the mother in isolation is often not enough to prevent her illness from affecting her child. In a study published last year psychologist David Forman of Concordia University in Quebec and his colleagues compared 60 mothers who received psychotherapy for depression with a group of 60 untreated depressed mothers and 56 healthy mothers. Six months of therapy did lower parenting stress in depressed women as compared with untreated depressed women, but the treated women still viewed their infants more negatively than did mothers who had not been depressed. Perhaps as a result, after 18 months of therapy the affected mothers reported more behavior problems, a lower level of attachment security and a more negative temperament in their children as compared with moms who had not been depressed.

Now these and many other researchers believe that therapy for postpartum depression should also involve the child. Psychologist George Downing of Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris developed video intervention therapy, for example, to improve mother-infant interaction. The technique helps mothers to correctly perceive their infants’ behavior by recording and analyzing it—and to feel better about their own actions as mothers. “The goal of therapy is to reactivate the intuitive maternal behavioral repertoire that was covered over by the depression,” explains Heidelberg clinic psychiatrist Thomas Fuchs.

Baby Talk
Tabea, a mother in her early thirties whose depression was severe enough to warrant hospitalization for several weeks after she gave birth, is still having difficulty interacting with her four-month-old son. At the Heidelberg clinic, a psychologist asks Tabea (which is not her real name) to sit in front of a video camera with her baby. Tabea speaks loudly to him. She raises her eyebrows and laughs. Her infant makes eye contact, and a smile flits across his face. His mother feels reinforced. But then the infant turns his head away. And Tabea says, “Well, what’s the matter now? Sulking again, are we? Did mommy leave you by yourself too long?” Tabea feels guilty for having had to leave her baby to be treated for depression.

But it is normal for infants to turn away after a social interaction. That is how they regulate stimuli. It is not, as Tabea sees it, a personal affront or a sign that she is a bad mother. Nevertheless, Tabea’s misinterpretation of her baby’s actions can prompt a vicious cycle in which the child’s apparent rejection hurts Tabea, making her feel insecure and sad, which in turn has a negative effect on the baby.

The therapist’s job is to break that cycle, large ly by correcting a mother’s misimpressions and emphasizing what she has done well. Tabea’s wide-open eyes, for example, signaled that she was paying attention to her child. The psychologist points out that Tabea’s expressive face and melodious speech are similarly appropriate and helpful. Then she encourages Tabea to wait for her child to take the initiative, which will be her signal to respond.

Some hospitals have mother-infant treatment centers for postpartum depression so that the mother can remain with her infant during treatment. There hospital personnel help the mother feed, diaper and bathe her child while also providing behavior therapy. Fathers can play an important part, too. Assuming he is not depressed, a father can significantly ameliorate the effects of a mother’s depression by building a close relationship with his son or daughter.

Meanwhile a mother can take steps to ease her emotional burden by asking for help from family and friends, sleeping more, spending time with her spouse, getting out of the house and putting less pressure on herself. In the end, most mothers who receive adequate treatment—often a combination of psychotherapy, medication and self-help—usually recover completely within about two months of starting treatment, according to psychiatrist Ricardo J. Fernandez of Prince ton Family Care Associates in New Jersey. Some mothers even emerge from their cloud of sadness with a new sense of clarity. As one mother said of her depression, “It gave me the impetus to change my life.”

 

re fda warning re stims, more controversy, the hard and sad thing about this kind of study is that many young children who would benefit will likely be pulled off meds, and who can count increase in accidents from untreated impulsivity, etc

re fda warning re stims, more controversy, the hard and sad thing about this kind of study is that many young children who would benefit will likely be pulled off meds, and who can count increase in accidents from untreated impulsivity, etc

http://www.fda.gov/Safety/MedWatch/SafetyInformation/SafetyAlertsforHumanMedicalProducts/ucm166667.htm

Stimulant Medications used in Children with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder - Communication about an Ongoing Safety Review

Products involved include: Focalin, Focalin XR (dexmethylphenidate HCl ); Dexedrine, Dexedrine Spansules, Dextroamphetamine ER, Dextrostat (dextroamphetamine sulfate); Vyvanse (lisdexamfetamine dimesylate); Desoxyn (methamphetamine); Concerta, Daytrana, Metadate CD, Metadate ER, Methylin, Methylin ER, Ritalin, Ritalin-LA, Ritalin-SR (methylphenidate); Adderall, Adderall XR (mixed salts amphetamine); Cylert (pemoline) and generics.

Audience: Pediatricians, Neuropsychiatric healthcare professionals

[Posted 06/15/2009] FDA notified healthcare professionals that it is providing its perspective on study data published in the American Journal of Psychiatry on the potential risks of stimulant medications used to treat Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in children. This study, funded by the FDA and the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), compared the use of stimulant medications in 564 healthy children from across the United States who died suddenly to the use of stimulant medications in 564 children who died as passengers in a motor vehicle accident.The study authors concluded that there may be an association between the use of stimulant medications and sudden death in healthy children. Given the limitations of this study’s methodology, the FDA is unable to conclude that these data affect the overall risk and benefit profile of stimulant medications used to treat ADHD in children. FDA believes that this study should not serve as a basis for parents to stop a child’s stimulant medication. Parents should discuss concerns about the use of these medicines with the prescribing healthcare professional. Any child who develops cardiovascular symptoms (such as chest pain, shortness of breath or fainting) during stimulant medication treatment should immediately be seen by a doctor.

FDA is continuing its review of the strengths and limitations of this and other epidemiological studies that evaluate the risks of stimulant medications used to treat ADHD in children. FDA and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality are sponsoring a large epidemiological study that will provide further information about the potential risks associated with stimulant medication use in children. The data collection for this study will be complete later in 2009.

A great article on a reporter’s journey into insidious sleep disorder. This is the tip of the iceberg.

When Sleep Leaves You Tired

• By MELINDA BECK

Ask readers of this newspaper if they're getting adequate sleep, and many would probably say "Ha!"

Twenty percent of Americans sleep less than six hours a night, and nearly one-third have lost sleep worrying about financial concerns, according to the National Sleep Foundation, which recommends that adults get seven to nine hours. "Our society thinks sleep is for slackers," says Darrel Drobnich, the organization's chief program officer.

But all that lost sleep is taking an insidious toll. Chronic, inadequate sleep raises the risk of cardiovascular disease, depression, diabetes and obesity. It impairs cognitive function, memory and the immune system and causes more than 100,000 motor-vehicle accidents a year. Sleep deprivation also changes the body's metabolism, making people eat more and feel less satisfied.

Studies presented at the American Association of Sleep Medicine's annual meeting in Seattle this week also found that inadequate sleep is associated with lower GPAs among college students and with elevated levels of visfatin, a hormone secreted by belly fat that is associated with insulin resistance.

What many people don't realize is that even if they log respectable time in bed (known as TIB among sleep researchers), they may be getting poor-quality sleep, with not enough of the restorative phases. REM, the Rapid Eye Movement phase in which dreaming occurs, is crucial for consolidating memories, learning, creativity, problem-solving and emotional balance. Deep, or slow-wave sleep, when the body secretes human growth hormone, is critical for development and physical repair. Both REM and deep sleep decline with age and are highly vulnerable to disruptions, from caffeine and alcohol to anxiety and a variety of sleep disorders.

One tip-off that you haven't gotten enough restorative sleep is trouble waking up and excessive daytime sleepiness (a condition known as EDS). "People say, 'Oh, I don't have a sleep problem. I can fall asleep anywhere, anytime' -- but that means you are excessively sleepy," says Charles Czeisler, a professor of sleep medicine at Harvard Medical School.

Other symptoms of sleep deprivation include mood changes, difficulty focusing or remembering and a chronic need for caffeine, which can then create a vicious circle of dependence and disruption. That would be me.

Finding out what's going on in your sleep generally requires spending the night in a professional sleep lab hooked up to lots of wires and monitors. But I've been testing a new home-sleep monitor called the Zeo Personal Sleep Coach that lets people track their sleep patterns nightly in their own bedrooms.

You sleep wearing a soft headband with sensors that monitor your brain waves and send signals wirelessly to a device that looks like a sleek clock radio. It displays whether you are awake or in light sleep, deep sleep, or REM sleep, in real time, all through the night.

"If you can measure it, you can manage it," says Stephan Fabregas, one of two recent Brown University graduates who invented the Zeo because they were looking for a way to wake up feeling less groggy after late nights.

Of course, not everyone needs a fancy gadget to tell them whether they are sleeping properly. But I was stunned by my results: The Zeo showed that I woke up numerous times and was awake for long stretches of the night, without having any recollection. (Perception of time is often distorted at night -- many people with insomnia actually sleep more than they think they do.) Even though I was in bed for six or seven hours each night, I was averaging only about four hours of real sleep and very little REM or deep sleep. No wonder I feel so tired!

The Zeo stores the information on a memory card you can upload to a Web site, which helps track your sleep patterns and sends daily coaching tips for getting better sleep. The $399 device comes with six months of daily email coaching, which can be extended at a cost of $99 for each additional six months. (Currently, it's available only online at www.myzeo.com.)

To help you keep track of your sleep, the Zeo also gives you a "ZQ" score every morning, based on the quantity and quality of your sleep the night before. There's no ideal ZQ -- you're comparing your own score from night to night. But the average for people in their 20s is 86; for those in their 40s, it is 74; and for those in their 50s, it is 67, since sleep quality declines with age.

My ZQs bounced from the 40s to a dismal 15 the first week. Switching to decaf after 3 p.m. and making an effort to get to bed earlier helped me bring my score into the 50s the second week. ("Having caffeine even first thing in the morning can induce changes in brain activity during sleep," says Kenneth Wright, director of the Sleep and Chronobiology Lab at the University of Colorado at Boulder and one of Zeo's scientific advisers.) I also noticed that the nights when I had the longest stretches of wakefulness were those when my column was due -- probably a sign that I was still thinking about it long after turning in.

Everybody's sleep and sleep disruptors are different. Todd Johnson, a 40-year-old border-patrol agent in Caribou, Maine, and one of ZEO's early testers, found that reading before he went to bed helped reduce his wake time and bring his ZQ from the 20s into the 60s. "You can try something that night and see the results in the morning," he says. Another early tester, Tim Guirl, who teaches at a community college in Seattle, found that he had more restorative sleep if he didn't exercise too close to bedtime and eliminated a large late-night snack.

Other recommendations from Zeo include reducing noise, light and disruptive influences like pets in the bedroom; having a "power-down" hour before bedtime with no email, no Internet use, no cellphones and no BlackBerrys; and keeping a consistent sleep schedule. And if you find yourself awake and worrying, Zeo recommends getting out of bed and writing down what you're thinking about in a "worry journal."

Zeo says its brain-wave results are similar to those from professional sleep labs -- but only about 140 people have tested it so far. And the Zeo isn't designed to diagnose actual sleep disorders, which plague an estimated 70 million Americans -- you need to see a doctor for that.

To see if something besides drinking coffee and thinking great thoughts was affecting my sleep, I underwent a sleep study at the Sleep Health Center connected with Brigham and Women's Hospital in Brighton, Mass. A polysomnography, as such tests are called, measures brain waves like the Zeo, but also heart rate, respiratory rate, oxygen saturation, body positions and movements. It took about 45 minutes to have all of the sensors and wires attached -- and then a little longer to get comfortable enough to sleep.

To my surprise, the study found that I had a fairly severe case of Periodic Limb Movements, episodes of involuntary muscle movements in the night. About 10% of adults have PLMs. Many don't even notice; sleep partners are often bothered more than the sleepers themselves. But PLMs can be very disruptive if they are accompanied by arousals from sleep. I was averaging 42 arousals per hour. According to David White, another Harvard sleep physician who prescribed the study for me, PLMs can be due to an iron deficiency or medication side effects, and they are often related to "restless-leg syndrome," which causes an irresistible urge to move the legs, day or night. Medications like Requip can minimize the movements; I'm going to give them a try.

The study also showed I had some obstructive sleep apnea, in which the airway narrows, especially when the muscles relax in sleep. People with OSA stop breathing momentarily until a lack of oxygen alerts the brain, which wakes them up with a gasp. These mini arousals can occur as often as 70 times an hour, leaving the sufferer exhausted and at risk for heart disease, stroke and atherosclerosis. An estimated 4% of men and 2% of women have OSA. One telltale sign is having a shirt-collar size larger than 17 inches. Another sign is loud snoring, although I certainly don't do that. ("Women never snore -- they all deny it," says Dr. White.)

The most effective treatment is a Continuous Positive Airway Pressure machine, which blows air through the nose to keep the airway open. My OSA isn't that bad -- yet. Other remedies include a dental appliance that helps prop the airway open and losing weight, which helps reduce the airway blockage.

Dr. White is also chief medical officer for Philips Home Healthcare, which makes a watch-like monitor, called an Actiwatch, that tracks whether the wearer is moving or still, roughly corresponding with sleep. The Actiwatch doesn't show sleep phases; it generally diagnoses problems with jet lag and body clocks. I wore one for a week, and although I'm still a night owl, it showed nothing amiss in that area.

All in all, "there are plenty of ways you can improve your sleep," Jason Donahue, another Zeo founder, tells me cheerily. This week, I'm starting in on Zeo's tips on keeping disturbances in the bedroom to a minimum. The dog may have to find a new place to sleep.

• Email HealthJournal@wsj.com

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124451280076496767.html?mg=com-wsj#project%3DSLEEPQUIZ0906%26articleTabs%3Darticle

Screening tools for sleep disorder; the Epworth Sleepiness Scale

A good interactive using the most widely utilized clinical sleep scale. This is well validated and good screening tool

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124451280076496767.html?mg=com-wsj#project%3DSLEEPQUIZ0906%26articleTabs%3Dinteractive

reprint from New York Times essay; I disagree with this notion that happiness is best left unpursued, but appreciate the poetry of it. I think happiness must be pursued, but something more akin to joy than happiness. They are penumbras of each other, and the semantics get complicated…The recession is moving people strongly toward the core elements of life, and it seems to me to be a worthwhile swing, closer to the heart of God and of real life?

June 7, 2009, 10:35 PM

The Joy of Less

http://happydays.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/07/the-joy-of-less/

By PICO IYER

“The beat of my heart has grown deeper, more active, and yet more peaceful, and it is as if I were all the time storing up inner riches…My [life] is one long sequence of inner miracles.” The young Dutchwoman Etty Hillesum wrote that in a Nazi transit camp in 1943, on her way to her death at Auschwitz two months later. Towards the end of his life, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “All I have seen teaches me to trust the creator for all I have not seen,” though by then he had already lost his father when he was 7, his first wife when she was 20 and his first son, aged 5. In Japan, the late 18th-century poet Issa is celebrated for his delighted, almost child-like celebrations of the natural world. Issa saw four children die in infancy, his wife die in childbirth, and his own body partially paralyzed.

In the corporate world, I always knew there was some higher position I could attain, which meant that, like Zeno’s arrow, I was guaranteed never to arrive and always to remain dissatisfied.

I’m not sure I knew the details of all these lives when I was 29, but I did begin to guess that happiness lies less in our circumstances than in what we make of them, in every sense. “There is nothing either good or bad,” I had heard in high school, from Hamlet, “but thinking makes it so.” I had been lucky enough at that point to stumble into the life I might have dreamed of as a boy: a great job writing on world affairs for Time magazine, an apartment (officially at least) on Park Avenue, enough time and money to take vacations in Burma, Morocco, El Salvador. But every time I went to one of those places, I noticed that the people I met there, mired in difficulty and often warfare, seemed to have more energy and even optimism than the friends I’d grown up with in privileged, peaceful Santa Barbara, Calif., many of whom were on their fourth marriages and seeing a therapist every day. Though I knew that poverty certainly didn’t buy happiness, I wasn’t convinced that money did either.

So — as post-1960s cliché decreed — I left my comfortable job and life to live for a year in a temple on the backstreets of Kyoto. My high-minded year lasted all of a week, by which time I’d noticed that the depthless contemplation of the moon and composition of haiku I’d imagined from afar was really more a matter of cleaning, sweeping and then cleaning some more. But today, more than 21 years later, I still live in the vicinity of Kyoto, in a two-room apartment that makes my old monastic cell look almost luxurious by comparison. I have no bicycle, no car, no television I can understand, no media — and the days seem to stretch into eternities, and I can’t think of a single thing I lack.

I’m no Buddhist monk, and I can’t say I’m in love with renunciation in itself, or traveling an hour or more to print out an article I’ve written, or missing out on the N.B.A. Finals. But at some point, I decided that, for me at least, happiness arose out of all I didn’t want or need, not all I did. And it seemed quite useful to take a clear, hard look at what really led to peace of mind or absorption (the closest I’ve come to understanding happiness). Not having a car gives me volumes not to think or worry about, and makes walks around the neighborhood a daily adventure. Lacking a cell phone and high-speed Internet, I have time to play ping-pong every evening, to write long letters to old friends and to go shopping for my sweetheart (or to track down old baubles for two kids who are now out in the world).

When the phone does ring — once a week — I’m thrilled, as I never was when the phone rang in my overcrowded office in Rockefeller Center. And when I return to the United States every three months or so and pick up a newspaper, I find I haven’t missed much at all. While I’ve been rereading P.G. Wodehouse, or “Walden,” the crazily accelerating roller-coaster of the 24/7 news cycle has propelled people up and down and down and up and then left them pretty much where they started. “I call that man rich,” Henry James’s Ralph Touchett observes in “Portrait of a Lady,” “who can satisfy the requirements of his imagination.” Living in the future tense never did that for me.

Perhaps happiness, like peace or passion, comes most when it isn’t pursued.

I certainly wouldn’t recommend my life to most people — and my heart goes out to those who have recently been condemned to a simplicity they never needed or wanted. But I’m not sure how much outward details or accomplishments ever really make us happy deep down. The millionaires I know seem desperate to become multimillionaires, and spend more time with their lawyers and their bankers than with their friends (whose motivations they are no longer sure of). And I remember how, in the corporate world, I always knew there was some higher position I could attain, which meant that, like Zeno’s arrow, I was guaranteed never to arrive and always to remain dissatisfied.

Being self-employed will always make for a precarious life; these days, it is more uncertain than ever, especially since my tools of choice, written words, are coming to seem like accessories to images. Like almost everyone I know, I’ve lost much of my savings in the past few months. I even went through a dress-rehearsal for our enforced austerity when my family home in Santa Barbara burned to the ground some years ago, leaving me with nothing but the toothbrush I bought from an all-night supermarket that night. And yet my two-room apartment in nowhere Japan seems more abundant than the big house that burned down. I have time to read the new John le Carre, while nibbling at sweet tangerines in the sun. When a Sigur Ros album comes out, it fills my days and nights, resplendent. And then it seems that happiness, like peace or passion, comes most freely when it isn’t pursued.

If you’re the kind of person who prefers freedom to security, who feels more comfortable in a small room than a large one and who finds that happiness comes from matching your wants to your needs, then running to stand still isn’t where your joy lies. In New York, a part of me was always somewhere else, thinking of what a simple life in Japan might be like. Now I’m there, I find that I almost never think of Rockefeller Center or Park Avenue at all.

[Editor's note: an earlier version of this post included an inaccurate reference to the constitution of Japan. It has since been removed.]

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Pico Iyer’s most recent book, “The Open Road: The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama,” is just out in