An Open Letter to Insomniacs and Other Sleep-Pattern Outliers

Since childhood, we’ve been told that getting eight hours of sleep each night is one of the most important things we can do to keep ourselves happy and healthy. I have no beef with this conventional wisdom as broad advice for the broad population. With most human needs, there is an optimal behavior that works for people in the middle of the bell curve. So for the majority of people reading this blog, you are well-served by getting seven or eight hours a sleep every night.

However, I know a few people outside the bell curve who have worried themselves into insomnia over their inability to conform with the classic sleep pattern. One friend of mine has nearly turned herself into a sleeping-pill junky (admittedly, this is my judgment, not hers). She rarely falls asleep without pills and complains of waking up dead-tired. Sleep aid commercials are common on late night TV. The presumption is clear: If you’re up in the middle of the night, there must be something wrong—so knock yourself out.

Researchers and physicians have established guidelines for a range of human needs: diet, exercise, even sexual activity. But there are always outliers. Some people are particularly responsive or non-responsive to physical exercise. Some digest certain foods particularly well or badly. Some are particularly sensitive or insensitive to changes in daylight or temperature. And some are not wired to the classic sleep pattern.

Top physicians understand this. The National Library of Medicine cautions people who are worried about their sleep habits: “It is important to remember that not getting 8 hours of sleep every night does not mean you are putting your health at risk. Different people have different sleeping needs.” But my unscientific sample (three people who’ve complained about not easily falling asleep to their doctor) suggests that too many people label themselves insomniacs and ask for a pill, and too many docs uncritically oblige.

For many years, I went to bed at the same time each weeknight (about 11:00), even when I wasn’t tired. Sometimes it took me two or three hours to fall asleep. Other nights, I woke up at 3:30 and tossed and turned in bed until the alarm went off. About five years ago, I stopped fighting against my presumed insomnia. When not tired, I got up and started writing short stories in the middle of the night. Losing a few hours of sleep didn’t impact my performance at work the next day. If I tired early the next evening, I went to bed early.

Embracing this “sleep when I’m tired” philosophy is the best thing that’s happened to me since the birth of my children. I now follow an approximate three-day sleep pattern: two nights of 7 or 8 hours, one night of 4. I sleep soundly when I sleep, and don’t sweat it when I don’t. I almost never feel tired during the day, and I’ve gained the time to pursue my creative interests. This includes writing a well-reviewed novel (A Thinking Man’s Bully) and an award-wining history book (The Theatre of Spoil and Destruction: The American Revolution in Monmouth County). Both books were written primarily in the middle of the night. Other books will be born from future late-night writing sessions.

Insomnia, the inability to sleep when your body needs it, is a real problem for many people. Medical/drug interventions may be necessary to address that problem. But I think there are a great many Americans—perhaps even in the millions—who have convinced themselves they’re insomniacs just because their natural sleep rhythm does not fit the classic sleep pattern. That’s a shame.

Falling asleep when you’re tired and waking up well-rested is more important than the sleep pattern that delivers the good result. I checked in with Dr. Patricia Salber, co-author of the excellent blog, The Doctor Weighs In (www.thedoctorweighsin.com). She counsels: "One of the best tests of whether you got enough sleep is 'are you refreshed in the morning after waking up?'" If you can pass Dr. Salber's test without sleeping 8 hours every night, you're probably fine.

If you're a sleep pattern outlier, embrace that fact. Write a book, manage your assets, educate yourself on interesting topics, gets tomorrow's dinner going in the crockpot, or find something else that deserves your energies. You are fortunate to have this extra time to do something meaningful outside of the daily grind.

An Open Letter to Anyone Fretting over the Muslim on Your Plane

http://www.michaeladelberg.com/

Few terms raise my neck hairs like "racial profiling", and for good historical reason. Racial profiling, the practice of applying extra-surveillance to a certain racial or ethnic group because that group is more prone to dangerous behavior, has a nefarious history in the U.S. It has undergirded many of our nation’s worst moments: Japanese Internment camps, Jim Crow, discriminatory lending, bigoted law enforcement. Though broadly discredited by responsible voices across the political spectrum, the question of racial profiling has recently re-arisen in the context of air travel and Muslims. Case in point: Liberal pundit Juan Williams famously confessed discomfort when flying on the same plane with people in traditional Islamic clothing.

These comments come as airport security grows increasingly inconvenient (some would say invasive), and the T.S.A. implements full body screening. Critics of the new screenings argue that everyone now suffers the inconvenient new screenings because political correctness has made it impossible to admit that Muslims pose a greater risk to air travel than other groups.

Here’s the approximate argument in favor of profiling Muslims at airports: This group of people can be linked to nearly every instance of air travel terrorism or attempted terrorism in the last two decades. It is wasteful and inconvenient to subject all travelers to increased security procedures when those efforts could be reasonably confined to one group of people and have the same net impact on air travel safety.

But anyone who thinks hard about a how a Muslim profiling program might be implemented will immediately understand how problematic it is: One fifth of the world’s Muslims are Sub-Saharan African, including the so-called Underwear Bomber, and another fifth are East Asian, including the Filipino Muslims of Abu Sayyaf, a terrorist group. Nigerian or Filipino Muslims look like Africans and Polynesians, not Arabs. And if Airport security staff started screening all people who look “Muslim” , imagine the uproar when US-born Greeks, Italians, Jews, and Latinos gets selected for increased security because a T.S.A. Officer interprets one as “Muslim-looking.” Applying increased security to people with Muslim names or dress is even sillier. The British/Caribbean shoe-bomber is named Richard Reid and his dress was completely western. Name changes are easy; slipping on jeans and a t-shirt easier still. Screening based on name or dress may throw a bone to nervous travelers, but it won’t catch a terrorist.

Immediately after 9/11, airport security staff engaged in profiling. I was walking proof. With two days of scruff and dark features, I was consistently “randomly” selected for the extra pat-down at the airport and manual bag checks. One of my son’s toy racing cars once ended up in an odd seam inside my travel bag and I was detained twenty-minutes while airport security staff emptied all the contents of the bag in search of the elusive offending item. Other days, when flying clean-shaven in a business suit, I zipped through the security lines. I never gave the security staff a bad time—an extra pat-down really isn’t a big deal—but this undeclared profiling program bothered me because it was so plainly ineffective. A clean shave and tie was all that was needed to beat the profilers.

There is a time and place for profiling, albeit not racial profiling. Law enforcement and airport security already profile: Felons and people linked to dangerous organizations, even in absence of a particular concern, are singled out for higher scrutiny. And if law enforcement had a credible threat that an Arabic-looking terror suspect was likely to enter an airport on a given day, profiling Arabic-looking individuals that day would be in order. The concept of credible threat is the key, and it cannot be reasonably applied to Muslims as a whole.

 

There are over a billion and a half Muslims in the world, several hundred of whom are legitimate security threats. Even if we could deduce that fifty thousand Muslims are terrorists, that would mean only 1 in 30,000 Muslims are dangerous to U.S. air travelers. A much higher percentage of U.S. highway drivers text while driving; a much higher percentage of U.S. restaurants serve diseased food. Both represent a far greater threat to your safety than the Muslim who just boarded your plane