Personal health: the news topic that makes readers go, “Oh, I should start paying attention to that soon,” before moving on to read whatever Ann Coulter recently said about Hispanic people. But unlike Ms. Coulter, disregarding uncomfortable health conditions does not make them go away.
Take sleep: According to the National Sleep Foundation, 45 percent of Americans reported that poor or insufficient sleep had affected their daily activities at least once in the past week. However, the foundation also reports that, as a whole, American adults are actually getting the amount of sleep they need based on the national guidelines being an average of seven hours a night. What most afflicts American adults is quality of sleep.
Obligatorily scary health column fact: In a given year, one-third of Americans will experience insomnia. But don’t worry, only a quarter of those one third are afflicted by what is called chronic insomnia. That’s one-twelfth of Americans — not a number to balk at.
In medicine, misconceptions and lack of information make up the fuel of health problems. Chronic insomnia is perhaps what we think of when insomnia is discussed: a disease that keeps a person lying awake in bed for long hours, night after night for several months. In fact, the word insomnia refers to the complaint of being unable to fall asleep. In other words, insomnia is a symptom — like an ache in your joints or a runny nose — not a disease itself.
This might seem like an esoteric medical point, but it’s important to recognize that, in the same way there isn’t only one reason why a person might have a runny nose, there isn’t only one reason why a person may have insomnia. This also means insomnia could point to much deeper medical or psychiatric problems.
But here it is important to describe the two types of insomnia: acute, or short-term — sleeplessness lasting for a few days or few weeks at most — and chronic, or long-term insomnia — sleeplessness lasting for several months. The first can be resolved fairly easily with a simple treatment plan. For example, in the TV show “The Newsroom,” Jeff Daniels’ character is told his insomnia is caused by the naturally-occurring sleep-inhibitors found in his favorite midnight snack, bacon-and-egg sandwiches, and he should stop eating them at night. This doesn’t mean acute insomnia shouldn’t be looked at seriously — the 45 percent of Americans who reported bad sleep could not all have had chronic insomnia — only that it does not underlay deeper medical conditions. Individuals with chronic insomnia, however, need to speak with a professional — whether a doctor, a physiatrist, a physician’s assistant or a nurse practitioner — for at least twenty minutes to access the causes of the condition. Chronic insomnia, ironically enough, is chronically underevaluated; too many patients don’t receive a diagnosis from a professional, so it is important to press if needed.
This is all nice and upsetting, but what can you do as a reader? Well, you may believe you suffer from acute or chronic insomnia, in which case, seek out a professional opinion. And if a loved one does, urge them to. Americans are individualistic to a fault; the idea of speaking openly with a stranger, even a health professional, feels almost immoral. Yet the only way to receive adequate treatment is through a frank discussion of your health with an expert. And in the case that you simply cannot feel comfortable with a certain health professional, seek out another if this is available to you. Within UF there are resources from the Student Health Care Center to the Counseling and Wellness Center to UF Health Shands Hospital, for example.
But most importantly, you are your foremost healthcare professional. If you sense something is wrong, investigate.
Neel Bapatla is a UF English sophomore. His column appears on Fridays.
