Sleep Challenge 2010

I will move to New York City before my 25th birthday, and I will pursue a career in writing. Am I scared? Yes. Does it matter? Sure. How will I succeed? That's easy. Days filled with action and nights full of sleep.

Over the years, I have noticed an increasing problem in many of my teen patients: sleep deprivation.

With insomnia as with any chronic problem, one must look for the underlying imbalances and root causes and address them. Here are the common sleep "mistakes" I see in my practice and their solutions.

We believe getting enough shuteye is the next feminist issue. After all, women have already broken glass ceilings in politics, sports, business and the media -- just imagine what we can do when we're fully awake.

Two weeks into the sleep challenge, I've found myself in possession of a rich and compelling dream life. I used to write down my dreams in a journal. But then life -- especially motherhood -- intervened.

Sleep, or rather, lack of it, is such a hot topic that Arianna Huffington is calling it the next feminist issue. "It's time to sleep our way to the to...

For an insomniac, sleeping at home is hard to come by, but sleeping when you are traveling is almost impossible.

When Cindi and Arianna accurately defined sleep as an empowerment issue for women, I recognized that empowerment is exactly what sleep can do for everyone.

Now it is up to me during these six months to do all the healing remedies I can find. This twenty-seven day roller coaster I've been on since being diagnosed has not been funat all, but it has been educational.

This is it, the last post of Sleep Challenge 2010, my joint project with comrade-in-PJs Arianna Huffington to urge American women to stop walking around sleep-deprived and be good to themselves for once. So, what have I learned, other than that the world won't fall apart if I don't watch Letterman?

Recently developed sleeping pills are being promoted as effective for long term use. They produce on a 10-30 minute increase sleep in total daily sleep time, not a very large effect. But are they good for you?

When you give up unhealthy tendencies such as overdoing it on sugar, not getting enough sleep or consuming too much coffee, you can expect to get more energy.

Today is the last day of Sleep Challenge 2010... and I ended things by not getting a wink of sleep last night. This was not an act of defiance or the sleep equivalent of a last day of school blowout. It was a twist of fate -- and scheduling.

I tried lavender baths before bed. I tried early dinners. I tried Sesame Street Bedtime Stories DVDs. But despite my best efforts, bedtime became my most dreaded time of the day.

Sleep is one of the great mysteries of life. Like gravity or the quantum field, sleep is so fundamental that scientists still don't know exactly what it is.

Sleep Machismo is bringing this country to its knees in terms of performance deficits at work and fueling the fire under the obesity pandemic we are now witnessing. We must all become sleep specialists.

Among the 972 weird things about sleep I didn't know until Arianna Huffington and I started the Sleep Challenge: There is a toothpaste that supposedly makes you sleep better.

If there is any form of incompatibility -- they snore, hog the sheets or keep you up in any other way -- and you've tried everything to remedy the situation, then you might want to think of sleeping in separate rooms.

Sex dreams are my kind of dream -- no meandering narrative, just the undeniable physical proof of the dream's meaning even after awakening. I wonder if Dr. Freud ever heard about that.

I am a firm believer in the proverbial good night's sleep because as a dermatologist, I know that sleep deprivation has very definite physical, mental and emotional consequences -- and they are not pretty.

Throughout the Sleep Challenge 2010, I've faced numerous challenges in meeting my sleep goal. But this week has presented me with perhaps the toughest obstacle of all: the travel week from hell.

I know for a fact that everything in life is more interesting when you dress for it. So I've stopped collapsing in bed wearing my old Doors T-shirt, and actually started thinking of bedtime as a fashion occasion.

But hold on -- is this a realistic assessment of the sleep apnea condition, or is some writer over-blowing the situation in order to push business to the national Sleep Center sponsoring the brochure?

You know what the changes you ought to make are, but if you haven't been able to incorporate them into your life personally, follow along.