What a singular moment is the first one, when you have hardly begun to recollect yourself, after starting from midnight slumber! By unclosing your eyes so suddenly you seem to have surprised the personages of your dream in full convocation round your bed, and catch one broad glance at them before they can flit into obscurity. Or, to vary the metaphor, you find yourself for a single instant wide awake in that realm of illusions whither sleep has been the passport, and behold its ghostly inhabitants and wondrous scenery with a perception of their strangeness such as you never attain while the dream is undisturbed. The distant sound of a church-clock is borne faintly on the wind. You question with yourself, half seriously, whether it has stolen to your waking ear from some gray tower that stood within the precincts of your dream. While yet in suspense another clock flings its heavy clang over the slumbering town with so full and distinct a sound, and such a long murmur in the neighboring air, that you are certain it must proceed from the steeple at the nearest corner; You count the strokes—one, two; and there they cease with a booming sound like the gathering of a third stroke within the bell.

(more…)

The Fourth Kind – Alien Abduction

http://www.facebook.com/TheFourthKind?v=wall

The movie trailer states, “it started as a sleep disorders study”.

Have you ever had a patient who claims to have been visited by or abducted by aliens? I had one who claimed both but he also talked to GOD, and I mean the shaking hands pat on the back carry on my son type of GOD, not just the spiritual one….anyway.

What can you, as a sleep technologist, expect to see in the lab during a sleep study? As it may relate to “outer body experiences”.

(more…)

We love it when our aesthetic passions line up with a good cause. The Home Duvet from Dutch By Design, a UK-based company specializing in contemporary home goods by Dutch designers, is a product that raises money for the homeless and manages to heighten awareness for the cause in a stylish way. We could see buyers loving the cause–benefiting the less fortunate–or being turned off by what they think are offensive designs. (more…)

(more…)

This article appeared on Medical News Today webiste on 02 Oct 2009

A study in the Oct.1 issue of the journal Sleep shows that long-term alcoholism affects sleep even after long periods of abstinence, and the pattern of this effect is similar in both men and women.

Results indicate that in long-term alcoholics who had not had a drink for up to 719 days, the percentage of slow wave sleep was significantly lower (6.6% in men, 11.1% in women) than in controls (12.0% in men, 12.1% in women). Alcoholics also had significantly more stage 1 non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep (8.5% in men, 6.3% in women) than controls (6.2% in men, 5.6% in women). According to the authors, having less deep, slow wave sleep and more light, stage 1 sleep is reflective of poorer sleep quality, which could act as an exacerbating factor in alcoholics’ cognitive decline.

(more…)