W. Chris Winter - The Sleep Solution: Why Your Sleep is Broken and How to Fix It

I HAVE ALWAYS LOVED SLEEP, AND its always been important to me. I remember as a child appreciating how fantastic it was to sleep in on the weekend. I have very clear memories of waking up for school as snow fell and eagerly scanning the radio to listen for school closing information. Finding out schools were closed meant getting right back into bed for extra sleep! Because both of my parents were public school teachers, it was always a family event.

When I was seven years old, my doctor prescribed me medicine for a bad cold. It had to be given around the clock, so at some point during the night, my mother woke me up to swallow some strongly flavored antibiotic liquid. The nocturnal awakening and subsequent sleep always seemed to make the night feel longer. I loved it.

I decided to become a doctor in third grade because I liked drawing organs and memorizing the Latin names for muscles. Family members and friends always gave me such high praise when I told them my plans, so Im sure that solidified my goal even further. As time passed, I would go through dermatology phases, pediatric phases, and even orthopedic phases, but life decisions and luck eventually landed me in the field of sleep.

I started learning about sleep and studying it long before I became a doctor, even before medical school. I was fascinated by the study of sleep, running sleep studies and getting my hands dirty when it came to research. And get dirty they did. My hands were plenty dirty studying sleep apnea in Yucatn micro pigs when I was an undergraduate. Pigs happen to be a fantastic model for sleep, and they can snore just as loudly as any human sleep apnea patient. For those who are not familiar with the Yucatn micro pig, there is little micro about them, except for their patience as a teenager tries to shave their little tail and tape a probe to it. When it came to sleep, smelling like a farm was a small price to pay.

My curiosity has continued to be unusually strong. As a physician, I like to know as much as I can about what my patients are going through. To that end, over the years, Ive volunteered to have my blood drawn, and Ive undergone a three-hour neuropsychological test battery. Ive had a nasogastric tube stuck in my nose, my muscles electrocuted, lidocaine injected into my love handle, making it go numb. I even had a powerful electromagnet applied to my head, causing my arm to spasm uncontrollably.

My medical experimentation reached its peak when during a boring medical call-night I asked if I could jump into an MRI scanner to take some pictures of my brain so I could see what the experience was like and what was going on up there. All of my patients said it was loud, claustrophobia inducing, and generally miserable. I was fairly unimpressed. What did impress me was the size of my cerebellumstrangely small. I posted my MRI in the neurology residents reading room the next morning. It was a tradition to post unusual images or diagnostic dilemmas so other residents could write their guesses and theories next to the images. For those who didnt notice my name on the films, virtually everyone wrote cerebellar hypertrophy, or an unusually small cerebellum. Unexpectedly, my cerebellum (the part of the brain responsible for muscle coordination; indicated by an arrow in the photo) was a little puny, as you can see from the actual image. Of those who did notice my name, the overwhelming guess was testicular atrophy. Smart-asses.

My brain, circa 2001.

The bottom line is this: Despite some occasional unwelcome information, I like experiencing what my patients experience. It engenders trust and a common ground from which to work. I want to help my patients with their issues and understand what they are going through as much as I can.

As a sleep specialist, I help patients with their sleep problems every day. Im also lucky enough to work with many professional athletes and help solve their sleep problems too. This might mean helping a team plan out the best time to travel during a long road trip. It might mean helping an athlete and his family adjust to a new baby in the house. Often athletes experience difficulty sleeping before big games or after poor performances. Regardless of the situation, I hope to help players improve their performance by improving their sleep.