Yes, awake! We have the solution to your sleep problems

Insomnia is not necessarily a cut from the sky for life. Dr. Keren Or Chen, a sleep disorder specialist, knows exactly what each of us needs to do to sleep properly, a full night, non-stop, and wake up the next morning with a new song in the heart. Late Night Interview

Dr. Keren Or Chen (Photo: Rami Zeranger)

Dr. Keren Or Chen (Photo: Rami Zeranger)

So yes, I am a full time grandmother too. After our babies left the nest, we thought to ourselves that at the time of separation from the menstruation, calm would come. Time to indulge and pamper ourselves. Make the good life dream into an intoxicating reality. Abroad, sea, country, television and sleep. Mostly sleep. As much as possible. We have, blessedly, quite a few hours to complete.

Is this really what happens to our lives as we retire? not exactly. Suddenly, in mid-life, you find yourself flipping over and over in bed trying to fall asleep and sleeping pills star as a central theme in your friends' mental conversations. Why? Well, six meetings at the Open University's Foreign Studies program entitled "Sleeping in on it: The Body-Mind Interaction Sleep and Dreams" deal with just that.

The lecturer in this series of enlightening encounters is the Or Hen Chen Foundation - Dr. of Psychology, Decision Making and Game Theory Specialist. This is a very busy woman: Lecturer at Haifa University and works in the Technion's sleep lab, social work school and psychology, nature and environmental circles. She is a talented demon and very unconventional, for her lecture at the Zucker Hall of Culture in Tel Aviv, for example, she appears in a dizzying red-and-white total: a red dress with a generous neckline, a red pashmina scarf, red sandals.

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In her lecture, she skips between universal sleep stories and her sleeping relationship with her partner and wants to make it clear that she will not marry the father of her second son. The lecture is about sleep, but believe me: no one can keep an eye on it. The charisma of mesmerizing gem. How did she even get to deal with sleep problems? It all started in 1995, when the psychologist and dean of the Technion School of Medicine, Prof. Peretz Lavi, a pioneer in sleep problems in Israel (who opened the first sleep lab in Israel in the early 1970s) was looking for someone to replace him with lectures in the course "Introduction to Psychology for Medical Students."

"Prof. Baruch Nevo, the father of writer Nevo Eshkol, a friend of Lavi who appreciated my work as a practitioner, recommended me," she says. The future and I saw in these lectures a mission. My goal was to sharpen for medical students the connection between body and mind. I am not a sleep researcher, but as a curious statistician and researcher I have collaborated with sleep researchers. "

"Hard sleep causes health damage." Dr. Or Chen Chen (Photo: Rami Zaranger)

Dr. Keren Or Chen (Photo: Rami Zeranger)

In your encounters with us, you claim that it is enough for you to scan us with your eyes to diagnose the nature of our sleep. This is real?

"Yes, definitely. According to the body language of the people sitting in the audience, I know that they are associated with sleep types. We distinguish two extreme sleep types: short and long sleep. 80 percent of the population, those in the middle, need 6-7 hours of sleep a night "When it comes to sleep, there is a genetic profile. We are born with the qualities of sleep, so we have no reason to fight the type we are. Who needs a lot of sleep - who sleeps a lot.

According to your body language - if I may guess - you are asleep.

"True. I'm a typical short-sleeper, from childhood. 5 hours of rooftop sleep is enough for me. If I don't sleep at night, I fall asleep at 8 in the morning, wake up at 2 in the morning and have time for a seaside activity. When I tried to go to bed after midnight to wake up In the morning and not at dawn I failed. Since then, I no longer fight my genetics. "

Sleep experts state that in order to not hurt our health we must sleep for at least 6 hours a night. Or Chen, for her part, claims that this is a myth. "What is important is that sleep will not be bad," she says. "Difficult sleep causes health damage - from heart attacks to damage to the mechanisms of satiety and starvation. At least shortness of sleep is characterized by rapid sleep - something like five minutes - I'm having trouble falling asleep. "

How do you deal with one spouse sleeping long and the other sleeping short?

"This is my family story. Erez, my partner, is a long sleeper and I'm a short sleeper. From the bed I get up on a leap. I have no problem that my driver will pick me up for a lecture even before 6 am. Erez, on the other hand, doesn't wake up to sleep. Of long sleepers and when Erez opens his eyes in the morning he hates the world. Long sleepers do not get up with Ron in the heart. If you do not let them sleep as much as they want they will suffer from sleep deprivation. Let them sleep as much as they need. And snoring, so I sleep in a separate room, we really love our couples, but when Erez wants sex at 11, he has no one to talk to. At the height of his vigor, he is of course sleeping. Long sleepers are slowly getting up, bitter, tired, not wanting to talk to them in the morning. "

So when, if you may ask, do you have sex?

"At noon. Sleeping in separate rooms does not threaten sex and couples. Maybe even the other way around."

Any tips for struggling with insomnia?

"One should not buy a luxurious and comfortable bed. What is needed is security of sleep. I, for example, do not fall asleep if I am not covered in a down comforter. This is my security. There are those who need a pillow hug to fall asleep. Blue lighting that damages melatonin and the immune system. Under no circumstances do you fall asleep in front of a lit TV. People who get used to falling asleep in front of the lit screen do not know that the TV stimulation is critical and causes bad dreams. The laptop from the bedroom. "

"When it comes to sleep, we're all a little scratched." Dr. Keren Or Chen (Photo: Rami Zeranger)

Dr. Keren Or Chen (Photo: Rami Zeranger)

The dream as therapy

It is customary to divide the night's sleep into sleep cycles, each of which lasts about 90 minutes and consists of five stages. "The first stage is the no-nim," explains Or Chen, "We are in the cave transition to sleep. During waking, the frequency of EAG waves in our brain is up to 32 per second. In the relaxation phase, the EAG It drops to 12-18 waves per second - and at this stage noises will wake us up. Then we get to stage 3 and stage 4 - the deep sleep stages. Most of the problems of insomnia are related to deep sleep rather than to the dream phase, the fifth stage, Rapid eye movements, US).

"The deep sleep, in stages 3-4, is a quiet sleep. The IIP year, on the other hand, is very active. It's a deceptive sleep. We make a lot of involuntary movements and emit unintelligible syllables. "

Many mothers complain that they do not sleep all night. Does it make sense that they really don't sleep?

"No, it's a false mantra. They sleep. They fall asleep. They relate to the many wakes during the night and the lack of deep sleep. It's a matter of sleep quality. When it comes to sleep, we're all a little scratched. Reasons for hard dreams. "

In summary, in what cases would you recommend going to a sleep lab?

"People do not know the genetic profile of their sleep. Sleep labs do not come because of short, long hours of sleep or insomnia. People come from suffering from sleep health problems, such as sleep apnea."