Sweet dreams
============

* Vincent Hanlon MD

*   © 2008 Canadian Medical Association

**Combating Sleep Disorders** Kathy Sexton-Radek and Gina Graci; Praeger Publishers; 2008; 152 pp $34.95 ISBN 978-0-275-98973-6

Had I been able to read *Combating Sleep Disorders* 25 years ago I might have enjoyed more and better sleep during my years as a shift worker. Much of the information regarding sleep hygiene succinctly laid out in figure 7.1 on page 67 took me several years to acquire during nocturnal conversations with emergency worker colleagues.

![Figure1](http://www.cmaj.ca/https://www.cmaj.ca/content/cmaj/179/6/561/F1.medium.gif)

[Figure1](http://www.cmaj.ca/content/179/6/561/F1)

Photo by: Praeger Publishing

In retrospect, many of the book's recommendations seem self-evident: limit noise, light, alcohol, nicotine, and caffeine; manage diet, exercise, room and body temperature; improve bed comfort and air quality. But I wonder whether I could have put these directives into practice back then, when I was often chronically sleep-deprived.

Authors Kathy Sexton-Radek and Gina Graci bring much expertise to the subject. Sexton-Radek is a psychologist involved in research and treatment of sleep disorders. And Graci, a sleep specialist and director of a program in Psychological Oncology at Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois, has a research interest in insomnia.

Their short book is intended as an introduction and guide for the individual referred to, or in the care of, a sleep specialist. As such, it is also somewhat of a primer for anyone curious about sleep problems.

The first half of the book provides basic information about sleep architecture, sleep hygiene and the work of sleep specialists. Rather than starting off with a chapter entitled “Signs of Poor Sleep,” the book would be better served with some of the material from Chapter 3, “Sleep Medicine Facts,” incorporated into a cogent introduction to the nature of sleep, a simple schema for thinking about sleep disorders and a few paragraphs about the work of sleep medicine specialists.

The latter half of the book features a mixed bag of “common sleep battles,” presented in no particular order. Diverse topics, such as menopause and poor sleep, sleep and athletics, work and sleep, cultural influences on sleep, and the use of melatonin (*not* recommended by the authors), are briefly considered.

Physician readers may get a little impatient with some of the content. On the topic of food and sleep we are told: “Maintain a balanced diet. Yes, maintain a balanced diet of foods to give you optimal health.” In a chapter on emotions and poor sleep comes the rather impractical suggestion: “If you feel that you are depressed or have a family history or past history of depression and are experiencing sleep disturbance, please schedule an appointment with a sleep specialist.”

I smiled at the end of the micro-chapter, “Should your pet sleep with you?” I had a vision of Wallace and Gromit as I read the authors' well-intentioned warning: “[P]et owners on [continuous positive airwave pressure] machines or other health care machines are at risk for some interference of the instruments' functions with a cat or dog climbing around the wiring or machine to get into bed.”

*Combating Sleep Disorders* is not designed to be a clinical reference text; at the same time, it contains a lot of useful, referenced information, including suggestions for further reading from the sleep literature, and the website address for the non-profit National Sleep Foundation ([www.sleepfoundation.org](http://www.sleepfoundation.org)). File it under books your sleep-disturbed patients may or should be reading.

## Footnotes

*   Vincent Hanlon is an assessment physician for the Physician and Family Support Program of the Alberta Medical Association.