Sleep problems can be a professional hazard of police work, but what you may think is a problem may not be.
According to Dr. Richard Friedman, a New York psychiatrist who specializes in anxiety and mood disorders and is a frequent contributor to The New York Times science section, many people have a “cherished notion” that a normal night’s sleep consists of “seven to eight blissful hours of uninterrupted slumber.” They then complain that they have a sleep problem “because they wake up in the middle of the night for a time, typically forty-five minutes to an hour, but fall uneventfully back to sleep.”
Friedman calls that a “problem” with no consequence. In other words, it’s not a problem at all, provided you remain essentially “unaffected during the day [or whenever you’re supposed to be awake], have plenty of energy and concentration” to go about your life, and don’t show symptoms of depression, anxiety disorder, substance abuse or other indications of untreated medical or psychiatric illnesses.
Research has shown that for much of the population sleep seems to be concentrated in two blocks. First comes an average of three to five hours of solid sleep, then an hour or two of peaceful wakefulness, and then a second three- to five-hour sleep period, Friedman explains. This pattern may have its ancestral origin when early man had few protections and sleeping solidly left him vulnerable to predators.
Says Friedman: “If its any consolation to those of you who are awake in the middle of the night for an hour or so, reading or watching television, you may simply be the most natural sleepers.”