Disturbances of Life (Chapter Ten)
“Believe me, the truth is we’re not honest, not the people that we dream.
We’re not as close as we could be.
Willing to grow but rains are shallow.
Barren and wind-scattered seed on stone and dry land, we will be.”
Gather around and hail the Book of Life. The school child looks with wonder upon the drawings and tales of a mystical world. Magnificent characters display the perfect form: knights with swords slaying fearsome beasts in masterful ways, fairies with wispy wings flying in a sea of sparkles, and companions of admirable constitution and character cultivating lasting friendships. Should hard times fall, a young boy needs no more than to plant a magic bean at bedtime, that by morning will grow to the sky - and swiftly climb the stalk, disappearing into the clouds, only to return with a bag full of gold. And in time, meet a prince or princess to whom can freely be given the hand and heart. The human brain could not conceive of a more beautiful and just world.
So you set out on the road to seek this magical life of honor, glory, and love. What you found was entirely unexpected. Like a child, you reveled in the storm and flood, stood silent as you gazed upon disease and death. You saw life as it exists, both its compassion and cruelty, its joy and heartache. You saw it all: not the prince and the princess alone, but the beggar and the crone, the ruler and the servant. You saw the beautiful and ugly, and with it knew the truth of life.
In the distance lies the prosperity of the promised world, the great romance, grand mansions, and gilded crown. This was of no use to you. The streets are your home now, along with the other peons too many to count. Every time you stood for a moment in the crowd, an officer tapped you with a baton and bade you to “move along.” At last, battered and broken, and almost dead from moving along, you fall upon the cold hard steps of the emerald city, barred from entry by a gate with words that serve both as a warning and a condemnation, the same words that will one day be inscribed on your gravestone:
"FUNCTION FOLLOWS FORM
IMPERFECT FUNCTION FOLLOWS AN IMPERFECT FORM"
Do you wake up feeling knocked out?
You are invincible. You are indestructible. You stand in the ring as a champion, or so is the illusion. Rage, hatred, a vicious temper, that insane instinct to annihilate all of it honed with discipline and control is your adversary and companion inside the ropes. The first glove on the liver crumples the frame. Staggering to your feet, barrages of blows smash the nose, shut the eye, and strike the jaw until resistance ends, defenses melt away, and solace begins. Drifting away in peace and serenity, your face appears calm as your head slams against the canvas.
“Get up.”
The crowd rises to its feet.
“Get up”
The referee hovers over you.
“Get up!” your child screams as you awaken, stunned.
A dream that began as an illusion ends in exhaustion. Night after night, day after day, regardless of how long you sleep, you awaken beat, struggling to get out of bed. Sleep is a period of restoration. It’s a time to explore depths of consciousness to rest, repair, grow, and learn.
Not if mouth breathing narrows the airways and interrupts the sleep cycle. Every jab, jolt, and jerk from an arousal knocks you out of slow-wave sleep. Every primal scream shatters REM sleep. Every beatdown robs you of the consolidated, deep, and enduring rest you seek.
Are you sleepy?
Sometimes the most important decisions in life are made between two people in bed.
“Honey, it was nice seeing your cousin today. And her daughter is adorable. I know life seems complete right now, but wouldn’t it be wonderful to start our own family? Can you imagine, we would be the perfect parents. Don’t you think?
“Zzzz-shew. Zzzz-shew. Zzzzzzzzzzsnort snort oink oink.”
That is if you can stay awake.
There is a delicate order to sleep, as seen in a normal hypnogram. The NREM-REM sleep cycle occurs every 90 minutes with 4 to 6 cycles per night. NREM to REM sleep ratio varies within each cycle, with early cycles dominated by N3 NREM sleep and later cycles dominated by REM sleep.
Arousals cause the awakenings that fragment the delicate architecture of sleep, as seen in an abnormal hypnogram. They prevent you from channeling through the cycles to achieve the N3 NREM and REM sleep you need to awaken refreshed, even after eight hours of sleep.
Mouth breathing and the consequent cranial dystrophy narrow the airways and ultimately lead to the snort, snort, oink, oinks that disrupt your sleep architecture.
Are you fatigued?
Weariness settles on you like a layer of rust. An empty room or a crowded street makes little difference to the vacant eyes of the listless. Lethargy is not the lack of life around you; it is the parasite within you. It plagues you, consumes you, feeds off your life force until you are virtually dead to the world. You are a void, a black hole, free-falling within yourself with no bottom in sight, an infected thing to be avoided.
Hint: Think Night of the Living Dead
Pierce the shell of lassitude that imprisons you. Break free from the black hole that exerts its attraction.
Distinguish sleepiness from fatigue. Sleepiness is sitting in a chair and dozing. Fatigue is sitting in a chair and unwilling to rise.
Why are you fatigued?
Suppose inhalation is demonstrated by the ascending line and exhalation by the descending line.
Narrowed airways exponentially increase the effort to breathe, especially during sleep.
In that case, the flattening of the ascending line represents flow limitation or the incredible amount of energy you expend with each breath.
There are two places you can walk around disheveled with no shoes and a glazed look: your home and the set of a goth horror movie.
Do you get headaches?
An Ode to a Feathered Friend
Lovely bird won’t you sing,
Why do you barf with your head in your wing?
The dreadful decision to breathe through your mouth sets off a chain of devastation that renders your head an instrument of torture.
The carbon dioxide buildup in the blood from shallow breaths taken through narrow airways signals blood vessels in the brain to dilate, putting pressure on surrounding nerves and tissues to create painful, throbbing headaches.
Grinding and clenching teeth, necessary to open the airway and restore breathing, tights the band of muscles around your scalp.
Sinuses, inflamed from allergies and infections entering unfettered through mouth agape, fill with mucus behind your cheeks, eyes, and forehead.
And migraines, triggered by virtually any part of the conflagration, make you bow your head and bleeah…bleeah…HUURGGEHH!
Are you sad?
“So, what brings you in today?”
A pair of tears raced down the cheeks. Too numb to wail, you sat motionless while the magnitude of the loss sank in. When asked to describe the despair the moment you heard the devastating news of the unexpected passing, your eyes well with tears as if the weeks had passed in seconds, and you remain silent, for once again you are lost in the barren black hole of the moment. It was a moment that carried forward until perhaps only death could release you from its grasp.
“My cat, Mr. Moo Moo, died last month, and I can’t stop crying.”
What lies behind the melancholy that makes you walk in the garden of shadow and gloom and shun the light of day?
Answer: Suffocation.
The suffocating effects of a narrow airway rev the sympathetic nervous system to produce stress hormones. Adrenaline makes the heart race, blood pressure soar, and breath quicken. With continuing distress, cortisol maintains the body on high alert. However, neither the body nor the mind is designed to be in a constant survival mode. It wears you down, and hopelessness and helplessness follow.
Take comfort. Set aside the fury, folly, and bitter tears. Relish the hardship that has filled the soul with the fruit of experience, despite how sour it may taste. When you feel you have lost everything dear to you, rather than accuse external forces, justified as it may have been, take consolation in the fact that you are fully alive and breathing.
Or are you?
Are you anxious?
“So, what brings you in today?”
Thoughts were darting inside your head like fireflies in a cage, bouncing off each other, flickering on and off.
“I want you to check me out. Whoops! I meant I’m here for a check-up. I’m fine, I mean, not hot and sexy fine but fine like ok.”
Stop worrying if people think you’re nuts. You are nuts.
Anxiety is fear, and it is the greatest enemy of love. It hinders you and suffocates those around you. While you may not be morally at fault for its cause, you are responsible for its consequences. So please take notice of its subtle forms and the pervasiveness in which it exists. Anxiety is not merely the troubled soul with panic attacks; it is the overwhelmed young mom cursing her child, the reckless day trader buying at the peak, the tense tennis player netting an easy volley, or in short, it is the everyday person whose feelings at times have grown too strong and destructive for their good.
The sympathetic nervous system relaxes while the parasympathetic nervous system rouses during sleep, producing a feeling of relaxation and calmness in body and mind. Unless, that is, arousals and sleep fragmentation stemming from mouth breathing keep you on edge.
Do not let anxiety erode the person you were meant to be. Do not let fear blacken out the sun. Just breathe. Search within to feel the stillness, the timeless now that usurps the past and future, and go out and live the moment.
“Doctor, what is it you want to tell me?”
The forehead furrowed in a worried frown, but it was the wrinkles on the face that told the story of a long journey: laugh lines etched from the joy of a baby’s first breath, eye creases drawn with the tears of a wounded heart, and crow’s feet cut from the unbearable grief of losing a companion. The wrinkled and weathered skin betrayed a lifetime of memories that spanned decades. But nothing, not the birth of a child, lovers lost, death, not a lifetime of laughing, frowning, or grimacing in pain, not all the experiences in the world, none of it prepared you for the journey about to begin.
“You’re just not going to remember things so well going forward. It’s slow, so you have some time.”
Sleep is vital for learning, memory, and detoxification. It’s when the brain clears away the waste products of mental activity that accumulate during the day. The waste removal or glymphatic system operates during sleep and removes toxins such as amyloid-beta and tau linked to neurodegeneration. Every toss, turn, and arousal interrupts this process.
It’s dubious a single night or even week of awful sleep leads to anything more than just forgetfulness. Troublesome as it may be to leave a toilet unflushed, misplace car keys, wander grocery aisles, roam parking lots, forget names, and miss anniversaries, they are a short-lived phenomenon. The brain clears the toxins with the following good night of sleep.
What if you mouth breathe? What if you sleep poorly, night after night, indefinitely? What if you gradually accrue the toxins of dementia? Would the terror of fragmentation become real? Now is not the time to gamble. Now is the time to get a good night of sleep and take out the garbage.
Are you losing?
“On your mark.”
You have the soul of a winner, a warrior, one who defies the odds by grinding, enduring, and suffering.
“Get set.”
You are the feared one, strong and mighty, an object of dread, spitting gasoline from the lungs and at the right moment, striking the match and incinerating adversaries as you alone walk through the finish line.
“Go!”
The race is on. The opponent takes the early lead, streaking along at an incredible speed. Meanwhile, you’re moving off the starting block very slowly. In fact, it’s not clear you have started the race. Wait a second; it appears you have inched forward just a bit.
“Run, you can do it, run,” the crowd roars as you inch forward, collapse and rollover.
Sleep improves athletic performance and separates winners from losers by making them bigger, stronger, faster, and more focused. Mouth breathing and the resultant sleep disturbances do the precise opposite: increasing reaction time, impairing judgment, worsening hand-eye coordination, dulling mental focus, promoting injury, lessening maximum strength performance, and reducing accuracy.
It was so well played out in your head as you clutched the cold silver in your hand.
Is your blood pressure soaring?
The fateful tale of an Eagle and a Mouse
Perched high.
Little feet.
Sharp eyes.
Silent kill.
The pressure of blood dips during sleep and rises before awakening in the morning. If something prevents the nocturnal dip, the blood pressure remains high during the night and climbs further during the day.
Mouth breathing places you in harm’s way of hypertension. Inflammation hardens arteries. A heightened sympathetic tone raises blood pressure, stretching and damaging the delicate inner arterial lining. Fat, calcium, and other gunk, drawn to the injured area, narrow the critical passageways of life. Once a clot forms and blood flow ceases, strokes, dementia, heart attacks, arrhythmias, leg cramps, and blindness silently kill you.
Is your blood pressure soaring like an eagle?
Are you at risk for a sudden heart attack?
“Nurse! Code Blue. Crash cart STAT.
He’s in cardiac arrest. Blood pressure low. 50/30. It’s V-fib.
Stand aside. Charging, 250, CLEAR!
Nothing, try again, Charging, CLEAR!
Let’s go up to 280. Charging, CLEAR!
It’s a flat line. I can’t feel a pulse.
Give me one milligram of epi STAT! Now, nurse NOW!
We’re losing him.
Oh my God, we’re losing him.
Time of death: 03:35.”
Are you ready to leave this world? The suction pressure generated in the chest from struggling to breathe through a collapsed airway squeezes your heart while the adrenaline surge from an arousal stresses your heart. Being suffocated during sleep, even slightly, deprives your heart of sustenance at a time it’s laboring most.
Can’t move parts of your body?
“Grandmama, read me a story.”
“There was once a little boy who wanted to be a better person. His mom tells him that she loves him for who he is. But the little boy tries hard to become someone he isn’t and in the end………………..”
“Grandmama? Grandmama? GRANDMAMA! What’s wrong? You’re scaring me!”
No answer forthcomes as the book falls to the ground. Strength, speech, comprehension, feeling, and vision fail in a singular defining moment. A life as had been known evaporates, and a new life begins.
Strokes maim more than kill. Are you ready to stay in this world? Mouth breathing and its entailing consequences can change life in an instant.
Sleep matters, it all matters, until nothing matters.
Sex: Can’t pop a wheelie?
(For Men Only)
You open the door to your bedroom to find a stunningly beautiful, naked woman lying prostrate on your bed screaming, “Give it to me! Give it to me now!” You promptly do one of the following:
Ask her what she wants
Tell her you’ve seen better
Give it to her
Say goodnight and leave
You say goodnight and leave because the only thing more unimaginable than leaving is staying. You leave to escape the shame, anguish, and blame of diminished virility. You leave to spare your partner from guilt, frustration, and helplessness. Most importantly, you leave before being left behind, as many have done. But there is a difference between leaving and knowing where to go.
There is a place, beyond the empty words of therapy, beyond the onerous changes in lifestyle, beyond the sickening medications, injections, and pumps, where suffering ends. This place, seemingly beyond human reach, lies deep within yourself. It is here, on the playground of pint-sized arousals and itty-bitty adrenaline surges, where awareness begins.
Point and shoot. The parasympathetic nervous system produces an erection (i.e., point), and the sympathetic nervous system produces an ejaculation (i.e., shoot). What happens if repetitive arousals inhibit parasympathetic tone? That’s right. You can’t get it up.
Is curling up with your cat enough?
(For Women Only)
Your heart flutters as you sink into the warmth and comfort of his body pressed against yours. Shivers run down your spine as his tongue lightly kisses your neck. The world around you melts away as you hear his intoxicating voice.
“Purrrrrr.”
This begs the question, is curling up with your cat enough?
Sex has the power to heal a relationship, to bring people together, to renew love, but when desire falters, distress takes its place.
How can you create desire? How can you inject life into a lifeless libido when medication, menopause, or a mundane relationship are not the problem? How can you become a sex kitten, if at least for a moment?
The arousal is the thief in the night that steals your libido. Instead of creating sex hormones, you create stress hormones.
What does your cat have to say about all this?
Confucius says, “eliminate the arousal to be aroused. Purrrrrr.”
Chapter Ten Conclusion