Ramble On ... Get some Sleep

Good Night and Good Luck... the 2929 production that Mark Cuban thought would be his ticket to the stage at the Academy Awards.

With the pressure of the 'little things in life' like your family well-being, your personal and business financial foundation, home, mortgage, savings, family savings and elder care, the future of your job and the economy and a few other small issues all in crisis, it's not surprising that some people stay up at night and think about it.

Here's a little insight, courtesy of my hometown paper, The great Boston Globe and its Boston.com online destination:

Good night? Good luck.
As the economy sinks, insomnia increases and America searches for a good night's sleep
By Judy Foreman

Chris Dalto is an affable fellow, a happily married father of two and a lawyer-turned-financial planner. Normally, he sleeps like a baby.

But last fall, when Lehman Brothers tanked and the stock market fell apart, Dalto began waking up at 3 a.m. "You take on the clients' stress, which made it impossible to get back to sleep," he says. He would spend the wee hours fretting and checking on the already-open Asian markets. Then, come 6 a.m., it was off to work again.

Even in normal times, an estimated 40 million Americans have trouble sleeping, according to the National Institutes of Health. Sleep troubles are more prevalent now because of the economy, some psychologists and psychiatrists say. A third of all Americans are losing sleep worrying about money, according to a poll done last fall and released last week by the National Sleep Foundation, a nonprofit research organization.

Uncertainty - and especially the fear of job loss - are precisely the kind of worries that makes for sleepless nights, says Carol Kauffman a McLean Hospital psychologist. "A hypothetical emergency is often harder to deal with, and can cause more insomnia, than an actual one," she says; the worst place to be is "in limbo, waiting for the other shoe to drop, and there's a millipede up there raining shoes."

So what are the stressed out masses supposed to do to get some sleep? Sleeping pills, once frowned upon by doctors, are now increasingly prescribed if non-drug treatments don't help.

Stress management, meditation, exercise, nighttime habits more conducive to sleep, and, of course, talk therapy, should be tried first, says psychologist Cynthia Dorsey, director of behavioral sleep medicine at the Sleep Health Centers, a for-profit network of sleep disorder clinics

But for those who need more - and many do; doctors wrote more than 56 million prescriptions in 2008, according to IMS Health, a healthcare information company - sleeping pills are an acceptable alternative.

What changed? For one thing, it's clearer that extended use of some sleeping pills can be safe. Until relatively recently, doctors advised patients to take sleeping pills for no more than two weeks, partly out of the "concern that nightly use of sleeping pills would lead to 'tolerance' - the need to increase doses to get the desired effect," says Dr. John Winkelman, medical director of the Sleep Health Center affiliated with Brigham and Women's Hospital.

But then a study, funded by the makers of Lunesta, showed that the sleeping pill was just as effective at six months as at day one, suggesting that people did not become tolerant, and thus would not be inclined to boost their dosage. The US Food and Drug Administration approved Lunesta in 2004 for long-term use. Ambien CR and Rozerem are also now approved for long-term use, although there is less data on whether patients develop tolerance to these drugs.

The other change was in attitude. There is now "more acceptance of the fact that sleep disorders are very disturbing to the individual who has them," says Winkelman. Thus, the medical community sees more value in correcting the problem, which can harm both mental and physical health, says Winkelman, a consultant to several companies that make sleeping pills.

A new study from Carnegie Mellon University illustrates the health risk of insomnia. It links poor sleep "efficiency" (the percentage of time in bed actually asleep) and shorter duration of sleep to a higher risk of coming down with a cold. People who slept fewer than 7 hours were 3 times more likely to get sick than people, equally exposed to the cold virus, who slept 8 hours or more.

Still, many people view sleeping pills with suspicion. A common worry is that stopping sleeping pills use will cause withdrawal symptoms, including worse sleep. This can happen, but is often preventable if a person tapers off a drug gradually, rather than stopping abruptly.

People also worry that sleeping pills will make them do strange things in the middle of the night. Bizarre side effects are rare, but people on Ambien have reported cooking, eating, talking on the phone, even having sex - with no memory of such things the next day.

Still others fear that sleeping pills will make them groggy the next day, which can occur if the dose is too high or taken too late into the night.

On the plus side, having a sleeping pill handy may help - even if you don't take it, says Kauffman, the McLean Hospital psychologist. Much of the problem in insomnia is not worrying about a real fear - such as losing a job - but is the "secondary anxiety" about losing sleep. Just knowing you can take a sleeping pill if you really need it can allay this secondary fear.

As for Chris Dalto - the sleep-deprived accountant worried about his clients, me among them - he never turned to sleeping pills. Nor did he seek therapy or change his sleep habits.

What he did do was to figure out what he could, and what he could not, control. The larger economy, clearly, was out of his hands. So he focused intently on managing his clients' portfolios - more bonds, fewer stocks - to reduce the inevitable losses of a bad market. It worked.

"Gradually," he says, "I started to string together two, three, four normal nights' sleep. Now, I'm sleeping like a baby."

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Welcome to our Shores...

I always disliked the words "Foreign Athletes." I think it was Ted Turner's influence that made me realize the word "Foreign" had a negative connotation to it. Foreign to "Who? Foreign to "What?"

To that end, you always noticed the NBA just happended to avoid the word at all cost as well.. Hmm? Wonder why?
I cringed when I heard someone say "Foreign born" NBA players, or even wrose, "foreigners."

We used "International Players in the NBA" or "NBA Players from Around the World" in all of our communication.

This week, a story from the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services announced new policies for international athletes competing in the USA's top professional sports leagues. Check it out:

WASHINGTON -- U.S. immigration officials have agreed to let foreign athletes extend their careers here beyond a 10-year limit if the athletes leave the country first.

The change came in a new policy memo issued by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, following months of lobbying by sports leagues and lawyers for foreign athletes. The memo, obtained Monday by The Associated Press, also came after the AP made inquiries to the agency about the limit.

The leagues and lawyers had been complaining that CIS recently began enforcing the 10-year limit, endangering the U.S. careers of foreign athletes. CIS officials countered that they've enforced the limit for years, which is based on a 1990 immigration law.

Foreign athletes participate in pro sports such as baseball, basketball, hockey and golf.

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Here's the list of the endangered species, according to 24/7 Wall Street and printed courtesy of the Boston Herald. The list is AKA the top ten newspapers most likely to go out of business or switch to 100% digital distribution via online:

The Top 10 papers in danger, according to 24/7 Wall St., include (in order):

1.) The Philadelphia Daily News, the smaller of two jointly operated papers.

2.) The Minneapolis Star Tribune, which has filed for Chapter 11 protection.

3.) The Miami Herald, hurt by the state’s severe real estate collapse.

4.) The Detroit News, the smaller of two papers in the Motor City.

5.) The Boston Globe.

6.) The San Francisco Chronicle, a deadline for closing has been set.

7.) The Chicago Sun-Times, the smaller of two city newspapers.

8.) The New York Daily News, which could see losses in the millions.

9.) The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, facing stiff competition in the Dallas market.

10.) The Cleveland Plain Dealer, located in one of the nation’s toughest markets.

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