Kitabı oku: «Psychotherapy», sayfa 83

Cold Water.—In summer, when wakefulness is due to heat, a cool bath, or at least a rub down with cold water and going to bed without drying is an excellent method of inviting sleep. Under these circumstances the sheet acts as a soothing cool pack and people who have been wakeful for hours before, or at least have found considerable difficulty in getting to sleep, sleep promptly. The mechanism of sleep-production is easy to understand. There is less blood to go to the brain when the little capillaries at the surface are pretty well extended and after the application of cool water the reaction which follows the closing of the capillaries in response to cold leaves them of sufficient size to accommodate a large amount of the blood of the body. Of course, in both cases there is the suggestive value of a proceeding of this kind so well calculated to predispose the patient's mind to go to sleep without solicitude.

Diet.—As has already been outlined in the hints that precede, the first thing in the treatment of insomnia is to remove any causes that may be at work in producing wakefulness. Among the most common of these in our modern life is the taking of coffee or tea, important in the order mentioned. Every physician has frequent experiences of people who complain of insomnia, yet who take a cup of coffee late at night. A large proportion of humanity cannot do this with impunity and expect to go to sleep promptly. Occasionally one finds that patients complaining of sleeplessness are taking three to five cups of coffee a day. This must be stopped. A physician may be told by such patients that they cannot get along without their coffee. I have only one answer for this and it is meant to show patients that if they want to sleep they must take the means to secure it and, above all, must remove all disturbing factors. I tell them that if they cannot do without coffee they may continue to do without sleep. If they want to sleep they must give up coffee or at least must limit the amount. I have found it comparatively easy to get people to limit coffee-taking by the suggestion that there should be one tablespoonful of strong coffee taken to a cup of hot milk. This gives the taste, or rather the aroma of coffee, for coffee has properly no taste to speak of, and while, at first, patients crave the stimulation they have been accustomed to, it takes but a few days to overcome this craving entirely.

Usually it is easy to get people to confess that they are taking too much coffee. For some reason not easy to understand it is harder to get them to acknowledge that they are taking too much tea. Coffee is taken with a certain amount of deliberation. Tea may be and often is taken at odd intervals for friendliness' sake and sometimes patients do not know how much they are taking. Six or seven cups a day may be their usual quota, yet they do not realize it and at first are inclined to answer that they take it only two or three times a day, forgetting the little potations between meals. Tea is not so prone to cause wakefulness as coffee, yet the toxic irritant principle in both is the same and when the amount of tea and its strength are sufficient, the same results follow. The tea habit must always be given up if there is complaint of lack of sleep, especially early in the night.

There is a very common persuasion that the eating of food in any quantity shortly before going to bed, and especially the eating of certain materials, will keep people awake. It is well known, however, that there are a great many people who can eat anything and sleep well after it and young children sleep best when their stomachs are full. There are undoubtedly idiosyncrasies in this matter that must be respected, but many patients are deceiving themselves. They are eating too little and their wakefulness is more due to the mental state than to anything else. As this contradicts a very prevalent impression, I may say that it is said deliberately and only after much experience with people inclined to be over-solicitous about their diet and their health generally and who were actually producing wakefulness or at least very light dreamful sleep, by their elimination from their diet, and especially from their evening meal, of many nutritious substances. I make it a rule to insist with patients that if it is more than five hours since their last meal they must take a glass of milk and some crackers or a cup of cocoa and something to eat before going to bed. This is particularly important if they have been out in the air much between their last meal and bedtime.

The Evening Hours.—The use of the hours after the evening meal is an extremely important factor with regard to insomnia. If the patient tries to read the paper or some conventionally interesting magazine or book, thoughts of the possibility of his not sleeping will surely obtrude themselves and he will fail to get to sleep when he lies down. As a matter of fact, he will have so disturbed himself as to predispose to insomnia. Some quiet occupation, interesting yet not too interesting, that diverts the mind from the thoughts about itself and about sleep possibilities, yet does not excite it, is the best possible auxiliary and preparation for sleep. Prof. Oppenheim has, as usual, said this very well in his "Letters to Nervous Patients," to which we have turned so often:

A great deal depends upon the right use of the evening hours. On no account let yourself occupy them with anxious forebodings about the night. But, on the other hand. It is not at present wise to take up your mind with too exciting thoughts, as the strong after-impression of feeling and fancy may counteract the tendency to sleep. You must find out for yourself whether a quiet game (cards, halma, chess, or patience), the reading of a serious or an amusing book, the perusal of an illustrated paper, or a chat with a friend will be most certain to give you that tranquillity of mind through the vestibule of which you will pass into the temple of sleep.

Direct Sleep Suggestions.—Many plans are suggested by which people are supposed to be able to get to sleep. A favorite and very old suggestion is that of counting sheep go over a fence or something of that kind that is merely mechanical, yet takes the mind from other thoughts. As a rule, any plan involving mental occupation that is meant to produce sleep is likely to react and do harm rather than good. Sleep must not be wooed deliberately but must be allowed to come of its own sweet will. It is extremely important that exciting thoughts and bothering interests be put aside, not at the moment when we want to go to sleep, but some considerable time before. This is not always an easy matter and often requires careful planning. It is worth while doing it, however, in order to secure sleep promptly and not allow a prolonged period to pass while one is lying awake, for if nervous irritability ensues wakefulness is still further prolonged and the patient may begin to toss and so disarrange the bedclothing and disturb himself as to prepare for several hours of sleeplessness which would not have occurred if there had been an appropriate interval given to preparing the mind for sleep.

Diminishing Solicitude.—Patients must not be too anxious for sleep. If they worry themselves over the possibility of not sleeping then they will almost surely disturb their sleep, or at least delay its coming. The ideal state of mind is not to bother one's head about it, to lie down habitually at a given hour, compose one's self to sleep with assurance and then wait its coming without solicitude. Many people will say this is not easy to do, but habit makes it easy. Most of our animal life is lived by habit. We are hungry at certain times by habit. Our bowels move at a particular time by habit. We can sleep by habit. If we try to use our intellect solicitously with regard to any of these habitual functions we do much more harm than good. The more anxiety there is about sleep the more likely it is to be disturbed. When the habit of sleep at a particular hour has been broken the best way to regain it is to lie down at that particular hour and then wait patiently for the advent of sleep. If impatience gets the better of us sleep is kept off and will not come for hours. If the patient can lie down feeling "Well, if I do not sleep now I will to-morrow morning" then there is usually little difficulty about sleep.

Dread of Consequences .—Many people who suffer from insomnia fear that their loss of sleep will injure their intellectual capacity or make them prematurely aged, or drain their vitality so that they will not have health and strength of mind and body when they grow old. This adds to their solicitude about themselves and inveterates their condition. There is only one answer to this dread, which has no foundation in what we know of actualities, and that is, to tell them the experience of certain persons which absolutely contradicts such a notion. One distinguished physician who, at the age of seventy-five, is writing books that are attracting widespread attention and is doing an amount of work that many a younger man might envy, has told me of all that he suffered from insomnia between the ages of thirty and fifty-five. His mental productivity was much hampered at that time by his wakefulness and anxiety with regard to it. He feared the worst as regards advancing years, yet he is in the full possession of mental and bodily strength well beyond the Psalmist's limit. His is not an exceptional case, for there are many others in my own personal knowledge. Virchow once told me of years when he suffered from insomnia, yet he lived to be well past eighty and then died, not from natural causes, but from an injury. A man who accomplished an immense amount of work in his day in the organization of a great university suffered from insomnia in his younger years to such a degree that his friends and even he himself feared for his mental stability, eventually overcame this symptom completely and went on to years of great active work, dying in the end, not from his head, but his heart. We have records of a number of such cases. Few of the hard students of the world went through life without having some bother from insomnia. It is well-known, however, that many of the great thinkers, investigators and discoverers in philosophy and in science have lived long lives well beyond the age of the generality of mankind.

Mental Diversion.—The main thing is to banish the thoughts of one's ordinary occupation as far as that can be accomplished without laboring so intently at this as to give the mind another bothersome occupation. Many people find that a game of cards just before going to bed takes their thoughts off business and worry almost better than anything else. Something like this is needed in many people. Most people must not write for some time before retiring, because writing proves so absorbing an occupation, as a rule, that the mind becomes thoroughly awake and then remains so for some time afterwards. Reading is better, but the reading must be chosen with proper care. An exciting story, for instance, may serve to keep one awake for hours, as everyone knows who has tried and found himself still reading at three in the morning after having begun an interesting book. The reading of works of general information, of travels, of description of places, where it is comparatively easy to stop at any place, of short stories which do not hold the interest beyond a brief period, is much better. Osler's recommendation to have a classic author beside one's bed to be read for a few minutes every night after retiring as a preparation for sleep is an excellent remedy for the milder forms of insomnia, as well as a stepping-stone to scholarship.

William Black in one of his books has a description of an old man who had suffered from insomnia very severely until he discovered a plan of his own to enable him to get to sleep. This consisted in reading the Encyclopedia Britannica. He began at the beginning and read straight ahead, article after article, and volume after volume. He never even by any chance departed from this routine either to look up cross references, or read anything further about men who were mentioned in the article he was going through at the moment and whose names occurred in another volume. He read straight on until his eyes got heavy and then he went to sleep. At the time he was introduced into the story he had already read the whole work through twice and was, I think, at "D" on the third reading. He had had considerable bother about getting to sleep before he adopted this plan, but it proved an always efficient somnifacients. There is a story about an old American farmer who said that he read the dictionary over and over again for the same purpose. The stories were short and disconnected, but they never bothered his sleep, while his wife and daughters were sometimes kept up more than he thought was good for them by their interest in the story paper.

Treatment of Early Morning Wakefulness.—With regard to the disturbance of sleep in the early morning hours there are certain instructions to patients that have always seemed to me extremely important. Most of the patients who complain of wakefulness in the early morning hours are really suffering from hunger at that time. This is especially true with regard to those who stay up rather late at night. They have their last regular meal about seven or a little earlier, they get to bed at eleven or even later, and some of them, following the old maxim that eating before sleep is likely to disturb it, go to bed on an empty stomach. Whenever more than four hours have passed since the last meal the stomach is quite empty, and after the preliminary fatigue has worn off and the sleep has become lighter and the lack of nourishment more pronounced a vague sense of discomfort in the abdominal region wakes them, though most of them do not realize that they are disturbed by a craving for food. In a large number of these cases I have found that the recommendation of a glass of milk and some crackers, or some simple cake, just before retiring does more than anything else to lengthen sleep and prevent what has been learnedly called matutinal vigilance.

After emptiness of the digestive tract, the most prominent cause of wakefulness in the early morning is anxiety about the hour of rising or about some engagement that has to be kept in the early morning. I have known patients who worked themselves up so much thinking over the necessity for rising at a particular hour to catch a train, that they were awake for several hours before they needed to be. Some are much more inclined to this over-anxiety than others. If they move to the country where trains have to be caught regularly, their sleep may be seriously disturbed by this circumstance. If the trouble becomes acute they must simply change their residence. If it is absolutely necessary that they stay, then they must have someone to wake them at a definite time. This must be someone on whom they can absolutely depend, otherwise the old solicitude will reassert itself. This seems a small matter, yet I have known serious cases of neurasthenia with annoying digestive symptoms due to nothing else than this morning wakefulness consequent upon overanxiety with regard to trains and other morning engagements.

Habits.—In the correction of troubles of sleep one of the difficulties that the physician has to contend with when patients have grown accustomed to staying up late and finally have so disturbed their sleep mechanism that symptoms of insomnia develop, is the declaration that there is no use for them going to bed early since they cannot sleep. If a man has been accustomed for a long period to go to bed between midnight and 2 a. m. and his habits are suddenly changed so that he goes to bed at ten or even eleven, it is very likely that for some time after retiring he will not sleep. If he grows over-anxious he may toss and become somewhat feverish and then, even when the accustomed time for sleep comes, he may not secure it. Besides, the depression consequent upon failure to sleep when he has fulfilled his physician's directions and when he knows that this is considered an important adjuvant in his treatment, acts as a distinctly discouraging factor. Under these circumstances it is important to recall to him that one habit can only be removed by the making of another. It may be necessary to send him to bed for awhile only an hour earlier than before until he has grown accustomed to going to sleep somewhat sooner, and then this habit, in turn, be changed to an earlier hour so as to secure all the sleep that is necessary.

In a word, insomnia is not a definite affection to be treated by giving one or the other of one's favorite drugs, or if these should fail trying still others, but it is a condition of mind very often predisposed to by certain conditions of body. If this condition of mind can be adjusted by careful attention to the correction of whatever may be physically out of order, then there is every reason to look for definite improvement very soon and complete cure without any delay. Insomnia is not the awful ailment that it is sometimes pictured, nor all that it appears to the excited imagination of the young person who loses a few hours' sleep; but a manifold condition to be dealt with very differently in different individuals, according to the indications of the case. If the patient's confidence can be secured that means more than almost anything else that can be done. If a little patience is exercised in obtaining such definite details of the mental state and of certain physical factors as may seem quite trivial to the patient yet are really predisposing elements for his affection, the therapeutics become comparatively simple. It is the use of tact and judgment in this matter that means most, however, and then very few drugs will be required. Between the habits consequent upon the opiates and certain of the serious hemolytic conditions due to the abuse of coal-tar products, this is a consummation that may well be worked for assiduously.

CHAPTER VIII
SOME TROUBLES OF SLEEP

Certain annoying incidents in connection with sleep annoy those affected by them so much as to arouse them very completely from sleep and make them wakeful for a time. Nothing disturbs most people so much as the thought that some passing incident, a little out of the common, is quite individual and peculiar to them. If they are at all nervous they are likely to think that it portends some serious ailment, either present or about to develop. Nothing reassures them more than to learn that these incidents are not so uncommon as they imagine, indeed that many of them are quite frequent, and, above all, that many people who have had them are still alive and well beyond threescore and ten, and laughing at the fears of their earlier years.

Starting.—Perhaps one of the most annoying of these incidental troubles is starting in sleep. It occasionally happens that just about the time a person is dozing off he suddenly starts and, almost before he realizes it, is fully awake, his heart beating emphatically and there may even be a little feeling of oppression on the chest. The cause is not the same in all cases and individual differences are worth investigating. In most people this starting means that there is, for the moment, some mechanical interference with the action of the heart and that a systole has been delayed and has been pushed through with more force than usual because of this delay. A full stomach will occasionally cause this, especially if patients lie on their left sides. In some people even a drink of water taken just before retiring will be sufficient weight to cause this interference with heart action. An accumulation of gas in the stomach will do it by pushing up against the diaphragm. Where there is a distinct tendency to the accumulation of gas in the stomach I have sometimes been sure that the expansion of the gas consequent upon the cozy warmth of the patient in bed, or its greater effect upon the stomach because the relaxation of sleep affected even the stomach walls slightly, was the cause of it. It happens more frequently in the old than it does in the young, but it is observed at all ages and patients are usually quite disturbed about it, as, indeed, they are likely to be with regard to anything that affects their hearts.

The thought that this forcible beat must mean some serious pathological condition will obtrude itself on many people, and if it does sleep is sure to be disturbed. Even though there may be no discoverable lesion of the heart, these patients often, though they are physicians, will worry lest some underlying condition should be developing. The first patient who ever described this symptom to me told me of it while I was a medical student and he is still alive and in good health, though he is past seventy. At the time I went over him rather carefully with the idea that there might be an organic heart lesion, but found none. The prognosis of these cases is always favorable, for there are many who suffer yet live long. I have found if to occur particularly in elderly people when they were a little overtired on going to bed, or in anemic young people when they had had somewhat more exertion than usual during the day. Unless there is really some demonstrable heart lesion the start does not mean anything and patients can be reassured at once. They should be counselled against lying on the left side, though in some of them it will occur even while lying on the right side and then the mechanism of its production seems to be the gaseous over-distention of the stomach. Patients may be told at once that it occurs in a large number of people and then, instead of lying awake and worrying about it as they often do, they learn simply to place themselves in a more comfortable position and go to sleep again without solicitude. They would learn this for themselves in the course of time, but the physician's reassurance will enable them to anticipate the lessons of experience and they will thus be saved worrying.

At times this starting from sleep seems due to some unusual noise. In certain nervous states even slight noises produce an exaggerated reaction and there seems to be a surprising, almost hypnotic, acuity of hearing just at the moment when all the other senses are going to sleep. Any of the small noises that sound so loud in the stillness of the night may serve to wake the patient so thoroughly after a preliminary doze that sleep is disturbed for some time. As a rule, however, such noises would not disturb people if they were in normal healthy condition, or at least the disturbance would be only momentary. The solicitous effort that some people make to get away from every possible noise is an attempt in the wrong direction. We have heard of people building special houses, or noise-proof rooms in the center of houses where they hoped it would be impossible to be disturbed. What is needed is not so much an effort to secure absolutely noiseless surroundings, which is almost impossible in any circumstances, be it city or country, but to change the patient's physical condition so that slight noises are not reacted to so explosively. There are many general directions for this and certain drugs, as the bromides, are of distinct service. On the other hand, the taking of cinchona products seems often to emphasize it.

I have found that two classes of nervous patients particularly were likely to be disturbed by these starts in their sleep. The first class is perhaps the larger. They are the patients who do not eat enough. They will usually be found to be underweight and to be nursing some thought with regard to their digestion, or some supposed idiosyncrasy towards food that is keeping them below the normal weight for their height. Nothing makes sleep lighter than a certain amount of hunger. This hunger may be disguised so completely, or so covered up by the patient's persuasion that more food cannot be taken without serious gastric disturbance, that it may pass utterly unnoticed. When such patients are disturbed early in the night, it usually means that besides taking a not quite sufficient amount of food they are taking more tea or coffee or some stimulant than is good for them. I say some stimulant because in several cases that I investigated rather carefully the cause seemed to be the alcohol taken with one of the largely advertised patent medicines, a supposed digestive tonic, consisting mainly of dilute alcohol, and really about as strong as whiskey. When the tendency to be startled occurs in the early mornings, then people need to eat something simple just before they go to bed.

The other class of cases who are likely to start at night in their sleep are those who do not get out into the air enough during the day or who sleep in rooms insufficiently ventilated. At the beginning of the night the lack of ventilation makes the sleep light and easily disturbed. After a certain number of hours have been spent in a badly ventilated room the patient sinks into a rather deep sleep, which is likely to be dreamy, however, and then he is rather hard to waken, but wakes not feeling rested, but on the contrary often heavier and more tired than on retiring. In these cases an investigation of the amount of air the patient is allowing to enter his sleeping room or that his circumstances provide him with is extremely important. As for those who do not get out enough during the day, it is easy to understand that their sleep may be light. To them, as a rule, it will be a surprise to find how much depth is added to their sleep by an additional hour or two in the air. Commonly, people who do not get out much during the day are shivery and suffer from cold, especially in the winter time, and so they are likely to keep their rooms rather tightly closed. In this case they have two reasons for a tendency to be wakeful, which is emphasized if there are noises near them or if there is anything that disturbs their sleep.

In young children, of course, it must not be forgotten that starting in sleep may be due to the twitching pains of a beginning tuberculous joint disease. At times the children are so young, or the symptoms so vague and the tenderness, if there is any, so deep, that the real significance of this may not be recognized. The most successful treatment for these starting pains in children that has thus far been found, forms a striking commentary on what we have just been saying with regard to fitful sleep when ventilation is insufficient or when the patient has not been out of doors enough during the day. The children from the New York hospitals who in recent years were taken down to Sea Breeze during the autumn and winter and made to live in wards, the windows of which were constantly open so that the temperature was often below fifty, so that doctors and nurses had to wrap themselves up warmly and sometimes cover their heads and their hands, had all been sufferers from these starting pains before this experience, but gradually they lessened in frequency until after a few months the crying of a child at night because of these pains was extremely rare. The lesson is evident, and abundance of air not only cures tuberculous conditions, but also makes the nervous system so much less irritable that starting pains do not so easily affect it.

Noise.—Slight noises often make it impossible for nervous people to sleep. This is much more a question of personal sensitiveness and anxious expectancy and over-irritability than anything else. One distinguished physician whom I knew was extremely sensitive to noise and would be awake for hours if wakened up early in the night by the slamming of a door or a call in the street or anything of the kind. He suffered from insomnia to a noteworthy degree and found to his surprise that he could sleep better on a train than anywhere else. After he had lost two or three nights of sleep he actually used to make arrangements to take a berth on an express train going out of his city, ride until the morning and then come back. He usually slept well amidst all the noise and jar of the train, though he would be quite sleepless at home as the result of even slight noises. I have known people suffering from insomnia who took a long ocean trip on a slow vessel and who slept well amidst all the noises of shipboard, but were light sleepers after landing, and felt that they missed the noise and bustle. Of course, in these cases the rocking movements sometimes predispose to sleep. It is not the custom now to rock infants to sleep and a very definite agreement seems to have been come to among pediatrists to forbid the practice as harmful. It is probable, however, that the instinct of the race in the matter was not at fault. Rocking seems to relax a certain tension of muscles that of itself prevents the brain anemia which is the physiological basis of sleep. It is extremely difficult for nervous people to relax themselves completely, and the rocking movements, by tending to help them in this matter, are excellent predisposing factors. A rocking chair or a hammock furnish abundant proof of this.

Noise in general, as regards its relation to sleep, is an extremely individual matter. Habit plays the largest role in the matter. We all know the stories of men who have gone to great expense in order to build noise-proof rooms and yet have found afterwards that they did not sleep well. The rustle of the bedclothes as their thoraxes rose and fell in respiration was enough to disturb them when they allowed themselves to become over-sensitive about noise. We all know how impossible sleep becomes with a rustle of a mouse in the wastepaper basket, or the scratching of one on the wainscoting. On the other hand, anyone who has lived in a large city where past hundreds of thousands of homes the elevated trains thunder every few minutes all during the night, or the trolley goes rolling by within a few feet of the bed, knows, too, that a great many people become accustomed to noises so as to be utterly undisturbed by them, though at the beginning any such insensitiveness to noise seemed out of the question.