Two Mayo sleep medicine doctors team up on new book – Post Bulletin

ROCHESTER — Everyone does it, but many of us don’t get enough.

“We have a national crisis of people not getting enough sleep,” said Dr. Timothy Morgenthaler, pulmonologist and director of the Mayo Clinic’s Center for Sleep Medicine. “It manifests itself in many … ways that are important to human well-being.”

Sleep is a critical activity that consumes about a third of our lives. Therefore, Morgenthaler and Dr. Bhanu Kolla, a sleep and addiction psychiatrist, have co-authored a new book about how sleep works and how to solve or treat common sleep problems. ”

The Mayo Clinic’s Guide to Better Sleep”

appears Jan. 7, 2025 through Mayo Clinic Press.

“We feel the book is for everyone,” Kolla said. “Everyone sleeps and everyone at some point has trouble sleeping.”

The first chapters of the book describe what happens in your brain and body during sleep, how much sleep people need at different stages of life and how age, gender, screen time and substances such as nicotine, alcohol and caffeine play a role a role in sleep. quality and problems.

“When you don’t get enough sleep,” Morgenthaler said, “we know there’s a significant increase in the risk of developing obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease.”

And there are no shortcuts around the benefits of a full night’s sleep — that’s something Morgenthaler said some of his patients ask about.

“What they’re really trying to figure out is how do I get all the health benefits from seven hours of sleep, but can I do it in four and a half hours or five hours?” Morgenthaler said. “And we just haven’t found a way to do that.”

Later chapters of the book are devoted to specific problems, including sleep apnea and insomnia, the two most common complaints Kolla and Morgenthaler said their patients see.

“The goal here is just to put sleep on people’s radar so that when they have (problems), they recognize it early, they seek help early,” Kolla said.

The inspiration for this book came from Peter Hauri, who with Shirley Linde wrote the 1996 book No More Sleepless Nights, which focused on insomnia. Morgenthaler first learned about sleep medicine from Hauri, who taught at his medical school. Hauri would later become a colleague of Morgenthaler at the Mayo Clinic.

“Over the years, that book has become a bit dated; there was new information that was not in the book,” Morgenthaler said. “So, for a while now, Dr. Kolla and I talked about how we need to get something more up-to-date.”

Given that the science of sleep medicine has advanced in the 30 years since “No More Sleepiness Nights” appeared, Kolla and Morgenthaler said it’s important to translate medical information into something ordinary readers can understand and enjoy. The knowledge in the book comes from many different fields of medicine, which is why Dr. Mithri Junna and Melissa Lipford, both neuroscientists, also contributed to the book.

“If you think about the problems people have with sleep, they’re physical, mental, psychiatric, behavioral,” Morgenthaler said. “You really have to jump into this field with an open mind to whether it’s a multi-specialty approach or a whole-person approach.”

While the book is geared toward everyday people and their individual sleep hygiene, Kolla said he hopes employers will also take lessons from the book about how important sleep is to their employees.

“This is something that will help organizations think better about their employees, their shift timing and how they structure the work environment,” Kolla said.