How to Get a Good Night's Sleep

POSTED: July 22, 2007 11:17 am

For years, there were no refreshing lulls between days for Lauren Ero. Rather than waking up feeling clearheaded and healthy, the 37-year-old mother of two spent four years perpetually listless and moody.

"Those years are like a fog to me. I just remember how hard it was and how hopeless I felt," she says. "I would be more tired in the morning than when I went to bed the night before. I was too exhausted to do even day-to-day activities like taking care of my kids and things around the house."

Ero was suffering not from depression, as one doctor surmised based on her look-alike symptoms of despondent mood and irritability, but from insomnia.

The definition of insomnia, according to the American Sleep Disorders Association (ASDA), is difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep. If it occurs every night or most nights for an extended time, like Ero's, it's called chronic insomnia.

According to ASDA estimates, more than 35 million Americans suffer from this long-lasting type of insomnia, with 20 to 30 million others suffering shorter-term sleeplessness. Men and women of all ages experience insomnia, but it is more common in the elderly and in women, especially after menopause. The consequences of a "Sleepless Society" can be serious.