Movers and Shakers:Sleep

This week’s episode of Movers and Shakers is all about sleep. The fact that I started writing this before 6am on a Saturday tells you all you need to know about my sleep habits - I rarely get more than four hours a night. And when Judge (retired) Nick Mostyn begins the podcast by quizzing us about our nocturnal habits he finds that all but one of us is affected by insomnia, one of the more debilitating symptoms of Parkinson’s.

The judge himself - I can’t stop calling him that even though he has given up the bench to devote himself to the serious matters of playing golf and steering this podcast - suffers from terrible nightmares:

“My nightmares are almost invariably violent, they're often acted out. I have about two a week. The nightmare I had the night before last involved me standing in the middle of the bedroom, waving my finger in the air shouting ‘I am allowed to heckle.’” It may sound amusing - and we do laugh about Nick having any hesitancy about heckling the rest of us - but such nightmares are not just disturbing but physically draining.

Gillian Lacey-Solymar doesn’t suffer from bad dreams but has grown painfully accustomed to spending large stretches of the night awake: “When I was first diagnosed, it was even worse. I probably was up for about three, four hours every night in the middle of the night.”

Nick, Mark, Gillian and Paul during one of our cramped recording sessions in the pub

Paul Mayhew-Archer reveals his nocturnal obsession: “For some reason, I decide that two o'clock in the morning is a perfect time to do Sudoku, I don't know why. And I spend an hour and a half doing it. Then I finally get off to sleep about 3.30am. And then I find well, obviously, I doze off during the day, sometimes in the middle of a meal, I mean literally in the middle of my meal.”

While Paul is used to ending up face down in the soup, Mark Mardell thought he had escaped this symptom of his Parkinson’s: “When I first joined this group, I thought well, thank goodness, at least I don't have any of these sleep problems that everybody had - but now I do. I normally at this time would be taking a nap!”

The one exception is Jeremy Paxman: “Since I’ve had Parkinson’s, I sleep like a baby,” he says, before revealing that his doctor has prescribed him a sleeping pill each night.

But what are the roots of the insomnia that plagues most of us, and what can be done about it? Is melatonin the answer rather than the heavy duty sleeping pills Jeremy takes and what about the Cognitive Behavioural Therapy app Sleepio that I used for a while last year?

Fortunately we have a splendid guest Dr Ivana Rosenzweig, head of the Sleep and Brain Plasticity Centre at King’s College London, to answer our questions. Listen to. the podcast for her explanation of what causes the judge’s bad dreams and her advice on how much sleep we need and the best ways of ensuring we get it.

But a quick summary of her recipe for good sleep hygiene is to get plenty of exercise (but before 3pm), eat well, and do your best to cut down the stress in your life. She prescribes us a diet of sauerkraut and kefir and, asked for her one top tip, says this;

‘Try to enjoy your life during being awake as much as you can.”

Just a reminder that if you have comments or suggestions for the Movers and Shakers team you can contact us at feedback@moversandshakerspodcast.com.