O Say Can You Sleep? :

One nation, staring at the ceiling. Nearly 60 percent of all Americans report having trouble sleeping at least a few nights every week. Sleep deprivation and disordered sleep are in fact estimated to cost the country over $100 billion annually in lost productivity, medical expenses, sick leave and property and environmental damage, according to the National Sleep Foundation.

The national sleep debt is impressive, but the personal frustration of tossing and turning, exhausted yet unable to drift off, is even more of a nightmare. And hardly anyone is spared the experience.

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"The lifetime incidence rate of at least one episode of insomnia is nearly 100 percent," says Michael Perlis, Ph.D., associate professor of psychiatry and psychology at the University of Rochester (New York) and director of its Sleep Research Laboratory. If it takes you 30 minutes or more to fall asleep or if you’re awake for a half-hour during the night at least three times a week, (and your daytime drowsiness betrays your nighttime battles,) you’re officially suffering from a bout of insomnia. Three primary culprits lie at the root of insomnia, Perlis says. A medical issue such as a sprained knee could keep you from arranging yourself in a slumber-friendly position. Or the onset of a psychiatric illness could spur insomnia. (The mental health-sleep loss connection runs both ways: Chronic sleep disruption could be the single biggest trigger for an episode of depression.)

Perhaps the most common sleep thief, though, is the strain of modern life. "We view job and family stress as very life-threatening, physiologically," Perlis says. The mind churns with to-dos and what-ifs, and the body refuses to shut itself off.

So how can you sleep the sleep of the righteous? The surprising answer is to embrace the first few days of insomnia, without making any corrections or compensations.

"What do you most want when you’re stressed out?" asks Perlis. "Time! You should look at a few days of insomnia as a gift of time." Just get out of bed and attend to one of the tasks gnawing at you, and soon enough you should settle back into your normal sleeping pattern.

But if you throw your body’s homeostatic sleep regulating system off kilter -- by going to bed earlier or taking naps -- you will jump-start a more prolonged spell of insomnia. And the more you worry about not getting your Zs, the more your mind will associate your bedroom with anxiety, making it even harder for the sandman to visit. (Hence the common piece of advice, "reserve the bedroom for sleep and sex only.")

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