Snoring led to this!

'Went to the doctor because I snore. Epically.

Well, this is just disconcerting news: I may be in bed "sleeping" for 6 hours, but only 45 minutes of that is truly at rest, in the restorative level of sleep we are all to get so much of. How did I learn this? I had a gizmo hooked up to my finger recently measuring my oxygen levels and heart rate. It seems my lungs/breathing system overall is not doing a good enough job oxygenating my blood, so my heart gets alerted and kicks another system on overdrive to compensate. Sadly raising blood flow has no effect, for it's still dirty blood, just more of it.

I was asked a battery of questions to provide further insight/confirmation that there is trouble afoot, things like:

• Are you perpetually sleepy?
• Do you nap easily? often? too often?
• After a nap, does your energy level quickly dissipate?
• When a passenger in a car, do you often fall asleep?
• When driving a car, do you get groggy?
• Do you remember your dreams with amazing clarity?

The answers really drove home the prognosis--I am severely sleep deprived. I'm going to have to go to some specialist on sleep apnea and such to figure it all out. I may be on an oxygen supply at night after that. Geez.

Meanwhile, I'm going to read up on the 'science of sleep.'

I would offer it does not take a rocket scientist (even a sleep scientist) to tell me I'm tired, that I do not sleep like normal folk. I am sure generations of people (particularly first time moms) go through periods of sleeplessness. I have had such, weeks at a time, myself. I did not know that my blood was poorly oxygenated. What a loser, I cannot even oxygenate my blood right! I guess I've learned that I cannot even sleep well, and that was something I thought I was good at!

The doctor also confirmed something I knew but needed to hear from him. He looked over my chart back five years, looked at me, said, "How tall are you?" He told me my ideal weight, according to insurance actuaries, would be 156, not 189. He noted I'd weighed about 160 when I visited back in the day, that I've put on THIRTY POUNDS. I didn't even try to tell him it was all muscle. He asked, and rightly so, if I'd had sleeping issues back then...well, I did, but they were different in nature, more a matter of a troubled mind than a loser body.

I quit smoking when I had lots of incentive. My little toddler would cry at the window when I'd step outside. My 3 yr old would say, "I want to 'moke just like you." I quit quickly. Now I've got a doctor reminding me of the obvious and "life threatening" issues with lack of sleep coupled to being a lardass. Thus, I have perhaps reached critical mass on this fitness crisis. I hope.

Maybe now I'll be moved to move! Get more active. Get more fit. Eat better.