Mohave Daily News: Local

PHOENIX (AP) - Crying babies and nighttime feedings are ancient history. The teens who kept you up night worrying are adults now and on their own.

Time - finally - for a good night's sleep.

But for baby boomers like Diane and Frank Longbrake, a Mesa couple with three grown kids, sleep can remain elusive. Age-related health conditions and anxieties about fast-approaching retirement have replaced earlier impediments to a peaceful slumber. Almost three-fourths of boomers don't always get eight hours of sleep, and 1 in 6 has difficulty falling asleep every night, according to a survey released in September by the Better Sleep Council, a sleep-products industry group.

The numbers don't surprise Dr. Paul Barnard, medical director of Banner Desert Medical Center's Sleep Disorders Center in Mesa, where the Longbrakes are treated.

‘‘Insomnia and sleep apnea tend to get worse as people get older and heavier,'' Barnard said. ‘‘Things get floppier, for lack of a better word. Looser. Specific to sleep apnea, people lose the muscle tone that keeps their airways open and prevents obstruction.''

Those with obstructive sleep apnea, which Frank has, can't get sufficient air into their lungs. Their breathing stops temporarily or becomes shallow.

‘‘I was waking up in the morning feeling like I'd run a marathon,'' he said. ‘‘All I knew was that I was getting jabbed in the ribs at night.''

Diane was the jabber, terrified that her husband had died when his snoring and breathing stopped abruptly throughout the night. Until she started awakening with headaches and high blood pressure and underwent an overnight sleep test, she didn't realize that she, too, had a sleep disorder, hers related to the rapid-eye movement stage of sleep.

‘‘When you go to sleep,'' she said, ‘‘everything is supposed to slow down - your heart rate, your brain waves, your breathing. Mine didn't.''

Breathing devices now sit on both sides of the Longbrakes' bed, blowing air into their throats and keeping air passages open so they can receive the restorative powers of sleep.

The benefits they've experienced go beyond waking refreshed. Diane's headaches are gone, both have lowered their blood pressure and research suggests they're less likely to develop health conditions from diabetes to stroke.

‘‘When we started the center 20 years ago,'' sleep-specialist Barnard said, ‘‘we were treating sleep apnea predominantly to resolve daytime -sleepiness issues.

“Now one of the major findings in sleep medicine has been the recognition that if you treat sleep apnea, you can prevent cardiovascular disease.''

Even common sleep disorders can have health consequences. Sleep deprivation caused by insomnia (usually treatable with behavioral changes) and restless-leg syndrome (treated with prescription medicine) lessens mental acuity, Barnard said.