Sleep disorders in the land of the midnight sun

For Whitehorse resident Charlie-Rose Pelletier, insomnia is something she’s dealt with on a regular basis for the last two decades — but she says it became worse after she moved to the Yukon from Quebec a few years ago. 

“Sleeping for seven hours straight, for more than two nights in a row … what a treat,” she said in French, as she tried to cover up a yawn. 

“I’m going to be 30, it would nice to sleep.”

Pelletier is not alone in her struggles. According to Statistics Canada, 25 per cent of Canadians are “dissatisfied” with their sleep. 

And some sleep clinicians say the challenges of getting good sleep may be greater for people living in the North.

Annie Vallières, with the School of Psychology at Laval University, says being “dissatisfied” with sleep doesn’t necessarily mean that someone suffers from insomnia.

Vallières specializes in clinical health psychology, with a focus on sleep disorders. She says insomnia can be defined as having a hard time falling asleep or staying asleep.

Chronic insomnia is when the sleep disorder happens at least three times a week, for at least three consecutive months. 

Vallières also says there’s more to it than just sleeplessness at night. 

“There’s what we call ‘distress,’ that’s present during the day,” Vallières said in French, referring to how the sleep disorder can make it difficult to function during the day. 

“There are people that don’t sleep at lot but they don’t need to in order to function well. We won’t call it ‘insomnia’ if there’s no [daytime] distress,” she said.

“Sleep disorders are associated with several mental and physical health risks, including depression.” 

The impact of light exposure 

Jessica Engle, a psychologist at the Boreal Clinic in Whitehorse who specializes in sleep and insomnia, says there are studies suggesting that people living in the North — where the amount of daylight varies widely by season — are more affected by sleep disorders than those living further south where daylight exposure is more consistent through the year.

She says too much daylight, as in a northern summer, can trick the human brain and block crucial signals that usually remind the body that it’s time to go to bed.

A relative lack of daylight in winter can have the same effect, she said. 

Pelletier says she noticed a difference in her sleep after moving to the Yukon, where summer days are long and winter days are short. While Whitehorse can get more than 19 hours of sun exposure in one day during the summer, the city sees only about five hours of daylight in December, the darkest month of winter. 

“I always have insomnia,” Pelletier said.

“During the summer, it’s very difficult. I barely sleep … sometimes I get four hours of sleep per night.”

Josée Fortin, who teaches at Montessori School in Whitehorse, echoes Pelletier’s experience.

She says when the days get longer in spring, she moves her bedroom around to try to prevent disruptions to her sleep. 

She adds that the light imbalance throughout the year affects not only her, but also her students. 

“Less daylight means they usually sleep more, but they are more tired too,” she said.

She also notices how students’ moods can change when the days grow longer and they’re maybe not getting as much sleep.

“In May, we see a lot of tears, very strong emotions — and that’s a reality purely northern.” 

Engle says many studies on sleep disorders use survey data from Canadians living in the south, and there’s a lack of research that focuses on people living in the North. Any data currently available about sleep in northern regions, she says, is from studies in Scandinavia where the amount of daylight is similar to northern Canada. 

She says more research is needed to understand how sleep disorders and inconsistent light exposure might affect the overall health of northern residents. 

When do we finally get to sleep well?

Most experts agree that in order to truly tackle a sleep disorder, people need to understand the roots of it and also be able to identify what sort of disorder they are suffering from — insomnia, sleep apnea, narcolepsy or sleep terrors, among others. 

“Sometimes obstructive sleep apnea can show symptoms of insomnia, so we are doing treatment for insomnia but it’s not effective,” said Nancy Kurichiyil, who works at Sleep and Wellness, a clinic in Whitehorse.

The clinic test patients for sleep apnea and promotes better sleep. She says the clinic sees almost 80 clients per month.

But there’s only so much the clinic can do, as it’s not a sleep lab where people can be tested for a wider variety of sleep disorders. For that, people need to travel outside the Yukon. 

“It’s so important to have a sleep lab here that caters both to pediatrics and to others, because the population is increasing over the years and having a lab would highly benefit us. At the moment, most of them are going down to B.C.,” Kurichiyil said.

Meanwhile, Engle says people should try to have a regular and fixed sleep schedule. She suggests having the same bedtime and waking time throughout the week to regulate the circadian rhythm. 

“The thing that makes it hard though is if you don’t sleep well, you probably don’t want to set a consistent wake time,” Engle said. 

There’s also therapy, which Pelletier tried two years ago. She admits it was not a miracle cure, but it has helped her to understand the patterns that interrupt her sleep and what to do to improve it. 

“I realized I’m not a victim in all of this. I see now how I can get out of this,” she said.