While sleep research has come a long way in recent years, sleep science is still relatively new and not well understood by the medical profession. The first sleep disorders were finally classified in the 1980s. Sleep was not considered a medical discipline by the American Medical Association until the 1990s. Today there are 89 classified sleep disorders with medical descriptions, occurrence rate data and treatment plans, yet only a few thousand sleep centers exist across the country. According to an article in Consumer Reports, medical schools devote, on average, less than 2 hours to the topic of sleep medicine. A study in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine found that only 25 percent of primary care providers asked new patients about insomnia or other sleep issues, despite the fact that many patients showed signs of sleep problems.
Sleep research continues to evolve. Though REM sleep was discovered in the late 1950s, a more robust understanding of the role of sleep didn’t begin to emerge until the 1980s. The Stanford Center for Sleep Sciences and Medicine, a pioneer in sleep research, was founded in the 1970s.57 The National Sleep Foundation, a nonprofit scientific organization dedicated to improving health through sleep education and advocacy, was founded in 1990 (resources available at sleepfoundation.org). Sleep science is still considered a new research frontier, increasingly fueled by interest in the healing power of sleep. Sleep problems commonly remain undiagnosed and untreated due to lack of awareness about the importance of sleep, causes of sleep disruption and solutions for improving sleep naturally.
