A Yawn Loser? I'm Losing Sleep Over The Daily Grind

Sydney Morning Herald

Saturday May 10, 2008

Marcus Padley. Marcus Padley is a stockbroker with Patersons Securities and author of the daily sharemarket newsletter Marcus Today.

WENT to the dentist this week. He tells me I have been grinding my teeth. The only solution apparently is a $500 mouthguard that you wear at night.

Ridiculous.

I'd lay a bet that 50 per cent of people who go to the dentist these days are told they grind their teeth and 10 per cent of them walk out with a $500 oral "appliance". But let's be realistic. Grinding. Isn't that what teeth are for?

I chose to pass on the appliance. Not so much because I didn't believe him (Hi David!) but because I was struggling with a few of the collateral issues. Like being told grinding my teeth was unnatural. Like paying the price of a small fridge for a small piece of plastic that I'm sure you can buy at the chemist for $7 and like acquiescing on scant evidence to a plastic appliance going in my gob for eight hours a day.

I'm sorry, but for that sort of commitment I'm going to need a bit more than a grinding story. My life is already on the back nine. If I have to play in a mouthguard, I might as well exit now.

On top of all that I would feel like a bit of a loser. Wearing a mouthguard every night is an admission of defeat. An admission that my life is so wholly unsatisfactory during the day that my teeth need protection from my subconscious at night. It says failure. But I'm not a failure. OK, so I sold Babcock & Brown for a loss at 1280 cents and it immediately turned on a sixpence and went to 1650 cents. But apart from that, I'm not a failure

No. The dental profession can try to hold back the tide if they like. But not at my expense. Grinding is natural and I embrace it. I have to. Marital bliss is hard enough without turning up each night looking like a rugby prop forward. Not exactly going to improve my chances now, is it? She's already at the patient end of tolerant. Bless her.

Of course this never used to happen. Mouthguards and stuff. Life used to be so much simpler. Imperfect things like teeth used to be tolerated not obliterated. Crooked teeth were natural. Now they are "Bad" and in an "Extreme Makeover" culture, there's no excuse. The pressure is on to be perfect.

Just look at the ResMed share price. It is 30 times higher than it was just 12 years ago. Even sleep, it seems, can be improved upon and the last decade has been an epiphany of sleep problems that have clearly gone unattended for millions of years. In my local shopping strip, we now have a "Sleep Centre".

Sleep is important and I use it as a barometer of risk. You should never lose sleep over anything and if you do, it means you have exceeded your risk threshold. It means you are in over your head and you have too much on the line. In the sharemarket, it means exit. You need your sleep.

A lack of sleep can apparently cause cardiac disease, stroke, hypertension, diabetes and obesity. Half of all heart-failure patients suffer from obstructive sleep apnoea as do three in five people with type 2 diabetes and eight out of 10 people with drug-resistant hypertension. And that's only scratching the surface. The potential market is huge. Something like 20 per cent of the US population suffers some form of "sleep disordered breathing". That's 60 million people, 90 per cent of whom are still undiagnosed and untreated.

And the market is getting bigger. Imagine when this catches on in India and China. Billions unaware of their imperfection.

Our standard of living has supposedly improved. But sadly our progress hasn't paid off at all. It has only exposed our faults. It's hard to be happy when you can't even lie motionless and breathe in and out without being told you suck.

Wasn't life a lot more fun with long division and pencils? When your spouse came to bed wearing nothing. Now there's a chance she'll turn up wearing C-Series nasal pillows with full-face functionality to hold her airways open. Suddenly the mouthguard is looking sexy. Progress. Where's the exit?

© 2008 Sydney Morning Herald

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