An old Irish proverb said a good laugh and a long sleep are the best cures in the doctor's book.

For many patients this is kind of elusive. There are also many movies about sleep but the one that's most accurate for us has to do about Tyler Durden.

That's right.

In the film Fight Club, Edward Norton and Brad Pitt play two different characters, but at the same time they may be the same.

Now they're represented a separate, polar, opposite best friends for most of the movie,

however one, and here's a spoiler alert for all of you who've never seen it, but the movie came

out a long time ago, is that one is imaginary. Experts say that Tyler Durden's disassociative identity disorder

was actually exacerbated by his insomnia.

And he even said with insomnia, nothing's real and everything's far away.

And if you've seen it, you know that his soul-crushing office job didn't really make

them a zombie. It was actually Tyler's insomnia that had him stumbling red-eye through work,

barely even a person at all, and that led to all the serious

consequences in the movie. That's right, ladies and gentlemen, we're going to be talking

this week about insomnia, a very difficult topic for those who have it and a difficult

topic for those who haven't suffered from it to understand.

I'm Dr. Nakede Son Paul, your friendly neighborhood internist, gastrointestinalastroenterologist, and of course, podcast host here at med geeks,

hoping that I don't put you to sleep with this week's topic,

Insomnia. The word insomnia is from Latin. In insomnia, which is translated to without sleep, is a common term that we're all familiar with.

And many people will say, oh, I had a bout of insomnia last night, or that I may have been suffering

from insomnia for this reason or that.

But it turns out it's pretty common.

About 10 to 30 percent of adults have insomnia at any given point and up to half of people have insomnia

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