Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Edison harnessed electricity and brought it into our homes, and now we can read the paper in the evening, work a graveyard shift and do homework well into the wee hours.

But the key underpinning of modern life--artificial light--has also robbed us of 20 percent of our daily rest. And that means we're working harder and sloppier at the same time. While he's just one man, Murrieta sleep medicine specialist Delmer Henninger Jr., MD, is doing his part to make the world a better-rested place.

"We spend one third of our lives asleep, but we still don't know much about it," Dr. Henninger explains. "It's absolutely necessary for life. It affects our ability to function day to day and our overall longevity."

Even though we've become a 24-hour-a-day society, our bodies' circadian rhythms--which regulate hormone function, body temperature and alertness--remain synched to a wake-and-sleep cycle established many millennia ago. The most common patient complaints Dr. Henninger gets are about unusual sleepiness or inability to sleep. Another is about bizarre actions while asleep, such as sleepwalking or eating. In addition, narcolepsy is more prevalent than most physicians think, he reports.

Sleep medicine keeps its practitioners connected to a wide variety of other specialists, including neurologists, psychologists, psychiatrists, cardiologists, ENTs, internists and family practitioners, Dr. Henninger says. Half of his insomnia patients, for example, have an underlying affective disorder such as anxiety or depression. Sleep apnea may be tied to hypertension and an increased risk of heart attack or stroke. Some patients who complain of sleep-disturbing snoring may need surgical intervention, requiring the services of an otorhinolaryngologist. And even the very common restless leg syndrome may generate a referral to a family practitioner, because the condition is often caused by an iron deficiency.

It took the rise of evidence-based medicine to catapult sleep medicine to its current status, Dr. Henninger says. He still takes some ribbing from colleagues who don't understand the nuances of the field, he says, but it's nothing compared with a decade ago. "With evidence to prove that sleep disorders are directly tied to health problems like heart attack, stroke, heart failure and psychosocial dysfunction during the day, there's now rock-solid data in the literature that says this is real stuff."

Even Dr. Henninger's path into the specialty took a few turns. His mother was a major influence in his desire to become a doctor. "She was always talking about it and always interested in it," he explains.  Later, in high school, a biology teacher got him even more excited about a career in medicine. But then admissions officials threw cold water on his dreams.

Even though he graduated cum laude in biology and psychology and had decent MCAT scores, he didn't get into medical school the first time around. "It was a very depressing thing. I figured I'd have to give up and be a lawyer." That's when an advisor told him about the Caribbean island of Grenada and St. George's University School of Medicine there.

"The people were fabulous," Dr. Henninger says. "They loved Americans. And I got to work in clinics out in the bush right away. It was an eye-opening experience."

Dr. Henninger missed the Reagan-era invasion to "liberate" the island, but did witness the Communist coup that set the U.S. military into action. "We saw 14-year-olds with AK-47s," he reports, "but they left us mostly alone and let us go about our business."

To a setting far removed from the Caribbean, Dr. Henninger moved next to Coney Island Hospital in Brooklyn, N.Y., for his internship and residency in internal medicine. In 1985, he started a fellowship in pulmonary and critical care medicine at the University of Missouri in Columbia. Dr. Henninger worked with Sheldon Braun, MD, the head of the pulmonary medicine department, to put together a sleep lab. "It was the most fun and fascinating thing I'd ever done," he says.

Dr. Henninger opened his own full-service, four-bed sleep lab, with testing capabilities, in Murrieta in 1994, and now runs a second lab in Riverside as well. That 1994 opening wouldn't have happened without the most important influence on Dr. Henninger's decision to pursue sleep medicine: Philip Westbrook, MD, the founder of the Mayo Clinic's first sleep lab in the early 1970s and a key player in creating the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. "I met and began to learn under him at the Pacific Sleep Medicine Group in Redlands," Dr. Henninger says. "His guidance led me to where I am today in sleep medicine."

Dr. Westbrook is now part-owner and medical director of Advanced Brain Monitoring, a biotech company in Carlsbad. Dr. Henninger's labs and ABM continue to work together on various research projects.

Looking forward, Dr. Henninger hopes to improve and expand the operations of his sleep labs and he's excited about collaborating with the steering committee for the developing UC Riverside medical school. He wants to ensure that sleep medicine education gets its due in the curriculum. He quips, "Very few medical schools now give students much more than an hour of sleep."