We try to walk out at first light. The sand is washed smooth, gulls rest onshore, and no one else is out—most people are still sleeping.
Our own sleep patterns are wrecked. We go to bed early but sometimes wake at two, unable to get back to sleep. There are worries, of course. Everyone has worries, and while ours are not really urgent concerns—we have food and are able to pay our bills—we dwell on them overmuch. The dog attack on the beach, construction next door, incomplete projects. Should we pick up our mail today? Are we out of eggs? When will we hear about our second covid shot? We’ve both been experiencing vivid dreams.
Sometimes we lie down after lunch for a nap, because only sometimes we sleep right through the night. Why has sleep become so important? It always was. Add it to the essential human needs for survival: food, water, shelter, and sleep. Meaningful work. The NIH (National Institutes of Health) declares: “Sleep is an important part of your daily routine—you spend about one-third of your time doing it. Quality sleep—and getting enough of it at the right times—is as essential to survival as food and water.”
In truth, human beings can survive longer without food than without sleep. Experiments in sleep derivation have lasted as long as eleven days. At that point the sleepless person experiences hallucinations and becomes paranoid. Keeping a person awake longer would likely kill them. By contrast, with water, a person might go without food for weeks, up to two months. Three days without food wouldn’t hurt anyone who was not already starving. Three or four nights without sleep will make most people basket-cases.
Researchers still recommend at least seven hours of sleep each night. Less is unhealthy. The side effects of chronic sleep loss read like those of a dangerous drug: changes in appetite and mood, diabetes, heart disease, depression, and psychosis. Years ago, the theory was we slept to keep us out of trouble, but it’s more important that that. Life goes on even in sleep. “REM sleep is thought to enable critical cognitive abilities, including memory consolidation, but non-REM sleep, even with reduced brain activity, is also believed to play a role in facilitating proper brain function while awake.”
Essential brainwork occurs in sleep. Information is sorted and stored, the brain repairs itself and clears pathways that otherwise clog and can lead to dementia. Sleeping all in a piece at night is best, and sleeping after a period of insomnia takes most people right back to a healthier state. Even that poor man who set the 11-day record for wakefulness and became an emotional wreck was reportedly fine again after a few full nights sleep.
Early walks are our great pleasure, but today we will need a nap.
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IMPERFECT PATIENCE 
I have been struggling with sleep issues since menopause. Mostly waking up not being able to go back to sleep. Horrible when I had to get up to work. So no chocolate after 3 pm no caffeine after 3 pm no alcohol at dinner. Recently after a spate of sleepless nights I remembered that I should restart taking magnesium at night. That didn’t work so after my doctor’s suggestion I take valerian, magnesium and melatonin every night. It’s a chore but I sleep through the night now!
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Good that you found something that works for you. I drink my two cups of coffee first thing in the am and rarely another cup after our walk. No chocolate hardly at all.
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I think sleep is a great hobby—except coffee cannot be drunk during the unexercise. Having weird dreams during sleep means that the dreamer is so lazy that they won’t wake up and change the dream channel which brings us to the need for a dream channel remote. Yes, a remote that can be used to select a different channel—in Oregon sometimes it rains during dreaming whether at night or day so some of these channels may show the dreamer dreams that are—you guessed it wet—the moon does not help one sleep at all anymore since people jumped on it back in 1969. I guess that’s some sorta payback or something—overall, though, sleeping can be both good and bad, but one should never try to mow the lawn in the dark—I know because I tried it once and nearly cut off my finger.
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Mowing the lawn under clear and bright moonlight may work….but seriously, I Have been able to recently sleep through the night and wake up naturally at 5:00am. That does not mean I get up at 5:00AM, but on occasion I have. I am not sure why suddenly this is happening. But one change I have discovered, is that I have stopped listening (with earplugs) to podcasts from my iPhone or iPad at night. And I am consuming less news. With insomnia, it has been wonderful to turn to my podcasts, constantly learning but it has consequences. Postpones sleep, and if it does not, I have noticed my brain feels “sore” in the morning, and cannot make obvious connections with it during the day. I discovered reading with an actual physical book in bed with a book light zonks me out in a few minutes no matter how riveting the book is. And I wake up refreshed. I can hardly wait until that renovation next door gets done. It has disturbed me too, and it is taking longer than what is considered normal.
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I’m glad you are getting your sleep.
(If you mean the rebuild next to us? That is going to take much, much longer. I think the contractor said it would be done by June. Now the owner is hoping for August. That might be optimistic.)
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Ah, elusive sleep. I’ve always been a light sleeper and victim of angst dreams (the ones where you’re scheduled to give a presentation but you can’t find the place or your notes and you spend the dream wandering hallways). Since I’ve retired, I’ve had a few nights of insomnia … well, one was because of the bladder infection, the other because I had a cup of decaffeinated coffee in late afternoon. Apparently, even decaf has enough caffeine to mess with my sleep. I sometimes dread going to bed because that’s when my brain will start processing all the things that bother me, like you describe with the worrying. Since I am retired, I don’t try to fight it. I’ll get up and read or write in a journal, and still get up at the same time as I always do, no matter how painful. My cats will not let me sleep and I am the de facto breakfast server for them. Naps are good, short naps can be rejuvenating. But I do hope you all get a good night’s sleep 🙂
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It’s taking a while to get used to the world again—without that awful President masquerading as a human being. Too many years worrying every day what’s next.
I can stop now. Now an actual human being leading the executive branch, I think I need to rediscover trust.
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In a way, I was just writing about that in a comment on another blog. Here we have an administration wanting to help our country (and ourselves) to recover and rebuild, to, yes as you say, rediscover trust. But for the GOP. That party’s resistance to providing relief and sustenance and justice just boggles my mind. I cannot think in what world their behavior would ever make sense. Now Biden wants to spend trillions on infrastructure. I’m sure the GOP will balk at that, but didn’t Trump claim he wanted to invest in infrastructure? Only he never did because he didn’t really care. Investing in infrastructure will create jobs and save lives in so many ways (most notably by bridges no longer collapsing onto cars). Eh, I best quit before I work myself into a frenzy and have a hard time getting to sleep tonight 😉
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Exactly.
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I’ve heard that in pre-industrial days we used to sleep in shifts. It was so common that it was not commented on. I guess that’s what happens when you go to bed at sunset. https://www.sciencealert.com/humans-used-to-sleep-in-two-shifts-maybe-we-should-again
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Oh dear. Now I will bore you about sleep.
Just to address the term of “sleeping in shifts”: In pre-industrial times, people got up with the sun and slept in the dark because it was too expensive to do otherwise. Candles and whale oil to light the house or workplace were dear. Even in the early post-industrial age, artificial light would not be used much after dark, which in winter might last from 5pm to 7am—fourteen hours is far longer than people need to sleep. If it’s dark for fourteen hours a day, and you are a farmer, you go to bed in the dark and get back to full work in the earliest light. The notion that people stayed awake for as long as there was work to get done? Maybe, kinda, sorta. But not really. Any person desperate to survive will do whatever is necessary, but we are physically evolved to sleep in darkness and to “make hay while the sun shines.”
Some recent studies about sleep simply do not pencil out. Not so long ago, because of a single brief study with a handful of test subjects, a psychologist tried to convince us we evolved to live on a planet with a 25-hour day.
Who has tried to get a toddler to bed and they want to stay up, even thought they are falling asleep on the sofa? We resist sleep in a well-lighted house with fun things going on.
Yes, there is some evidence that people can and have habitually woken briefly in the middle of the night and then gone back to sleep. They wouldn’t have done that in high summer when there is predawn light from five until full darkness at nine or ten at night. If they were physically and mentally active during the day, would you waste two hours of your seven or eight in bed? Farmers went to bed when their animals did and rose when the cock crowed. They would not have gone by the clock at all but by light.
Sleep has been damaged as we drift farther and farther away from nature in our habits. Monty Don even said the other day about DST that “we have more time” now. No. Same hours in the day, however we style our clocks. People want permanent DST as if noon were not an actual thing (zenith of the sun) instead of when they want their lunch hour or when their program comes on.
That said, I’ve managed first and second sleep and I’m glad when I am able to do that, but most activities suggested in the article would not work for me—sometimes I read and am able to get back to sleep, but sewing? (Seriously, I would not recommend chopping wood in moonlight.) Sadly, sometimes I wake at one and am still awake at five, regardless of sex or reading.
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