How typical, Ms "Taken For Granted" is out, totally oblivious to the wake of her aftermath…
Mayday! Mayday!
We are often blissfully unaware of the abundant wealth which the simple things in our lives embody. Pause to practice gratitude daily. One never knows what tomorrow will take…
Today at the age of 54 my body is signaling change: sleep has become a precious commodity. I find myself dealing with insomnia in its many forms.
Feelings of longing and abandonment are a lousy stand in for dreams…
The Pixie Dust has gone AWOL it has! No more lingering in bed to flirt with dawn’s radiant sun rays, no more giant yawns to devour with gusto the slumbery residue of night and gone (forever? I surly hope not…) are the supercharged energy reserves to tackle the new day with fervor. PD come home!
A night owl? No, that was never my scene. Early to rise and always in bed way before my friends and family, that was me. Sleep came easily and I would ride the tail of my dreams nonstop till morning.
When my alarm clock would pierce my blissful slumber at 4:30 am for the early morning milking, it was pure torture and I found it very difficult to get out of bed. Motherhood? That too painfully jolted my cozy blanket of sleep. Consideration? Not one of my three children let me sleep through the night for a very long time…
Jetlag that too was devastating. Each transatlantic trip to visit family grounded me for weeks. I was taxed coping with the transition to a distant time zone and felt forever like a doormat, unable to rise from my knocked out stupor.
Are you familiar with those who have an innate ability to sleep: smug folks who can effortlessly fall asleep and wake up at the snap of your fingers? I live in the shadow of such a fortuitous soul.
Need to sleep? Merely lay down your head. It is as simple as that!
Traveling abroad? Simply set your watch to the new time zone and you are done. The secret is to fall asleep on the ground, long before takeoff. Wake up for the meal cart. Coffee and dessert is a must. Afterwards close your eyes again. Your internal and external clocks are in sync. At the hotel lights out according to the new time zone. In the morning you awake renewed, refreshed and ready for a full day’s work. Transatlantic, transposed and tripped. No jetlag for you! Incredible is it not?!
I take the potion and he falls asleep!
It can be so terribly frustrating to live at his side…
We live in a connected world, live 24/7. Our attention and focus are online following the money: the internet and the economy have their hold on us. Our time is a precious commodity.
A badge of honor is awarded to those able to sleep two hours less at night.
When the caveman lay his head down to sleep he was liable to awaken within the clutches of a wild beast’s jaws. Despite the risk, he went to sleep … Surely if sleep served no higher purpose it would have been evolutionarily weeded out.
O sleep! O gentle sleep!
While in the Elizabethan era Shakespeare and his likes sang praises of sleep, famous figures from the earliest of modern times went off in the complete opposite direction. Thomas Edison took pride in his ability to sleep only four hours a night. Margaret Thatcher too was infamously known for her motto: “Sleep is for wimps!”
Of late sleep can be seen in the headlines in the media, ground breaking research is a hot subject. It is not clear if we are heralding a wakeup call or simply leveraging technological innovations.
It would be interesting to plot a bar graph portraying our sleep habits from the invention of the light bulb until present day. Plot the years from 1880 onwards on the X axis. Plot the average hours of sleep per night on the Y axis. In the background place the technological innovations by year: light bulbs, radio, telephone, television, computer, cell phone, internet, tablet, smartest phone, etc. Without a doubt the artificial light and the time spent using these technologies harm our sleep: both its quantity and quality.
It is common knowledge that upwards of one third of our life is invested in sleep. With such a high investment there must be a lucrative ROI or return on investment. What are the opportunities and the risks that we can anticipate?
Science is constantly inventing and reinventing itself. What is true today may not hold water tomorrow
Today three hypotheses as to the main functions of sleep:
♦ Restoration
♦ Energy conservation
♦ Brain processing and memory consolidation
Healthy sleep can promote our health in many ways:
♦ Improves concentration
♦ Increases attention
♦ Sharpens decision making skills
♦ Increases creativity
♦ May protect against Diabetes Type 2
♦ Improves mental health
♦ Reduces risk of Alzheimer, Parkinson, osteoporosis and cancer
♦ Reduces mood swings
♦ Reduces incidence of substance abuse and over eating
♦ Strengthens the immune system
♦ Restores, rejuvenates and removes toxic biological debris in the brain
Lack of sleep can turn any advantage into a disadvantage. Sleep is only effective when you get enough of it.
New studies show irreversible damage stemming from an accumulated lack of sleep. Sleep debt may damage and kill neurons and brain cells. Accumulated debris such as amyloid protein in the brain leads to a greater risk and susceptibility to chronic disease such as the likes of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.
So yes, perhaps sleep is a waste of your precious time, but for your body it is time to repair, restore and rejuvenate.
Before you go offline and dim the lights may I share with you two videos: one amusing and uplifting?
“Sleep is the interest we have to pay on the capital which is called in at death; and the higher the rate of interest and the more regularly it is paid, the further the date of redemption is postponed.”
~Arthur Schopenhauer