Sleep’s My Friend

Let’s begin with the myth of eight hours sleep we need every day and that our ancestors slept much longer than we do. Maybe myth is a bit hard an expression, but it’s definitely a wrong assumption. In 1913 Californian researchers found that children and youths between the ages of eight and 17 slept for eight hours a day. This still holds true, for that age group. But for grownups it’s highly irrelevant.

Having that out of the way, how much sleep do we really need? The answer is a bit obvious: It depends on the person. Actually each of us has to find out for him or herself how much is really needed. Researchers talk of an average of seven to seven and a half hour, but many people can do with less and be none the worse for it.

The only part of our body that would be affected by lack of sleep is the brain, and it would take several days of true sleeplessness to show at that. Tests have shown that there is no physiological difference to either muscles or organs when you’re asleep or just lying still fully awake. The brain is different. Even though it constitutes only two per cent of your body mass, it consumes 20 per cent of your total energy household. So to say, it’s the United States of your body.

The brain has three sections, cortex, mid brain, and hind brain. Mid and hind brain are responsible for motor functions like breathing, blood pressure, heart rate, and liver functions. They work steadily and at the same rate if you are awake or asleep. The cortex is responsible thinking, speech, memory, and perception. It’s the cortex who needs a break, and it gets it when you are asleep.

Take away sleep, and the cortex starts to mess up. Just one night without any sleep, and irritability sets in, small pressures become a major irritation, disruptions of routine produce a complete derailment. Make it longer and forgetfulness is rampant, coherent speech and conversation become major feats, simple things like sums or lists get impossibly dense.

In 1966 a high school student stayed awake for 11 days, a record to this day. After four days he started to have hallucinations. Towards the end he could hardly hold a conversation nor clearly perceive what was going on around him. He played pinball still with ease, which shows that part of the cortex is quite hardy. The eye-hand coordination apparently was not affected by the lack of sleep.

Since then, a whole industry has started to tell us that we don’t get enough sleep. Compared to 150 years back, we rather get too much sleep. Then a factory worker was on a stint for 14 hours, coming home to a cramped abode where 12 or more persons lived in a single room. We are getting enough sleep, but the industry wants to sell us either toxic waste, called sleeping tablets, or natural herbs. Both are needed maybe by one per cent of the population who really are sick. But one per cent brings no real turn-over, so we are all manipulated into believing in sleeplessness.

Don’t let yourself be caught in that wily net. You can find out for yourself how much sleep you really need, simply by testing yourself. I survived four years in high school on three hours a night without any loss of concentration. To this day, more than six hours sleep gives me a headache. It all lies in the rhythm, so to say. If you can find your sleeping rhythm, you will be able to steer your sleeping needs more efficiently.

Sleep has different phases, light sleep and deep sleep. During the night you pass from light sleep into a deep one, then back to light, just to go back into deep sleep, and out again. This sequence is a full cycle consisting of two half cycles with one deep sleep phase each. Speaking only for myself, one complete cycle takes three hours to run through, the half cycle one and a half. Once I managed to wake up on full cycle or at least half cycle ends of sleep, I never was tired again, even with only one half cycle in a night.

I did this by training myself to wake up at specified times just by telling myself to do it. Call it mantra if you want, just repeat the time you want to wake up in your head while going to sleep. Something like ‘I want to wake up at seven fully rested and awake’. Set the alarm clock after seven. You won’t need it anymore after a few days. Even just setting your alarm clock to a time coinciding with your cycle’s end time will help you feel more rested and refreshed than when you get caught out in deep sleep which leaves you dog tired the whole day.

Most people who complain about lack of sleep actually have just bad timing, setting the alarm into a deep sleep phase. And no drug and no tea or herbal brew can help you out of that, just do it right instead.

If you want to know more about sleep, read Professor Jim Horne’s book ‘Sleepfaring – A Journey Through The Science Of Sleep’ published at the Oxford University Press.