“You look awful”.
That was the greeting I received recently from someone I’ve known for a few years.
When that’s the opening line in a conversation you can respond in a couple of ways:
Be offended: “Well, thank you very much – you’re not looking so hot yourself!”
OR
Take note and recognise this as a warning: “I thought I was doing OK – perhaps I’m not coping as well as I imagined.”
The second option was my path of choice.
If I’m looking so awful what could be the cause?
There were a few potential candidates:
- The house is trying to kill us: I’ve covered that in previous posts. In an attempt to defeat it, we’ve installed an ioniser (which made a significant and immediate difference), had cleaners come through and do a thorough dusting, and had the bed and carpets cleaned and sanitised.
- My diet: Danita and I eat healthily and generally pretty well. We opt for organic wherever possible and tend to have very little commercially produced food. Also, sugar and salt have very limited places (if any) in our eating habits.
- Lack of sleep. This was the most likely candidate and so I decided to try a test.
As it was a Friday it meant I could get to bed early and there was no need to wake up at any particular time the next morning.
So, by 8.45 that night I was in bed.
I’m grateful to be blessed with the ability to go straight to sleep (a trait which Danita finds annoying because she’s left lying awake for quite some time).
This means that by 8.50 I was comatose.
Getting up a couple of times through the night is now normal but it was well past 9am the next day when I was properly awake and ready to get out of bed.
Saturday is a day when I make a point of doing very little – no computers, no driving anywhere – a day of chilling out at home.
Even after a huge night’s sleep I was still finding myself feeling tired and so decided to do something similar Saturday night – early to bed and get up when I feel like it.
Sunday I was feeling a bit better and the bags under my eyes (a feature I’d assumed was the result of years of experience being written on my face) had virtually disappeared.
Clearly, there was something about this sleep stuff that has value.
Until recently, I’ve been of the view, promulgated by people like Thomas Edison (“Sleep is a criminal waste of time and a heritage from our cave days”) and Margaret Thatcher (“Sleep is for whimps”) that sleep is a waste of time and you’ll get to do plenty of it when you’re dead.
Clearly, the sort of people these two were should have alerted me to the stupidity of this attitude (you might guess from this that I’m not a fan of either).
On the other hand Shakespeare wrote: “Enjoy the honey-heavy dew of slumber” and “O sleep! O gentle sleep! Nature’s soft nurse”.
And so to find out about the value of sleep I went to explore what the world’s greatest researchers had to say on the subject ie watched TED talks.
There’s a playlist called “Talk’s to inspire you to go to bed and get a good night’s sleep” and so I checked out what they had to say:
- Arianna Huffington (founder of The Huffington Post) gave a short talk (How to succeed? Get more sleep) where she tells women how to sleep their way to the top.
- Russell Foster, a neuroscientist, describes what happens when we sleep and how important it is for our physical and mental wellbeing (Why do we sleep?)
- Jeff Iliff, another neuroscientist, refers back 2000 years and describes the brain’s cleansing process which only occurs during sleep. This has significant implications for the prevention of Alzheimers (One more reason to get a good night’s sleep)
So, based on these great authorities and to remove myself one more degree from people like Edison, Thatcher and co., I’m committing to getting to bed early from now on.
I know Danita will be thrilled and she’s going to use this post to remind me.
And maybe, I’ll be a saner, nicer, healthier person as a result. (If not, I can always justify it by saying I’m fulfilling my role as a “grumpy old man”).