You're smart to have insomnia

Title

Language

English

Source

Panorama Volume XVII (Issue No.8) August 1965

Year

1965

Subject

Insomnia

Sleep disorders

Sleep deprivation -- Physiological aspects

Insomniacs

Rights

In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted

Abstract

Successful persons sleep but a few hours

Fulltext

■ Successful persons sleep but a few hours. YOU'RE SMART TO HAVE INSOMNIA During his days of glory, Napoleon slept not more than four or five hours, at the most, out of the 24. His physical and intellectual ac tivities were prodigious. He would at times ride horse back for ten hours at a stretch, then hold conferences with his staff and dictate in numerable letters until late into the night. Yet he never felt tired or sleepy and a few hours of repose sufficed to “relieve his fatigue.” Heads of large businesses work much harder than do most of their employes. Some stay at their desks long after the office force has left, then attend business meetings un til late in the evening. If they are interested in the business and are making a success of it, they do not complain of being tired. Nor are they as tired after 15 hours of “free labor” as are their stenographers and su bordinates after six or eight hours of routine jobs. There was another side to Napoleon’s story. Later in life, when his dream of world conquest was finally shat tered at Waterloo and he was exiled to a remote island, he completely altered his life time habit in regard to sleep. At St. Helena he found it necessary to devote eight or nine hours to bed instead of the four or five that were previously sufficient, and this at a time when he had changed from a life of phy sical and mental activity to one of sloth and indolence. Does this mean that the more we work the less we should sleep? Psychologists are beginning to think so. In fact, many of them are quite sure that this apparent ly paradoxical theory is cor rect and that insomnia ought |o be cured, not by teaching insomniacs how to sleep, August 1965 47 but by teaching them how to stay awake properly. But, in order for the cure to be effectual, the staying awake must be done under circumstances that absorb the interest of the individual and flatter his ego. Does this mean that ego tistical gratification can take the place of rest? Undoubt edly so. Napoleon/s rever sal of form under conditions of victory and defeat can be adequately explained on no other hypothesis. There is on record the case of a gambler who could go for several days and nights without sleep, provided he was winning. After a heavy loss, or even a session in which his winnings were off set by his losses, he needed ten or twelve hours’ sleep to put him in humor to face reality again. Another case in point is that of a neurotic with a strong inferiority complex who was overwhelmed by sleepiness every time he encountered defeat. After a quarrel, or whenever a discussion in which he took part turned to his disadvan tage, he was obliged to lie down and ‘‘sleep it off.” The old saying that a change of work is as good as a rest was founded on sound psychology. Children “tired” of sitting in a classroom will romp wildly, shout at the top of their lungs, jostle and fight one another, and re turn to their studies “rested.” A businessman who has at tended to the tedious details of his office until five o’clock feels "all in” and goes home ‘‘tired.” He changes his day suit for evening wear, attends a dinner at which he does a good deal of talking, sits for three hours in a stuffy theater and comes back “rested/’ At the end of a “heavy” week this same businessman will gather up his golf out fit and trail for miles in the wake of a small rubber ball. He returns to his office “rest ed,” although he has only exchanged one form of acti vity for another. Of actual “rest” he has had none. Mental rest, then, consists in part of egotistical gratifi cation and in part of a com plete change of mental or physical activity. 48 Panorama Neither physical nor men tal rest of this kind, how ever, is synonymous with sleep. If we admit that the conquering Napoleon, the successful businessman, and the winning gambler were sufficiently rested by being Wcupied with activities that flittered their ego and were of their own choosing, is there any common factor that enabled them to main tain their health with less sleep than is usually thought necessary for the average man? There is such a factor, and it can perhaps be better ex plained by reversing the question and asking if there is not some definite factor that causes most of us to de vote more time to sleep than we .actually need. The an swer to this question is again yes; and that definite factor is monotony. Thomas Edison, in an in terview, once expressed this opinion: Nothing is more dangerous to human efficiency than too much sleep. The average man who sleeps seven or eight or nine hours daily is continually oppressed by las situde. There is really no reason why men should go to bed at all, and the man of the future will spend far less time in bed than the man of the present does, just as the man of the present spends far less time in bed than the man of the past did. In the old days, man went up and down with the sun. A million years from now we won’t go to bed at all. Really, sleep is an absurdity, a bad habit. We can’t sud denly throw off the habit, but we will throw it off even tually. Perhaps Mr. Edison exag gerated a little, but he had faith in his doctrine and practiced what he preached. He reduced his bad habit of sleep to a minimum. The amount of sleep need ed by various individuals is never proportionate to the amount of muscular or men tal effort they expend. Men of intense physical and in tellectual activity, like Fre derick the Great, Schiller, Humboldt, Mirabeau, John Hunter the English surgeon, and Virchow the great Ger man pathologist, flourished August 1965 49 on an average of four or five hours of sleep daily. Every one of these men had a co lorful existence. Their lives were crowded with varied and interesting experiences The real purpose of sleep is restoration of emotional and sensory tone and not elimination of toxins or re pair of waste. It is quite ridiculous to imagine that our bowels or our kidneys or our digestions work better when we are asleep than when we are awake. The exact contrary is true. All these functions are slowed down during sleep, like the rest of the bodily processes. It is a matter of common knowledge that we have more difficulty in digesting heavy food at night than at noon, and that, if a heavy meal is not digested before we go to sleep trouble is likely to en sue. Normally the bowels and kidneys do not move during sleep, and their acti vity is promoted by exercise and being awake, not by rest and sleep. The effect of pro longed sleep is to clog and not to clean the body. The dangers of insomnia have been so widely arid generally exaggerated that the average person becomes little short of panic-stricken when sleeplessness attacks him. Yet the worst insom niacs not only survive, but not uncommonly reach a vi gorous old age. The dangers of excessive sleeping after the age of puberty are rarfr ly heard of; yet they are real, and it is indeed quite possible, as Mr. Edison in sisted, to sleep too much, des pite popular opinion to the contrary. The best way of combat ing a tendency to excessive sleep is not arbitrarily to shorten the hours devoted to oblivion, but gradually to accustom the mind, cons ciously or unconsciously, to act more vigorously and ex pansively. Widening the men tal outlook by increasing the number of interesting con tacts with reality seems, strangely enough, to have the dual effect of prolonging it without injury to the organ ism. The exact number of hours that should be passed in sleep is a question upon which authorities are not unanimous. It is generally 90 Panorama agreed that the healthy new born child sleeps during the entire day and night except when it is being nursed and dressed. This period is gra dually lessened up to the age of ten or twelve years, when the requirements of sound health do not demand more than nine hours out of the 24. There has always been a considerable diversity of opinion in regard to the pro per adult sleeping allowance. Disregarding considerations of sex, mentality, occupation and idiosyncracy, it has here tofore been generally believ ed that in the prime of life seven hours out of the 24 should be given up to sleep, though some individuals do very well on five or six and others seem to require eight or nine to be at their best. Elderly people, unless se nility has produced abnormal drowsiness, find it difficult to sleep as long as those of middle age, and four to six hours is often the maximum that they can endure. Individuals who possess a diversity of interests, or who concentrate intensely on some single field of thought, can maintain their health and realize their nor mal life expectation on much less sleep than these average standards. On the testimony of some who have put a lesser maximum to the proof, a nightly average of four hours’ sleep supplemented by four hours’ rest is sufficient not only for comfortable liv ing but will even leave a mar gin for gain in health. There are few if any in somniacs even among the most afflicted who get less than this amount, although many quite honestly believe they do. All sufferers from insomnia unconsciously exag gerate their trouble, and their statements on the sub ject must taken with many grains of salt. Fear causes both their me mory and their judgment to be unreliable. And yet this fear is entirely uncalled for. Lying awake at night in a comfortable bed is really never a desperately danger ous performance. What is the origin of this obsession that we must sacri fice so considerable a por tion of our short and pre August 1965 51 cious lives to the god of sleep? Popular belief holds that Alfred the Great divided the day into three equal parts and strongly advised that one of these parts be allot ted to sleep. Because he was a good king and an unusual ly wise one, the inference was that, if Alfred said it was, it was so. And for mpre than a millennium the supersti tion has persisted. As a matter of fact, Alfred has been misquoted. What he did say was that onethird of the day should be given to diet, sleep, and exercise — that is, that a man should devote eight hours daily to sleeping and eating and whatever form of exer cise or recreation he prefer red. There is nothing to show that Alfred himself spent even six hours a night in sleep. Ours is the age of the ef ficiency expert. If the ave rage human being can main tain working efficiency on six hours of sleep or less a day, it ought to be known. Two hours a day saved means salvaging a loss of 90 working days of eight hours each per year. — By Dr. Ro bert Kingman from Maga zine Digest. LONE CHICK Lonely baby chick taking a look around the elec tric incubator of unhatched eggs: “Well, it looks as if I’ll be an only child. Mother’s blown a fuse.” — Mrs. L. F. Duncan. 52 PANORAMA

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