Sleep
Sleep. Bedfellows.—There is nothing that will so derange the nervous system of a person who is eliminative in nervous force as to lie all night in bed with another person who is absorbent in nervous force. The absorber will go to sleep and rest all night; while the eliminator will be tumbling and tossing, restless and nervous, and wake up in the morning fretful, peevish, fault-finding, and discouraged. No 2 persons, no matter who they are, should habitually sleep together. One will thrive and the other will lose. So say the doctors.
Length of Sleep.—It is manifestly impossible to lay down any universally applicable rule as to the number of hours which it is desirable to sleep. Probably no two persons require precisely the same amount of slumber, and it is scarcely likely that any person needs the same length of sleep on all occasions. Sleep is the state in which the fires are, so to say, damped down, and the machinery has opportunity for cooling. The bow is, as it were, unstrung, and may recover its elasticity during the recurring periods of slumber. The great point is to secure what Bichât characterised as “general” sleep made up of particular sleeps. The whole body should be rested—so far as any avoidable demand on its energy is concerned—during sleep. If sleep be thorough, then a short spell will do more good than a much longer duration of sleep that is incomplete and imperfect, both in its nature and in its effects. Sleep is a distinctly natural function, and therefore, both as regards its induction and management, ought to be performed in conformity with natural laws. Practically, a man should sleep until he is refreshed. The mistake many persons make is in attempting to govern what must be a matter of instinct by volitional control. When we are weary we ought to sleep, and when we wake we should get up. There are no more vicious habits than adopting measures to “keep awake” or employing artifices, or, still worse, resorting to drugs and other devices to induce or prolong sleep. Dozing is the very demoralisation of the sleep function, and from this pernicious habit arises much of the so-called sleeplessness—more accurately wakefulness—from which multitudes suffer.
The secret of good sleep is (the physiological conditions of rest being established) to so work and weary the several parts of the organism as to give them a proportionally equal need of rest at the same moment. The cerebrum or mind organ, the sense organs, the muscular system, and the viscera should be all ready to sleep together, and, so far as may be possible, they should be equally tired. To wake early and feel ready to rise, this fair and equal start of the sleepers should be secured; and the wise self-manager should not allow a drowsy feeling of the consciousness or weary senses, or an exhausted muscular system, to beguile him into the folly of going to sleep again when once his consciousness has been aroused. After a very few days of self-discipline the man who resolves not to “doze,” that is, to allow some still sleepy part of his body to keep him in bed after his brain has once awakened, will find himself, without knowing how, “an early riser.”
Wakefulness.—The difficulties about sleep and sleeplessness—apart from dreams—are almost uniformly fruits of a perverse refusal to comply with the laws of nature. Take, for example, the case of a man who cannot sleep at night, or rather who, having fallen asleep, wakes. If he is what is called strong-minded, he thinks, or perhaps reads, and falls asleep again. This being repeated lays the foundation of a habit of waking in the night and thinking or reading to induce sleep. Before long the thinking or reading fails to induce sleep, and habitual sleeplessness occurs, for which remedies are sought and mischief is done. If the wakeful man would only rouse himself on waking, and get up and do a full day’s work, of any sort, and not doze during the day, when next the night came round his 16 or 20 hours of wakefulness would be rewarded by a sleep of 9-10 hours in length; and one or two of these manful struggles against a perverted tendency to abnormal habit would rectify the error and avert the calamity. The cure for sleeplessness must be natural, because sleep is a state of natural rhythmical function. You cannot tamper with the striking movement of a clock without injuring it, and you cannot tamper with orderly recurrence of sleep without impairing the very constitution of things on which the orderly performance of the function depends. (Lancet.)
Nothing lowers the vital forces more than sleeplessness, which may generally be traced to one of four causations: (1) Mental worry; (2) a disordered stomach; (3) excessive muscular exertion; (4) functional or organic disease. Loss of sleep is, when rightly understood, one of Nature’s premonitory warnings that some of her physical laws have been violated. When we are troubled with sleeplessness, it becomes requisite to discover the primary cause, and then to adopt suitable means for its removal. When insomnia (sleeplessness) arises from mental worry, it is indeed most difficult to remove. The best and perhaps only effectual plan under such circumstances is a spare diet, combined with plenty of outdoor exercise, thus to draw the blood from the brain; for it is as impossible for the brain to continue active without a due circulation of blood, as it is for an engine to move without steam.
When suffering from mental distress, a hot soap bath before retiring to rest is an invaluable agent for obtaining sleep, as by its means a more equable blood pressure becomes established, promoting a decrease of the heart’s action and relaxation of the blood vessels. Many a sleepless night owes its origin to the body’s temperature being unequal. In mental worry, the head is often hot and the feet cold, the blood being driven to the brain. The whole body should be well washed over with carbolic soap and sponged with very hot water. The blood then becomes diverted from the brain, owing to an adequate diffusion of circulation. Tea and coffee should not be taken of an evening when persons suffer from insomnia, as they directly induce sleeplessness, being nervine stimulants. A sharp walk of about 20 minutes is also very serviceable before going to bed. (Chambers Journal.)
Sleeplessness is sometimes engendered by a disordered stomach. Whenever this organ is overloaded, its powers are disordered, and wakefulness or a restless night is its usual accompaniment. No food should be taken at least within 1 hour of bedtime. It cannot be too generally realised that the presence of undigested food in the stomach is one of the most prevailing causes of sleeplessness. (Dr. C. J. B. Williams.)
Persons suffering from either functional or organic disease are peculiarly liable to sleeplessness. When inability to sleep persistently occurs, and cannot be traced to any perverted mode of life or nutrition, there is good reason for surmising that some latent malady gives rise to so truly a distressing condition. Under these circumstances, instead of making bad worse, by swallowing deadly sleeping drugs, a scientific physician should be without delay consulted. Functional disorders of the stomach, liver, and heart are often the primary source of otherwise unaccountable wakefulness.
Recently, the dangerous and lamentable habit of promiscuously taking sleeping draughts has unfortunately become very prevalent, entailing misery and ill health to a terrible degree. Most persons addicted to this destructive practice erroneously think that it is better to take a sleeping draught than lie awake. A greater mistake could hardly exist. All opiates more or less occasion mischief, and even the state of stupefaction they induce utterly fails to bring about that revitalisation resulting from natural sleep. The physiological effect of hypnotics, or sleeping draughts, upon the system is briefly as follows: They paralyse the nerve centres and disorder the stomach, rendering it unfit for its duties; they have life destroying properties in a low degree; the condition they produce is not sleep, but a counterfeit state of unconsciousness; and they directly poison the blood, consequent upon its carbonisation, resulting from their action. Of all hypnotics, chloral is by far the most deadly, and should never, under any circumstances, be taken except under medical supervision.
To epitomise what has already been said regarding wakefulness; its rational cure should be arrived at in each individual case by seeking out the cause, and then removing the morbid action, of which it is but a natural sequence. Lastly, sleeplessness under no circumstances should be neglected, as it acts disastrously both on the mental and physical forces.
Dr. Corning drops a few simple hints which may be of value. In the first place, he insists that people should have a regular time for going to sleep, and it should be as soon as can well be after sunset. People who sleep at any time, according to convenience, get less benefit from their sleep than others; getting sleep becomes more difficult; there is a tendency to nervous excitability and derangement; the repair of the system does not equal the waste. The more finely organised people are, the greater the difficulty and the danger from this cause. The first thing in order to sleep well is to go to bed at a regular hour, and make it as early as possible. The next thing is to exclude all worry and exciting subjects of thought from the mind some time before retiring. The body and mind must be let down from the high-pressure strain before going to bed, so that nature can assert her rightful supremacy afterwards. Another point is, never to thwart the drowsy impulse when it comes at the regular time by special efforts to keep awake, for this drowsiness is the advance guard of healthy, restorative sleep. Sleep is a boon which must not be tampered with and put off, for if compelled to wait, it is never so perfect and restful as if taken in its own natural time and way. The right side is the best to sleep on, except in special cases of disease, and the position should be nearly horizontal. Finally, the evening meal should be composed of food most easily digested and assimilated, so that the stomach will have little hard work to do. A heavy, rich dinner taken in the evening is one of the things that murder sleep, says Dr. Corning; yet many people will say just the opposite, and find they sleep most readily on a full stomach; obviously this rule varies with surrounding conditions. Late suppers with exciting foods and stimulating drinks make really restorative sleep next to impossible. Narcotics are to be avoided, save as used in cases of disease by competent physicians. The proper time, according to Dr. Corning, to treat sleeplessness is in the day-time, and it must be treated by a wise and temperate method of living rather than by medicines.
Dr. Rogers asserts that invalid children with little disposition to sleep may be induced to do so by placing their cots due north and south, with the child’s head to the north. There may be some truth in this popular superstition that the magnetic current induces sleep; but “due north” is not “magnetic north” by a long way.
Frank Buckland’s remedy for insomnia is “onions—simply common onions raw, but Spanish onions stewed will do.” The oil contained in onions, he thinks, has highly soporific powers, and in his own case they never fail.
Great benefit is sometimes derived from the use of a hop pillow on special occasions.
Snoring.—This is caused by sleeping with an open mouth. It is just possible that by a resolute and determined effort of will the habit may be overcome; breathing by day through the nostrils only and pursing up the mouth firmly will help much towards it. It is well to urge upon all parents and nurses the absolute necessity of their training all young children to sleep with mouth shut. Never allow an infant to get the contrary habit. Watch it in early life, and close its lips when it is falling off to sleep, which can easily be done with thumb and finger, holding them together for a few seconds. The habit thus acquired wards off consumption in after-life. Coughs and colds contribute to the tendency to snore by stopping the nostrils wholly or partially, thus rendering breathing through the mouth imperative. In this case, clear your nose well at night, using snuff if necessary, and keep your mouth closed.
Supplementary Literature.
Lady Barker: ‘The Bedroom and Boudoir.’ London, 1878. 2s. 6d.