No booze, no TV, no heat and no mobile but then sleep well

Country Living with Frank Farragher

With the advent of Winter, there always seem to be more emphasis on heat, comfort and sleeping soundly but it seems the more we learn the more we go back to the old adage of: early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.

Over the past few weeks there have been more research studies and surveys that delve into our sleeping patterns to try and ascertain why some mornings we wake up fresh as daisies, while on others, we crawl from our beds encased in grumpiness and lethargy.

In the south of France, over 3,000 people were surveyed and those who were involved in shift work, showed a very clear decline in cognitive abilities, or what we would regard as the normal learning and thinking processes.

According to the research teams in Swansea and Toulouse universities, the shift workers over a period of time underwent quite a substantial decline in brain function, a process that could take about five years to reverse, when people went back to normal sleeping patterns.

More recently, another survey revealed that during the peak winter months, around 50% of people in Ireland leave their heating systems on at night-time, another practice that leads to disrupted sleeping patterns.

Admittedly the survey was commissioned by Slumberdown, who want to sell more duvets and comfy pillows, but many people will have experienced the pretty uncomfortable feeling of waking up in a room or bed that’s just too hot (temperature wise) to handle.

Over one third of those who left their heating on overnight woke up with mild headaches or feeling unwell, a further 10% had dry mouths or were dehydrated and another 14% were more tired than usual.

We’ve all heard the stories of so called very successful people who could get by with only four to five hours sleep per night including the likes of Maggie Thatcher, Winston Churchill and Napoleon Bonaparte. The latter is reputed to have laid down the following guidelines as regards sleep requirements for his subjects: “Six for a man, seven for a woman, eight for a fool.”

In the case of Maggie Thatcher, all her staff had to gear their schedules to a four hours per night sleep routine for their ‘great leader’ but in hindsight maybe her lack of proper rest may have accounted for her contrarian ways and her almost complete lack of warmth and nature as a human being.

Anyway all of the latest research studies and papers very definitely suggest that this is not the way to go and that a regular, settled and sufficiently long night’s rest, can make a huge difference to an individual enjoying a better quality of life and doing a good day’s work.

A key aspect to all of this is what is referred to as the circadian cycle, or the 24 hour biological clock that we just cannot change. We do our work, play or relaxation for 15 or 16 hours each day and then we need to sleep and rest for the remaining eight.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.