SLEEP IN MIDDLE-AGE

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 8, Issue 90, 17 July 1945, Page 6

SLEEP IN MIDDLE-AGE

Middle-age is for many a time of broken sleep. This irregularity of sleep in middle life is very troublesonic. Many factors may lie responsible but the most common are probably wprry and anxiety and indigestion. The individual gets off to ; sleep all but Avakes in the small hours,, and dozes only for the i rest of the nighty to feel heavy and tired next morning. This goes on t night after night until A'ear of not i sleeping properly adds to the trouble, increases the sleeplessness and a bad habit of broken sleep becomes ; established. If this is happening to you see if there's a digestive origin from unsuitable or over-eating. At middle age our activity and energy expenditure are not so much as when we were younger, but few think to cut down the total food consumption accordingly, and to hep the. abdominal muscles fiym and in tone. 'Maj* be you are eating too much or wrong types of food—possibly too much carbohydrate type foodstuffs. Examine your eating, therefore, reduce the fat and carbohydrate intake and see. that there's a balance of vitamins and minerals from increased vegetables and fruits. Try a light instead of a heavy evening meal some hours before retiring. At bedtime take a warm.tyatli and a warm drink and .settle down to a good night's sleep. If your sleeplessness is clue to worry ? anxiety, or the hectic pace at which you are living to make the money you consider essential for your happiness, you don't usually drop off to sleep and wake up early as in the digestice type of insomnia. Rather you can't get oil' to sleep until the early hours o)' the morning. To cure this type calls for new ways of living—a slower pace with less anxiety. A complete medical overhaul and a chat with your physician would be the way lo initiate lliis changeover. You would know there was no physical basis for the insomnia then, and it's but a matter of readjustment to an easier, more health-: ful tempo of living.