SLUMBER TIME

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 65, 11 December 1918, Page 6

SLUMBER TIME

» ■ HOW MUCH AND WHAT KIND OP SLEEP -YOU NEED. ' 'On an average most healthy persons require "about nine hours' sleep in order to be thoroughly recuperated (-writes Dr. h. F. liowers of New York). Women need and should have half an hour to an hour ■ i more than men of the same age. i But this is entirely a matter of the indiridual's power to recuperate—to restore his oxygen balance, eliminate or burn up his fatigue poisons, and to replace his . ' worn-out ceils. All of which depends largely upon the depth of sleep. If the sleeping chamber is stuffy and poorly ventilated no amount of sleep is going to; produce the rested • feeling that should come from sound sleep taken under hygienic conditions. Of course, these hours of sleep do not » apply to children. The rules governing ■- their sleeping, must be much more flexe ible than those applied to adults. Chikl- ! ren growing rapidly need more sleep than S those of slow growth." Children require 1- and should get more sleep in winter than a in summer. And vigorous children need '- less sleep than delicate children. At a. V rough estimate it might be said that e babies can use fifteen to eighteen hours d out of every twenty-four very profitably e in sleeping.. This period gradually der dines, until at the third year the child d requires about twelve hours. By the sixtji s year, if left to his instincts, he takes ■ i- about ten hours. Up to the eighteenth s or nineteenth year this ten-hour necessity ;i persists. Growth being by this time at- » tained, the sleep .requirements drop an •t hour or more, and remain there until the' t advent of that second childhood age-

which'reduces the period of reconstruction because the reconstruction faculty has been .reduced. 5 To make children get up before they have had enough restful sleep to thoroughly refresh them is a foolish, healthdestroying; crime against the child njm an .insult to Nature. There's nothing >?8 could possibly do-unless it would be to frighten them with bedtime talcs ot ghosts or liobgoblins-that reacts more disastrously on the . nervous systems ot children or youths of either sex than to deprive them of needed sleep, and notliyig'; will sow the seeds of future nervous instability/ more surely. , ..,,.•„ The best time for sleeping is that time that will favour the greatest degree of relaxation. With most people this is sometime during the hours of darkness, when there isn't so much going on to distract the senses of sight and hearing. Just what hours should be devoted to sleep is not as important us that there should be enough of them. The so-called beauty sleep,- achieved during the hours preceding midnight, is a fact only because it adds (o tho number of hours-wluch, under ordinary conditions, we might he supposed to spend in bed; Most of us get up at about the same time every nioni-ing-no matter how early or how late we've gone to bed the night before, bo there isn't a word .of truth in the old fable that one hour of sleep before midnight is worth any two hours later. Sleep is sleep, provided only that it is sound, restful sleep-whet her we get it at 8 o'clock in the evening, 2 o clock in the morning, or 1 o'clock'the, next aiternoon. If we can get our sleep undiluted bv disturbances so much the better. "We are beginning to realise that sound sleep isn't obtainable in a bod that rattles or'squeaks or tint eh ocks he nerves into semi-wakofulness by umtou.i slipping of the springs or unexpected crea ings. The advent of the separate be and the banishment of the double bed into the limbo of wanning pans and night capfie a distinct advance.from the standpoint of hygiene, m \J™ more rational sleeping habits. VUen separate beds, or, bettor stil, sepal.te sleeping chambers, are in universal use men and women, especially nervous men and w» and delicate children, will get a good deal more sleep than they do at "wont; thev'll derive more bone it f,U thT leep they do get. All this will make easier for them to do with considenibly less sleep than they now require.