HEALTH NOTES.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXX, Issue 5446, 10 July 1929, Page 4

HEALTH NOTES.

SLEEP. AGE REQUIREMENTS. (Contributed by the Department of Health.) Sleep may be defined as a natural condition of insensibility more or less complete, recurring once in 24 hours normally (for the adult) and lasting from six to eight hours. The infant may sleep twenty hours out of each twenty-four ; the growing child may take twelve hours at a stretch. After middle-age sleep tends to become lighter—that is, more easily broken and of shorter duration. In human sleep, when it is deep, the body lies quiet, with the muscles relaxed, the pulse rate lower than during waking hours, and the respiration less frequent, but deep. It reaches its maximum within the first hour, and then diminishes, at first rapidly and then more slowly. Some have referred to sleep as a natural rhythm, that it bears a resemblance to the alteration of day and night, that rhythm is innate in Nature—after activity comes rest, after energy torpor, after mobility quiesccnse. and after waking comes sleep, because it is a law of Nature that action and reaction are always equal and contrary. This rhythm—if it be so —is seen not only in man and animals, but also in the vegetable kingdom. Witness, for instance, the leaves and flowers of many plants which expand by day and shrink at night. It requires no great consideration to make it obvious that without sleep healthy mental and bodily life is impossible. Men can fast, provided water is supplied, for several weeks, but loss of sleep, even for a few days, may prove fatal. Therefore it is a necessity, and the average individual suffers considerable after forty-eight hours of absolute sleeplessness. Production of Sleep. Almost every rule of hygiene and right living could be quoted as a sleep producer. The loss of sleep should not be considered as a forerunner of something dreadful. Persons often get much more sleep than they think they do. On the other hand, restless and insufficient sleep should not be accepted as an incurable condition. Insomnia or sleeplessness may be due not so much to overwork itself as to the manner of working, and particularly the foolish and unnecessary habit of not shutting down the business or professional part of the brain works for a reasonable time before retiring. Intellectual over-indulgence is a most unnecessary and unwise form of excess, the consequences of which are often most disastrous. How often is it that man’s inhumanity to himself brings on the infliction of insomnia. Should the insomnia habit become firmly established sleep may often be successfully wooed by a change of environment to counteract all the old suggestions linked up in the mind. Precautions to Take. The normal functioning brain can sleep under almost any circumstances, but once there has been trouble and the habit of fitful sleeping acquired certain precautions are necessary. The rule of the bedroom is a most important one. It should be quiet, cool, and with open window, but darkened, and the bed should be of the type used in hospitals, being without hollows and inequalities. As a rule light sleepers should avoid late and heavy meals. On the other hand, a glass of hot milk and a cracker biscuit will often help if one is restless. The habit of rising and restlessly moving round at night should, however, be avoided. Eyestrain is a fertile cause of insomnia. Restless sleep, as do headaches, calls for thorough examination of the eyes. Drugs should be taken only in the extreme necessity and under the supervision of the family doctor.