A study just out: Scientists built a cap with cooling water tubes to keep the brain temperature down. Turns out you sleep best when your head is at a little below 60 degrees Fahrenheit about 15 degrees Celsius.
What – they spent research funds on that?? Insane. Why invent a machine for something that is available easily in nature?
Then again: Natural Medicine tells us for more than a century now to sleep with the window open. For the reason that one doesn’t re-breathe ones stale reason. For a second reason: To keep a cool head.
The only other proven across-the-board condition that helps people go to sleep is having warm feet. Is this neat? Cool head, warm feet! You find the absurd prescription of Wet Socks in my water book (I don’t have the time to write about it now) – absurd, but it helps.
For today: Sleep with window open. Give it it try! Of course, we sleep with window open even in the coldest winter in Maine. You can start now - in summer weather. You don’t drink water that has once gone through your body and then been discarded. You shouldn’t re-breathe your used-up air either! Read More
Blog: On Health. On Writing. On Life. On Everything.
To Sleep or Not to Sleep
July 27, 2010
We all have heard that the tryptophan in milk, cheese or turkey makes us fall asleep faster – so off we go and enjoy a little snack at bedtime. I guess even doctors have given that advice.
It is bad advice. Tryptophan does not do the trick – and melatonin from wine or grapes does not do much either. Alcohol is the worst soporific because it makes you fall asleep by dampening down your brain - only your brain recovers and gets over-excited. So, you won't sleep long.
One should have the last meal not later than six or seven pm - and NOT have a snack before turning in to bed. We call it breakfast because we are supposed to break the nightly fast in the morning. If we eat late, the body is busy digesting instead of sleeping and repairing. Repair is crucial because daily we are exposed to harmful chemicals and radiation that break DNA strands which could lead to cancer.
The two things that help falling asleep easier are:
1. Going to bed with the early signs of tiredness. For most people that would be between eight and ten. If you then watch TV or sit at the computer, you get a second wind and sleep the worse for it. As a doctor who did many nights of duty, I know that one can experience even get a third and fourth and so on wind if needed – adrenalin always gets us going - but it is definitely not healthy.
2. Warm feet make you fall asleep as a study showed; cold feet keep you up. Taking a warm foot bath, or going to bed with socks might help. Perhaps you even one day you try the crazy-sounding “wet socks” - an old-world sleep remedy. I have tried them – they help: You need two pairs of socks; preferably one cotton, one wool, but both cotton works, too. Wet the cotton pair with cold water (as cold as comes from the faucet), wring lightly; they should be wet but not dripping. Put on the woolen pair of socks on top of it. You can wrap your feet in a towel if you want – but a bit of moisture does not hurt your bedding. Sleep.
You will sleep like a baby. If you wake in the night, you may remove towel and socks. But you might not wake until the morning. Read More