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The weekend looms, and that means a morning lie-in for many - though with the
clocks going forward there'll be an hour's less shut-eye on Sunday morning.
But, says Sean Coughlan, there's much more to getting a really good kip than
just shutting your eyes.
Britons are the worst sleepers in Europe, claimed a survey last week, depicting
a nation starved of sleep and facing a daily battle against red-eyed
exhaustion.
One in five of the population sleeps for fewer than seven hours a night,
according to research from the Future Foundation for the health campaign Sleep
Well Live Well. Many of these tired souls reported feeling stressed and
unhappy.
But how about looking at the question from another direction? If insufficient
or disrupted sleep is bad for our health - then what would be the ingredients
of a really good night's sleep? What makes a perfect sleep?
Dr Adrian Williams of the Sleep Disorders Centre at St Thomas's Hospital in
London sets out a few ground rules.
Don't have any caffeine drinks after 2pm, exercise some time between 4pm and
7pm, have a milky drink and a bath before bedtime and try to exclude noise and
light from the bedroom, recommends Dr Williams.
But sleep is a highly individual experience. Like our appetite for different
types of food, we all have our own gourmet sleeps. Here are 10 to savour.
1. THE AFTERNOON NAP According to the wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill,
the pearl of slumbers was the afternoon nap. "You must sleep some time between
lunch and dinner, and no half measures. Take off your clothes and get into
bed."
2. THE WEARY PARENT
For the sleep-starved parent, it can feel as though they've given birth to a
temperamental air-raid siren. Their sleep fantasy is nothing more elaborate
than a night alone and a long luxurious morning when they can wake up
undisturbed. Maybe they could warm the room with a bonfire of all those
smug-faced sleep training manuals.
3. HOTEL SCHADENFREUDE There are few more succulent slices of sleep than the
first morning of a holiday. No alarm clock, no rushing for the train, no
playing hunt the other sock, no making sandwiches for the kids. What makes it
even sweeter is the thought of everyone else back at work toiling over a hot
computer.
4. THE GREAT OUTDOORS Sleeping outside has a particular grass-scented pleasure,
whether it's drowsing on a sunny afternoon in the back garden, on the beach or
in the park. Looking up at the clouds creates that feeling of getting back to
nature.
Fresh-air sleeping has a long tradition. Alice Ravenhill, an Edwardian
authority on rearing children, ordered that bedroom windows should be always
fully open, apart from in the severest cold spells. In summer, she recommended
sleeping on the porch.
Modern hotels say they pitch their optimum room temperature for sleeping at 18
degrees. It must have been all the other ones I've stayed in that are hotter
than the Gobi desert, with the windows bolted shut.
5. COMFY PILLOW Pillows now come with almost as much science as hair
conditioner. And there are versions with in-built speakers to play
sleep-inducing sounds such as a heart beat or soothing music.
This would not have impressed the Elizabethan writer, William Harrison, who
attacked the young men of the 1580s for being so soft that they used pillows to
help them sleep. In his day, real men slept on wooden logs or hairy sacks.
Allergenic or non-allergenic sack, sir?
6. KEPT IN THE DARK For a city dweller, used to a constant fog of light, it can
be a rare treat to sleep in undisturbed treacly darkness. It's becoming more
and more difficult to find. There are light polluted skies outside - and the
insides of homes are overflowing with light-emitting gadgets. Kielder in
Northumberland is claimed as having the darkest skies left in England.
7. SNEAKY CINEMA SNORING
We've all been there. It's warm, it's dark, the mobile is switched off and
you're watching a film or a play, and you feel an irresistible urge to close
your eyes. It's been a long day and your body is crying out for a delicious
moment of rest. The innovative Japanese have recognised a gap in the market and
run "sleep concerts", in which rows and rows of exhausted salarymen cheerfully
snore while the musicians play.
8. NIGHT MUSIC Who wouldn't enjoy being lulled to sleep by music? Or else the
music is so dull that staying awake becomes impossible. Interpret this either
way, but a study for the hotel chain Travelodge says that Coldplay and James
Blunt are the most sleep-inducing musicians. Guests also like "unchallenging"
reads, with the literary works of Jordan and David Beckham topping the sleep
chart.
9. DREAMING OF FOOD The Christmas sleep, after a big dinner, is a classic of
its kind. But different types of food have associations with inducing sleep.
The NHS recommends eating bananas. Since the Romans, lettuce has been a
persistent ingredient in sleep recipes. Less attractive is the use of dormouse
fat, as used by the Elizabethans. The Victorians recommended top quality
champagne as an insomnia cure. Even if you didn't get to sleep, it would still
have been a good party.
10. WEEKEND LIE-IN Going home on Friday, the weekend stretches out alluringly.
The first pleasure is the morning lie-in, that extra hour or so when everything
seems possible. You lie there planning that great novel, dipping in and out of
sleep. Nathaniel Hawthorne caught this perfectly: "You speculate on the luxury
of wearing out a whole existence in bed, like an oyster in its shell, content
with the sluggish ecstasy of inaction."
Maybe we're not bad at sleep, just out of practice.
BBC journalist Sean Coughlan has written a book on sleep and writes a blog on
the subject (see link, right).
There's a lot of evidence coming out to show sleep disturbance is often the
cause of illness rather than the side-effect of it. I see this almost every day
as a health visitor/hypnotherapist. Learning meditation/relaxation/
self-hypnosis is an extremely effective way of rebalancing the sleep pattern
and enabling us to get through periods of sleep deprivation (eg new parenthood)
without cracking up. Sue Freeman
My literary sleep contribution is Mrs. Galloway. Four pages in, and I am
sleeping. I needed to read it for one of my courses in undergraduate studies,
never managed it. These days, living in the core of the city, I sleep with
black eye covers. Otherwise, the street lights, and store lights blink or stay
on until well past sunrise. Also, office lights in the towers around my
apartment stay on all night. My final suggestion is a good long chat with a
(group of) sympathetic listener(s). Often, ideas bounce around at night, waking
the tired one; in turn this one blunders around, waking all others. So, talk
out the ideas, bounce them around among people, and then, get some sleep. This
may help the whole family. Sonia, Toronto, Canada
The best nap ever is in the back of an American Thomas-built School Bus. There
is a heavily carpeted shelf over the rear engine the size of a comfortable
bunk. A little warmth comes thru the carpet from the engine. For best results
rise before six in the summer time, drive a route for a couple of hours and
then pick up a load of kids for a field trip and drive for another hour. While
waiting for the kids, use your jacket for a blanket and a left-on-the-bus
jacket folded for a pillow, pull your cap down over your eyes and kip for an
hour until it's time for lunch - and people wonder why I think driving a school
bus is the best retirement job in the world. Sandy Almond, Knoxville, Tennessee
USA
For the average worker to fit in the length of the working week and the hours
every day spent commuting, and still manage to squeeze in time for family,
household odds and ends, shopping for essentials and if lucky a few minutes
during which the said harassed worker can do nothing but relax, it will be
necessary to lengthen the day to 36 hours. A working committee is drafting the
final version of the report, outlining the details of the scheme, and tenders
have been invited for the manufacture of the new clocks and design of the new
calendar. John Lally, Reading
We like the idea of falling asleep to music. We don't think James Blunt is
suitable. We recommend jazz instead. Miss Snow's Year 7 tutees, Letchworth
I had the best nap ever while on call in Iraq. I had a stunningly vivid dream
that I was napping in the armchair at home, just after Christmas dinner. I
could even smell the turkey. Waking up to the truth was horrific, still stuck
in a small stinking room with seven other blokes, still in my kit. Richard,
Kent
I have always found church on Sunday mornings provokes the most pleasant
slumbers one could hope for. Maybe it's the soporific tones of my particular
vicar, who could make the sermon on the mount sound like an extract from the
local telephone directory or it's the atmosphere of peace and tranquillity with
angelic voices and a lovely big organ going on in the background - whatever it
is, I just can't get enough of it Enid Buttfield, Surrey