Sleep Theory

At three a.m. I was awake and thought, "this is why we die."  A little morbid? Not really.

If the purpose of sleep is to recharge our bodies; if it is during sleep that we grow; if it is during sleep that our cells repair themselves, then it seems reasonable to think that it is a lack of sleep that is killing us.

Think about a rechargeable battery, say your cell phone, for example.  What do the instructions say when you get it? "Charge fully before use."  This is, in theory, to maximize the battery's life. We're also advised not to charge the phone until it is nearly dead, because putting a 2/3 charged battery on the charger reduces its ability to be recharged and shortens its lifespan.  Another example: I leave my laptop plugged in almost all the time.  So much so that it popped up and prompted me to change my settings to "battery saver."  It now no longer charges constantly when plugged in.  Instead, the laptop waits until it is at twenty or thirty percent remaining before it starts to charge.

How does that relate to us as humans?  What if we're recharged during sleep and our lack of sleep, our "half-charges" are shortening our life?  What if when we die, we die because we can't be recharged any more and we've been living off of our reserves, and when those reserves are depleted, that's it? 

The experts say that we can't fix a sleep deficit by sleeping in; that our late nights all week can't be remedied by sleeping until noon on Saturday. This is certainly true of our phones.  Once your battery's capacity is diminished it doesn't matter how long it sits on the charger at 100% charged, as soon as you pull it off the charger, it will discharge at the same rapid rate.

As we age, we typically sleep less and less. I would be curious to know how much sleep centenarians got on average over their lifetime. I wonder how long you could live if your body perfectly renewed itself every night. 

Thoughts?

Sun Up

In the summer, when the days are longer, do you ever notice that you just naturally wake as the day dawns? Sure, if its the weekend, you might turn back over and go right back to sleep, but your body, at least as I understand from science/medicine/whatever, has a natural sleep/wake cycle.

Since its now pitch dark when I wake up in the morning, I have a hard time getting up. I've decided to employ the assistance of a nifty device called the Sun Up. It's essentially a visual alarm clock. I hook it up to my bedside lamp and tell it when I want to be awake.  I also give it the interval I want to use; in other words, how quickly do I want the "sun" to rise.

The first morning I used it I kinda blinked awake and wondered what woke me up. It was a much nicer awakening than the harsh beeping of my alarm. The second morning was a similar feeling of calm and slowly coming alert. I did notice however, that I wake pretty quickly. The interval was set for thirty minutes and I was awake ten minutes into the cycle.

I think I like it. Why start my day being jolted from whatever sleep I managed to slip into only a few hours before? Especially since its pretty much gonna be dark here for the next six months.

Yippee

Time Keeps Ticking

There are simply not enough hours in the day.  For fun let’s break it down.

Assuming you can manage to function on say, seven hours of lying in your bed tossing and turning sleep, that gives you seventeen hours to get stuff done. If you have a “normal” job like I do your day probably starts rather early, especially if you have a commute. Don’t forget to take into account the amount of time it takes you to get ready in the morning and get to work.  For me, it is summer break right now and the kids are with the ex so I don’t have to get anyone up or ready for school.  This means my alarm goes off at 6 am.  I snooze it at least twice…twenty minutes, gone. Sometimes, I’ll snooze it once more and try to think of reasons to call in sick or dead or something. Responsibility and honesty always win and begrudgingly I roll out of bed and literally into my clothes.

Completely bleary-eyed I stumble to the kitchen for a cup of caffeinated something for the road. I usually only eat breakfast early when the kids are around (thus the excessive snoozing), so I grab a bowl and spoon for later and head out the door.  Fifteen minutes later I arrive at work. I’ve killed an hour of my seventeen and the death of eight hours begins. Take away an hour for lunch, since even if I run a few errands on it, it’s pretty much a lost hour. Seven left.

After work I often have to run into town to the post office, bank, grocery store, et cetera. If I’m lucky I manage to get home by 5. I now have six hours left.

Keep in mind that during the nine hours I killed at work, I was thinking about all the stuff I needed to do after work. Unload the dishes, mow the lawn, empty the cat litter, clean the guinea pig cage, pick up groceries, drop off some movies, pick up the dry cleaning, jot down that story idea, update the blog, create a budget, fold the laundry, call Mom, go to church, be a friend, go to the gym, and the list goes on and on.

Wipe out another hour for dinner and clean up and we’re down to five. Tonight I mowed the lawn and obliterated another hour. Four hours left. At this point I have to make some decisions. Do I a) take some much needed down time or b) try to get some more chores done or c) admit I’m exhausted and hit the sack early?

Tonight I needed down time. It’s been a crazy week already. Lots of stress! So I watched a movie, wrote this blog, and mentally added a bunch of new stuff to my to-do list. (Sadly, I realized while mowing the lawn that things are starting to feel fall-ish. So many outside things to be done before our summer drifts away, its dark by 5 and the rain never stops.)

Now that I really think about it, tonight’s four hours were actually really special. In two weeks those four hours are going to be filled with homework, after school activities, and meal planning. Oh…I’m exhausted already! 

My coworker said something the other day that instantly had me imagining the next evil villain.  This guy goes around stealing the world’s clocks and watches.  Somehow he figured out a way to capture time. If he owns two watches, his time doubles, three, it triples, four, well...you get the point. Doesn’t it sound like something straight out of an old Batman and Robin comic book? I wish it were true. I’d go buy several watches ASAP!

How about you? How do you manage your seven "free" hours a day?