About Sleep and Dreams

 About Sleep and Dreams

I have taken sleep as a bit a routine and I did not write anything scientific or substantial. If you read the contents below it was always (with a bit of slant and satire attached)    not to the point but somewhat bizarre in attitude.

Simply because sleep was not a problem for me.

I can sleep standing in a bus plying to Colombo but awake quickly enough to grab a hand of a pickpocket. Equally, I can keep up awake with only coffee and tea in between for 48 hours.

I took a challenge and I won.

I kept up 48 hours without sleeping with the challengers watching me. Funnily enough, my watchers, could not keep up with me and they went into snooze mode while observing me. Then of course, I go into sleep mode immediately after and  I won’t wake up until I had recovered fully. The bottom line is nobody tries to wake me up (that includes my mother) while I am in sleep mode.

I dip into deep sleep without an intervention. Nutty things to do when one is young but I won’t recommend the above to any living soul. I can switch my wake and sleep cycle almost at will and I believed that others have the same ability.

I am proved wrong.

Let me expand.

1. I have never given a sleeping tablet to a patient for dropping to sleep except pre-medication for major surgery.

2. I am very liberal on pain relief (if one is not a drug addict). The practice of medicine relies solely on taking grief and pain factor away from patients.

3. Sleeping tablets are lethal and one gets addicted after 48 hours. The sleep one gets with these tablets is not normal and they upset the diurnal rhythm up to two weeks. It is the melatonin that keep our sleep cycle going on daily basis

4. One needs minimum of 4 hours of deep sleep.

Buddha was an example who slept only 4 hours and if not occupied, he was in meditative bliss and wide awake.

5. An average adult (children needs more sleep) needs about 8 hours of sleep, not necessarily continuous (one go).  

One can have it in two slots which is much better, if one can afford it.

6. The bottom line is how to get the most needed 4 hours of deep sleep.

The most important memory record of newly learnt material is laid down (where I do not know) in deep sleep.

7. Many does not have the ability to roll into this mode, simply because of the inhibitions that precedes the rest or the night cap.

8. Even if one is in bed for 10 hours and not got the required 4 hours of deep sleep, he/she feels sleepy during waking hours, the next day.

How to avoid it?

9. Few guide lines but none might work at the beginning but with perseverance one can achieve the target of 4 hours of deep sleep unless one’s physiology is deranged or has chronic painful illness. 

This advice is for one who has no other disability including major depressive illness or manic depression.

10. One should retire to bed only when the days work is finished and not before. 

Similarly, one should have a mental sketch of what has to be done the next day (not the next week).

11. Humans work on 24 to 28 hour cycles (unfortunately little longer than the earth cycle) not less.

This is why finishing the days major chores is of paramount importance. 

Do not leave the work for the weekends.

In other words “Moment Meditation” (my coining) in practice. 

Do the things as they ought to be, at the right time.

No procrastination.

The principle here is one should not detail more work than one can accomplish in day time hours.

Nothing pending at bed time.

If you practice this dropping to sleep is spontaneous.

More than likely you get to the deep sleep mode quickly. It is the mental anxiety that keeps you awake the first few moments in bed.

12. When you wake up (unless you are retired and nothing else to do (next morning) in the morning do not deliberate and stay in bed for few more minutes. 

Your sleep is already interrupted by normal biological rhythm or the alarm. 

You cannot go back to good sleep again.

Wake up and if you are bit early tidy up the morning work.

13. Mind you when you do not have a good sleep the first casualty is YOUR MEMORY.

You forget things.

14. Let me now dispense the factors that hinder your sleep.

Number one is excess of coffee.

No coffee at bedtime.

It is an addiction.

Number two is tea.

Both items impair your sleep and more importantly dropping to sleep is delayed. 

Others includes heavy rice meal or alcohol. 

Both items cause mid night hyopglycaemia and interrupt your sleep when deep sleep is about to commence.    

In our set up rice and alcohol are culprits of breaking the sleep pattern. 

Not only that both items cause regurgitation of stomach contents while flat on bed. They cause acid irritation, since starch and alcohol cannot neutralize acid secretions.

Light beefy (not necessarily beef but soya meat, egg omelette would do) meal and milk are the antidotes not tea or coffee. 

If tea is desired add lot of MILK.

Adding milk has no effect on coffee.

So take the mental and physical hindrances to your sleep as sleep deprivers or cardinal sins.

15. I have not talked about the bed, the room, the temperature, humidity and lightnings (they are individual variables) BUT your cellphone is the nasty invention of modern times.

Switch it off FIRST, before any preparation (for sleep).

I do not have one. I am fully retired.

16. Watching TV (passive attention) late at night (unless the next morning is an off day or holiday) is another reason for interrupted sleep and bizarre dreams. Unlike natural vision digital flashes of memory of TV irritate your brain. 

What one need is brain getting ready to relax and then sleep mode eventually.

It is not good for your health.

17. Computer (not cellphone) with a keyboard (you can hit the keys as they were made of steel) is a good anxiety reliever before bedtime. My routine is to look at the emails and deleting the junk. That routine start always after mid night.

Looking at your email is the most boring activity. 

So boring YOU feel like dropping to sleep on your keyboard.

The advantage is that you save lot of TIME, the next morning. Nobody expects (only paranoid person would take emails seriously NOW) YOU to answer emails as they come.

You must be liberal with DELETE action.

It should be like “the knee jerk reaction”.

This is why I prefer blogging (hate Facebook and social media) to social media.

Who cares if you had million hits?

Is it like an orgasm?

I doubt it has any impact.

18. Dreams are vital ingredients of your sleep and I will enlarge upon them with my own dreams.

Or you read my books on Dreams available at Amazon’s.

My recommendation of Sleep and Dream habits for Married Couples. 

This applies only to married couples. The young lovers should do whatever dreaming they do at lib and they should not read this article which is very obnoxious when infatuated.

I’ll try to be as brief as possible since married people have no time for heavy reading but reflex action only.

My advice to a young couple on sleep and never on dreams (since they are in a dream world which is going to end soon after the honeymoon) in good old days was one should match a couple with synchronized sleep.

Night sleeper who gets up early, late or indifferent.

Day time napper or of 8 hour 10 or 6 hour sleeper.

Idea was when two of them sleep which is synchronized, they get up together and the home and office work is synchronized. 

The advantage is only to the employer and not to the married couple any way. 

That is my new finding not disclosed.

My old advice do not stand to reality of married life.

One should have two erratic sleepers so that when one dreams other one is up and doing home or office chores.

Married life is 24/7 schedule and never 9 to 5.

One has to be working while the other is having a nap unlike in office life where everybody has to work whether enough work is there or not. 

My recent but not published or disclosed data suggest the only time married people have a respite is in their real dream world.

So enjoy them even they are bitter to the opposite sex.

After all they are dreams.

Have you ever seen a couple who relate their dreams when woken up to the opposite spouse.

In my experience never.

The reality is that the dream is heavily edited to satisfy the opposite spouse. Usually all the dreams are if not majority are obnoxious ones which even in reality extend from blue murder or downright slanderous. 

If they truly relate these dreams the marriage won’t last even three months. Most of the breakup are due to recurrent incidences of these obnoxious dreams.

One should never go to hypnotherapist for help and they (are the worse) will record them and use them to blackmail when his/her income is dwindling or volunteer to supply the information secretly to the defense lawyer of the other side for inappropriate black income.

This specially happens in Ceylon.

If these dreams recur it is alright to go to a divorce lawyer but never to a hypnotherapist.

Who knows one may take undue advantage.

One has to bear them, bite the teeth and boldly take them in, one go at a time, like a true and mature married man or woman. One should not give this information to doctors since they will give you a sleeping pill and inadvertently stop the only entertainment one has at his/her leisure time activity.

That is simply disaster.

If you want to prolong and succeed in marriage one has to edit every dream to suit the partner and occasionally relate them saying. I had a lovely dream about You KNOW with all the blah blah.

This has worked for me and I do not know about my wife. 

All bad dreams are censored by default. 

Now I write about dreams, nobody trust my dreams except Maha Brahma who never dreams in real life.

 His hobby is to listen to my ones and interpret them with wisdom. If you have any bad dream about your spouse (not your secret lover) please post them under comments.

I may consider sending them to Maha’s perusal and interpretation. 

I assure you he never keeps any record of them since I am the virtual registrar.