Photo from open sources
It would seem that we should already know everything about sleep. And we do not know almost nothing! We sleep almost half of our lives and still cannot get into any the main secrets of the special state of the brain, an intricate dotted line interlinked with real life.
Should I take a nap after dinner?
A normal person usually sleeps 6-8 hours a day, although at depending on the degree of fatigue and other factors, these boundaries fluctuate within 4-10 hours. According to recent studies, a man needs a good number of hours to get enough sleep: 6 or 8, and for a woman – odd: 5, 7 or 9. There are also pathological cases where people hibernate for several days or, on the contrary, they are disconnected for only a couple of tens of minutes a day.
Flipping through popular literature, you are convinced that insomnia is one of the most exhausting human torment. Perhaps the most convincing method of getting rid of this ailment (of course, not in its malicious manifestations) is considered a complex of simple rules, sanitized in the early 20th century:
• go to bed only when you want to sleep; •use the bed only for sleep and sex; • if it fails fall asleep, do not lie in bed for more than 10 minutes – the bed should associated only with rapid falling asleep; • wake up in the morning the same time – on an alarm clock; • do not sleep during the day.
Alas, these rules can only be followed by very much inveterate egoists and pedants. A number of points are confirmed by people who have lived long life is too disciplined. So, Anastasia Tsvetaeva she said that she only went to bed and never just to wallow. And Leo Tolstoy, who called “to sleep as little as possible,” quite often he liked to take a nap after dinner.
Speaking of the last point: a recent study conducted in Greece University of Athens Medical School in conjunction with Harvard University, confirmed: half-hour afternoon at least three times a week, rest-wanking reduces the risk of death from heart attack by 37 percent. Scientists have tried to establish necessary sleep duration for some professions.
So, astronauts need to sleep 2 hours during the day and 4 at night. Pilots After lunch, you should take a nap for 40 minutes. A 10-minute daytime sleep equates to a 30-minute nighttime sleep. IN in any case, after 16 hours you should not go to bed at all. And by the precepts of the ancestors, in no case should you fall asleep at sunset, as if nor drove into a slap! It was believed that it was life threatening.
Involuntarily siesta
From time immemorial, many creative personalities have preferred to work in silence of the night, not to mention today’s day, at the current level urban noises and the unceasing strumming of cell phones. In the 21st century typical insomnia spread due to social networks where people often in life shackled and lonely, find, though virtual, but still quite a lively company on Facebook or Vkontakte.
After all, climatic conditions are not the last. circumstance. With a 50-degree heat, it’s not painful to work. IN European countries, where uniform heat is observed by noon, residents prefer to retire at home in a cool, shuttered room, better with air conditioning, and nap after light lunch. Such a dream is called a siesta.
Photo from open sources
It is generally believed that the afternoon breakdown is natural occurs 8 hours after morning awakening regardless of whether a person has lunch or not. It is recommended not to sleep more than 30 minutes (so as not to provoke night insomnia). But then, on a cool evening, you can sit longer in the street zucchini and skip a glass of another good wine, watching along with everyone for broadcasting a football match on the big screen. A typical picture even for the smallest summer towns Of Spain!
Siesta, according to scientists, improves blood circulation, relieves stress, prevents hypertension, increases working capacity and allows you to stay awake until late in the evening. Suffice it to say that the adherents of this habit were smart girls like Winston Churchill and Albert Einstein (they “got infected” her in Cuba). As a result, their performance has simply become phenomenal.
Today, even office workers are not forbidden for 15-20 minutes relax and pokemarit at the computer in two or three hours.
At night on a visit
And recently, a sensational article appeared in the foreign press that our ancestors did not sleep at all like us, but twice for night! A continuous eight-hour sleep in the dark is a habit last centuries.
The discovery belongs to Roger Ekirch, professor of history Polytechnic University of Virginia. Having studied a large number fiction, records, court documents and personal papers, he concluded that people in Europe over night would undoubtedly slept twice, and this custom was widespread and mundane – nowhere is he emphasized as something strange. His theory Ekirch outlined in the book “At the end of the day: the night in the past.”
So, apparently, in the XVIII century (before the era of electricity) people slept like this: at about half past eight in the evening we went to the side. At about half past three in the night they woke up and stayed awake for two or three hours, and then rested again until the morning. In the night gap full consciousness, someone prayed, someone read (by candlelight), and someone with God’s blessing made love. It was considered quite decent to visit the neighbors, naturally, having previously dressed.
Photo from open sources
How else to explain what the doctor ordered the patient to do and Thinking “time between first and second sleep”? And why in “Canterbury Tales” by Jeffrey Chaucer (XIV Century) Heroine goes to sleep after the “first sleep”? ..
There were whole religious rituals, special prayers, designed to fill this quiet island of wakefulness.
The lamp that turned life
With the rapid development of civilization, the “double” dream began to go away. Did that ancient grandmothers, according to an old-time habit, were kolobrodil their family estates with a candle in their hands, scaring those who arrived to death visit grandchildren!
Ekirc believes that the reorientation of double sleep to a full night occurred with the advent of street, and soon home lighting. The writer Craig Kozlowski in the book “Evening Empire” develops the idea: with the advent of lanterns, the late dark time (we call it early at night) dramatically reduced the activity of criminal elements.
It stimulated the active life of society and became suitable for work. Two dreams that lost this early night’s clock turned out to be too much luxury for mankind. Gradually in cities began to appear cafes, where this time passed after work in a very pleasant way with friends.
Russian peasant and French princess
In Russia, of course, everything was a little different. Work day the peasant in the summer was 14-15 hours a day. Happy White Slaves (in the words of A. Herzen), of course, arranged a break for sleep. Not laziness, and in compensation for too short a night’s sleep. In winter work did not exceed two hours a day for men and 4-5 for women; and at this time of year they slept 2-3 hours longer than in summer. IN on average, for a year on weekdays, a peasant’s sleep did not exceed 7.5 hours per day.
The aristocracy had everything turned upside down. Of pre-revolutionary France came the fashion to wake up at sunset, and go to bed at dawn. Like the French women, our ladies have become consider that “the sun is for the mob”!
So, the beautiful Princess Avdotya Golitsyna (Princesse Nocturne), in which Pushkin and Vyazemsky were in love with, never fundamentally appeared in daylight! In her mansion on Millionnaya she gathered intellectual liberals exclusively at night.
And they had such an opportunity! The military went to the service six in the morning, civilians at eight. By two in the afternoon they were already at home, and having a decent rest, went to private evenings by seven, usually ending in two nights. Or to three, if after the ball dinner followed …
“The right to get up as late as possible was a kind of sign aristocracy, separating a non-serving nobleman not only from the common people or brothers, pulling the front strap, but also from village landowner, “writes Yuri Lotman.
The insidious Grandison wakes you up
An interesting experiment has been conducted these days: 15 men in for a month existed in conditions of limited hours of light of the day. Asleep (what everyone dreams of), the experimental wake up in the middle of the night, that is, they recovered two dreams! IN for 12 hours they almost all slept 4-5 hours, then a couple of hours were awake, then fell asleep again. The total dream was no more than eight o’clock.
Photo from open sources
But besides the manifest relic double sleep, scientists still more interested in the state of the subjects in the interval between two outages. Everyone noted that he was unusually calm and that the state was reminiscent of meditation.
Oxford Professor of Neurobiology Russell Foster believes that, in spite of all our deep-rooted prejudices and habits, Awakening in the middle of the night should not cause panic. “It means that a person is just experiencing a relapse of a bimodal sleep model, inherited from the ancestors, “he explains.
It’s clear that in our time, sleeping twice a night somehow uncomfortable, it does not give any advantages, besides it can seriously scare the home. We are so used to our “grave” 8-hour sleep in which we fall after a hard day!
And it is unlikely that humanity will agree to return to the “rational” schedule: early rise, early retirement. However douglas Rushkoff in The Shock of the Present: When Everything Happens Right Now writes: “Yes, we are experiencing a chronobiological crisis with depression, suicides, cancers, poor performance and social discomfort. And all this because we break and knock down rhythms that support us and are in sync with nature and between themselves”.
“But I’m not sure I’ll start sleeping twice a night!” – Rashkoff continues. In his opinion, modern man does not have another way, how to accept a new sensation, a new course of time and match him.
And yet, Russian scientists say: recently nocturnal people’s awakenings have become more frequent. Many experts directly they say: to feel good you need to sleep three times a day: two times at night and once during the day.
So if, falling asleep at nine to ten in the evening, at three nights you suddenly woke up and, as they say, in no eye you need to panic, rush about in bed and drink valocordin. Probably Your great-great-great-great-great-grandmother, who’s two centuries back at that moment reveling in “The Story of the Grandalon Cavalier” or imagined herself in the place of “Darling” Bogdanovich.
Andrey Arder
Time Life Russia Sun
