Dwindling Sleep

For many centuries, there have been inquiry and interest about dreams and sleep. Some believed, like pious Christian monks, that pagan powers invaded their dreams. If they banished sleep, that process would somehow protect their souls from temptation. In Revelation, it was stated “there shall be no night there.” Found in the Bible was Lilith the night monster “roaming with her retinue in the darkest hours of night.” The Greeks had their NYX, which was the night Goddess. They believed that the night allows the invisible world to appear in man. This is a world in which we find spirits, fatalistic foreboding, faultfinding, punishers and avengers, angry persecutors, miserable, distressed and lustful longings. Today, our thinking acknowledges that small children sleeping through the night can wet their beds. Parents are not too happy about bed wetter’s, but maybe, just maybe the child sleeps to protect his sleep from waking in the night, with its fearful intruders. However, for older folks, have prostate issues, with the frequent urge to urinate. They also have a disruption of circadian rhythms that interfere with sleep. The aging to not have sleep protection because of their interrupted sleep patterns. As a consequence of lost sleep, they purchase earplugs, temperature control devices, melatonin supplements and warm their milk. These are a few of the old school sleep protectors or remedies. Because of this significant sleep disorder issue, we have research centers on both coasts. We have MIT on the East Coast and the University of California, Berkeley on the West Coast, offering their latest insights into this complex problem. This problem-disorder is associated with the Army and its concern for impaired fighting man performance; Jeff Bezos too is worried about worker performance and the fear that it will lower Amazon stock; weakened immune systems; impaired learning and depression; diabetes; cancer, and early death are concerns. In a more recent research study with Danish and Japanese males, these researchers found that older males are retaining too much salt and water during the night. In fact, they were excreting more sodium at night and as a result voided more frequently. To be continued