Evening Republican, Volume 59, Number 98, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 May 1917 — SLEEP AND SLEEPLESSNESS. [ARTICLE]

SLEEP AND SLEEPLESSNESS.

(Written by Mrs. William E. Jacks and read at the last meeting of the Home Economics Club.) Of all the remarkable and wholly adjusted elements and agencies that go to the making up of the human machine, and that contribute to its maintenance in working order, nqne is so essential as sleep. Sleep is a magic restorative. The life force that we expend during the day is renewed in us during the night. . , The fatiguing of ' sixteen hours work or play is repaired in us auringthe eight 'hours’ of recuperative slum--1)01* During the day life flows out from us at every muscular or mental effort; During the" night it flows in with every sleeping inhalation. We do not live by days or years, but by the margin between what we expend of our vitality during the day and what we gain during the. night. So long as man was satisfied to spend during the day only as much energy as he could make up at night during sleep, the race was vigorous and long lived; old age began at eighty. In these strenuous, days, however, work and play are both under such heavy pressure that twice as much life flows out of us during the day as flows into us during the night and old age begins at forty.

Sleep is a sort of innocence and purification, the sure and faithful companion of life, our daily healer and consoler. Sleep is a state of tota! unconsciousness. —All cognizance of personality and action, and, for the most part, man’s sense and ideas cease to exist. Sleep is a certain physical alteration in particular pro-: longation of the cells of which the brain is largely constructed. Sleep is a phenomenon of nature m the shape of a reaction of defense to proltect the organization against fatigue. Sleep is a resting state of consciousness which is facilitated, and, if one tikes to affirm it, caused by cessation or interruption of all those stimuli that come from without and which reach the human organization principally through the special senses. The velocity of the circulation and of the respiration is dintiinished during sleep. The pulse of a sleeping individual is slow and full as compared to .that of the waking state. The temperature of the bodv is lowered during sleep. We cannot go without sleep as long as we can go without food. The amount of sleep that suffices for one individual would be in another productive of misery and a disorder of nutrition which might lead to disease. Sleep is measured by its depth as well! as by its duration, and it is as difficult to express in minutes or in hours, the requisite quality of sleep for the normal human 'being as it is to state the proper degree of depth of The deeper the sleep, the less protracted need that sleep be in order that the individual may receive physical and mental refreshment. Sleep may be indulged in to excess. Too much sleep stupifies the mind. As to time when sleep should be taken, night of course is preferable, since it is the time when the sleeper is feast likely to be disturbd, and as a proverb, the day is for labor and night is for rest. Natural sleep is tihe only kind that is really strengthening to all parts of the body. Sleep produced by artificial means weakens rather than strengthens. Sleeplessness or insomnia is not a disease, only a symptom. It may have different causes which must first be removed 'before any progress can be reasonably expected in the work of regaining sleep. One. cause may be from pain caused by different afflictions of the body, or it may be derived from mental, moral or emotional causes. Either class is a discomfort and may produce wakefulness. ■ . .

While the insomnia that springs from physical pain is easier to eradicate than that which originates from mental or emotional causes, it frequently happens that through failure to combat the ailment in its milder manifestations, what was at first but a physical reflex becomes mental all So. It is when the body is driven from day to day in a condition half way (between sickness and health that the foundition is laid for one of the most persistent forms of insomnia. The law of sleep is the law of life. Failure to observe it (through letting business cares offset it) must inevitably result in bankruptcy.

Anyone who by trivial means casts aside his intention and desire to sleep will find osoner or later that he has set aside to some degree his desire and intentions to live. Often an individual will carry his business o<r pleasures to bed with them and the result will inevitably be insomnia. The mind has been kept active from choice. v lt oniy requires so many reiterated statement of “I will sleep” in order to induce slumber, so will it only require a certain number of repetitions of “I will not sleep” in orddr to bring on wakefulness. The insomniac should be encouraged by the realization of the fact that the distribution of sleep and wakefulness is a process which goes on according to natural law, and is not subject to immediate direction of the human will. The natural law is to sleep and the will to obey this law is the natural will, of which we have the power to control to a certain or. large degree. Sleep in nature’s way is the method by which we obtain wakefulness. Nature’s method is not that of extended wakefulness but of systematized distribution of profoundly restful sleep on the one hand and systematized expenditure of efficient efforts during wakefulness on the other.* If we do not get a sufficient amount of sleep- we will gradually become weak-