“[Sleep is] the golden chain that ties health and our bodies together.” – Thomas Dekker (1572 – 1632)

You sometimes hear hard-driving individuals remark, “I’ll sleep when I’m dead!” as they burn the candle at both ends.  Regrettably, this can be prophetic, as sleep deprivation is correlated with serious medical conditions that actually do shorten life.  But how should we think about sleep if not as a waste of precious time?

William Dement, M.D., in his book The Promise of Sleep describes the benefits of adequate sleep for people of all ages from infants to the most elderly, and describes how sleep needs fluctuate according to many variables.  It is clear that Americans are not getting enough shut-eye at any age.

Today, more medications are sold for insomnia than ever before, indicating that a good share of people know they are sleep-deprived,  Dement, among others, offers strategies for reducing the nation’s sleep debt, and here I will suggest two of them:

• Just as an investor “banks” funds against the possible rainy day, so should the healthy person put aside a bit of sleep for those (hopefully rare) times when 7 or 8 hours of sleep are impossible.  To do this, deep relaxation of the body is certainly helpful, because it loosens the muscles and allows them to release the waste products of cell repair, and receive fresh supplies from the blood stream.
• Perhaps more necessary is the cognitive relaxation that signals all parts of the body to rest and recuperate.

You’ll find strategies for building the skills of physical and mental relaxation in my articles on meditation and relaxation in this website.  You may also enjoy my article on “Super Saturation” concerning the information overload we experience in America today.