Sleep

[The Boofon]

 

 

 

I think there must be something wrong with a man who goes to sleep before 9 or 9.30 pm. Anyone going to bed before 10 is a woose in my book but anyone going to bed as early as 7 or 8 has a serious mental illness, I would imagine.

 

I would say anyone who goes to bed after 10 is possibly closet gay and has maybe been interfered with as a child.

Given my average nod visitation hour, and assuming your hypothesis is correct, I'm in the same closet as that boof cunt and I had the whole of Pittodrie fingering and xxxxxxxxx in the 60's.

 

Edited: Too gross, even by my sick sense of humour.

What was it?

 

I was in bed before 10 yesterday which kept me straight but was in bed after 10 tonight making me slightly bent.

 

Laying off the sleeping tablets after the holiday as I slept fine without them and have the kids all to myself tonight to look after tomorrow so it'll be an. Early start tomorrow. Looking like a 7 hour sleep as the youngest is up at about 7.

 

Will be off to bed tomorrow early doors to make up for it so all boxes ticked.

 

Straight, gay and mad as a hatter.

[granite sheep]

Hud a magic dream that I was an army officer planning tank strikes against our ancient enemy, "The Hun Imperium", and then storming their fortresses..... Fuckin mental... Especially if anyone in my massive pile o bays ran awa fae the task, I shot them for cowardice..

[King Street Loon]

Since my return to offshore for the first time in over a year I've been getting a solid 7hrs a night and feel great for it.

 

It's only once in a while out here for the next few months, so I won't get too used to it.

[tup]

Hud a magic dream that I was an army officer planning tank strikes against our ancient enemy, "The Hun Imperium", and then storming their fortresses..... Fuckin mental... Especially if anyone in my massive pile o bays ran awa fae the task, I shot them for cowardice..

An Eric Joyce or Mick Philpott type character?

[Henry]

 

We often worry about lying awake in the middle of the night - but it could be good for you. A growing body of evidence from both science and history suggests that the eight-hour sleep may be unnatural.

In the early 1990s, psychiatrist Thomas Wehr conducted an experiment in which a group of people were plunged into darkness for 14 hours every day for a month.

It took some time for their sleep to regulate but by the fourth week the subjects had settled into a very distinct sleeping pattern. They slept first for four hours, then woke for one or two hours before falling into a second four-hour sleep.

Though sleep scientists were impressed by the study, among the general public the idea that we must sleep for eight consecutive hours persists.

In 2001, historian Roger Ekirch of Virginia Tech published a seminal paper, drawn from 16 years of research, revealing a wealth of historical evidence that humans used to sleep in two distinct chunks.

His book At Day's Close: Night in Times Past, published four years later, unearths more than 500 references to a segmented sleeping pattern - in diaries, court records, medical books and literature, from Homer's Odyssey to an anthropological account of modern tribes in Nigeria.

Much like the experience of Wehr's subjects, these references describe a first sleep which began about two hours after dusk, followed by waking period of one or two hours and then a second sleep.

"It's not just the number of references - it is the way they refer to it, as if it was common knowledge," Ekirch says.

During this waking period people were quite active. They often got up, went to the toilet or smoked tobacco and some even visited neighbours. Most people stayed in bed, read, wrote and often prayed. Countless prayer manuals from the late 15th Century offered special prayers for the hours in between sleeps.

And these hours weren't entirely solitary - people often chatted to bed-fellows or had sex.

A doctor's manual from 16th Century France even advised couples that the best time to conceive was not at the end of a long day's labour but "after the first sleep", when "they have more enjoyment" and "do it better".

Ekirch found that references to the first and second sleep started to disappear during the late 17th Century. This started among the urban upper classes in northern Europe and over the course of the next 200 years filtered down to the rest of Western society.

By the 1920s the idea of a first and second sleep had receded entirely from our social consciousness.

He attributes the initial shift to improvements in street lighting, domestic lighting and a surge in coffee houses - which were sometimes open all night. As the night became a place for legitimate activity and as that activity increased, the length of time people could dedicate to rest dwindled.

In his new book, Evening's Empire, historian Craig Koslofsky puts forward an account of how this happened.

"Associations with night before the 17th Century were not good," he says. The night was a place populated by people of disrepute - criminals, prostitutes and drunks.

"Even the wealthy, who could afford candlelight, had better things to spend their money on. There was no prestige or social value associated with staying up all night."

That changed in the wake of the Reformation and the counter-Reformation. Protestants and Catholics became accustomed to holding secret services at night, during periods of persecution. If earlier the night had belonged to reprobates, now respectable people became accustomed to exploiting the hours of darkness.

This trend migrated to the social sphere too, but only for those who could afford to live by candlelight. With the advent of street lighting, however, socialising at night began to filter down through the classes.

In 1667, Paris became the first city in the world to light its streets, using wax candles in glass lamps. It was followed by Lille in the same year and Amsterdam two years later, where a much more efficient oil-powered lamp was developed.

London didn't join their ranks until 1684 but by the end of the century, more than 50 of Europe's major towns and cities were lit at night.

Night became fashionable and spending hours lying in bed was considered a waste of time.

"People were becoming increasingly time-conscious and sensitive to efficiency, certainly before the 19th Century," says Roger Ekirch. "But the industrial revolution intensified that attitude by leaps and bounds."

Strong evidence of this shifting attitude is contained in a medical journal from 1829 which urged parents to force their children out of a pattern of first and second sleep.

"If no disease or accident there intervene, they will need no further repose than that obtained in their first sleep, which custom will have caused to terminate by itself just at the usual hour.

"And then, if they turn upon their ear to take a second nap, they will be taught to look upon it as an intemperance not at all redounding to their credit."

Today, most people seem to have adapted quite well to the eight-hour sleep, but Ekirch believes many sleeping problems may have roots in the human body's natural preference for segmented sleep as well as the ubiquity of artificial light.

This could be the root of a condition called sleep maintenance insomnia, where people wake during the night and have trouble getting back to sleep, he suggests.

The condition first appears in literature at the end of the 19th Century, at the same time as accounts of segmented sleep disappear.

"For most of evolution we slept a certain way," says sleep psychologist Gregg Jacobs. "Waking up during the night is part of normal human physiology."

The idea that we must sleep in a consolidated block could be damaging, he says, if it makes people who wake up at night anxious, as this anxiety can itself prohibit sleeps and is likely to seep into waking life too.

Russell Foster, a professor of circadian [body clock] neuroscience at Oxford, shares this point of view.

"Many people wake up at night and panic," he says. "I tell them that what they are experiencing is a throwback to the bi-modal sleep pattern."

But the majority of doctors still fail to acknowledge that a consolidated eight-hour sleep may be unnatural.

"Over 30% of the medical problems that doctors are faced with stem directly or indirectly from sleep. But sleep has been ignored in medical training and there are very few centres where sleep is studied," he says.

Jacobs suggests that the waking period between sleeps, when people were forced into periods of rest and relaxation, could have played an important part in the human capacity to regulate stress naturally.

In many historic accounts, Ekirch found that people used the time to meditate on their dreams.

"Today we spend less time doing those things," says Dr Jacobs. "It's not a coincidence that, in modern life, the number of people who report anxiety, stress, depression, alcoholism and drug abuse has gone up."

So the next time you wake up in the middle of the night, think of your pre-industrial ancestors and relax. Lying awake could be good for you.

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16964783

 

Last night was 10.30pm - 7.15am, but interrupted intermittently by coughing.

[Dynamo]

Midnight to 6.15. Safe to say getting up was a struggle.

[The Boofon]

8 hours last night. Knackered tonight already.

[minijc]

Probably not had a proper nights sleep in the best part of 2 years, always wake up through the night or take ages to fall asleep it's a pain.

[minijc]

If you have trouble sleeping loon, then your brain doesn't work properly. Work on your thinking.

My problem is that i think too much, that's what usually keeps me up and upsets my sleep, that and pishing, I pish a lot through the night.

[Cowie]

Just about to get the red eye back from the US... I want sleep, but the 15yr old glenlivet is too tempting.

[The Boofon]

Just about to get the red eye back from the US... I want sleep, but the 15yr old glenlivet is too tempting.

 

The red eye. Give yourself a fucking shake. Cringeworthy language.

[StandFree1982]

I sleep around 7 hours if i am lucky. It takes me ages to fall asleep, up to an hour and unless i have been drinking, in which case i am out in seconds, it takes well over 20-30 mins to sleep.

[StandFree1982]

On Sunday I had a mental illness.

 

The rest of the time I was fiddled with as a child.

 

What if I go to my bed at 5pm due to alcohol intake? What is the category for this?

Alcoholic i would imagine.

[Cowie]

 

Just about to get the red eye back from the US... I want sleep, but the 15yr old glenlivet is too tempting.

The red eye. Give yourself a fucking shake. Cringeworthy language.

Ok. Does the 'lets get fucking blazing plane' sound better? Have to work Wednesday so gonna feel pish.

[Sonoftherock]

Probably not had a proper nights sleep in the best part of 2 years, always wake up through the night or take ages to fall asleep it's a pain.

 

Because it's so hot over here and I don't have any air-con in my house, I always end up drinking gallons of water before I go to my bed. I wake up every night at around 3 am, with my bladder on the verge of explosion. Can usually get back to sleep almost instantly after emptying though...

 

In terms of sleeping, I have opposite problem to a lot of people. Most of the time it's a struggle to keep my eyes open!

[zander]

Only around 7 hours last night.

[Old Wing Stand]

 

Only around 7 hours last night.

5 hours for me more than enough !

[Henry]

 

Margaret Thatcher is famously said to have slept for four hours a night. How easy is it to do a high-powered job on this amount of sleep?

Part of Margaret Thatcher's fearsome reputation came from how little she slept. She could get by on four hours a night, it has often been said.

Indefatigability became part of her mystique. She would keep her officials up working on a speech until two or three in the morning and then be up by five in time to listen to Farming Today.

"She slept four hours a night on weekdays," says Sir Bernard Ingham, her Downing Street press secretary. "I wasn't with her at weekends, I guess she got a bit more then."

It isn't easy to ascertain when Lady Thatcher first referred to her minimal sleep schedule, But the figure of four hours has passed into lore.

Ordinary people refer to it as a benchmark of endurance, often jokingly comparing someone who needs much more.

Close friend and former Conservative Party treasurer Lord McAlpine stayed with her at Chequers during the holidays. "She worked right through Christmas. When everyone else went off to bed she went off to work."

Her biographer John Campbell, author of The Iron Lady, says her late-to-bed, early-to-rise routine made her the "best informed person in the room". Occasionally husband Denis would snap. "Woman - bed!" he is reputed to have shouted on one occasion.

Her frugal sleep pattern created a problem for her successor John Major. "He found it difficult coming after her because the civil service had got used to a prime minister who never slept and he used to sleep eight hours a night," Campbell says.

Sleep comes to be seen as part of a leader's character. When Napoleon Bonaparte was asked how many hours sleep people need, he is said to have replied: "Six for a man, seven for a woman, eight for a fool."

For the Iron Lady four hours was a badge of almost superhuman strength. It fits the narrative of the "warrior" prime minister as set out by the Times' Matthew Parris this week. "She understood that this was war when others didn't. And in war you need a warrior," he writes.

Churchill survived on four hours a night during the war. But what is less often noted is that he had regular afternoon naps in his pyjamas. Lady Thatcher was not one for these afternoon sleeps. "No, she wasn't a napper," Ingham says.

But is the four-hour measure something ordinary people should aspire to?

In the world of business it's certainly something people strive for. High profile chief executives from Marissa Mayer at Yahoo to Pepsi's Indra Nooyi get by on four hours a night, while Donald Trump claims to survive on three.

Geraint Anderson, author of City Boy, who worked as an analyst and stockbroker for 12 years, recognises the phenomenon.

"There was a real macho competition in the City about sleep. One of the ways of getting respect was bragging about how little you got."

The hours were long - from 6.30 in the morning to seven at night. Socialising might mean staying out till three in the morning. And this was just the analysts. The corporate financiers were the real hard workers.

"They'd work into the early hours, get a couple of hours kip at the office and start again."

To admit needing sleep was a sign of weakness: "After the Christmas or summer party you'd make sure you stayed the latest and came in a little earlier than normal the next morning."

Margaret Thatcher wasn't the cause but her name was regularly invoked by his bosses. "They'd say she can get by on four hours to run the country. And she's an old lady."

As well as business, there have been military leaders who eschewed the eight hours and opted for the Spartan Thatcher credo. General David Petraeus ate one meal a day and slept only four hours a night, it was reported.

There's no correct amount of sleep, says Prof Kevin Morgan at Loughborough University's sleep research centre. The only rule is to sleep long enough to feel refreshed when you wake up.

You can't just suddenly become someone who sleeps this little, he argues. It's likely to have been a pattern common to her life before becoming prime minister.

It is a big advantage for visionary or creative people to be part of this so-called sleep elite. And for a statesman attending all night summits it might be a huge advantage.

"The people around you are flagging. When people get tired the quality of their decision-making is compromised."

Prof James Horne, also at Loughborough's sleep research centre, says that mood is critical. Soldiers high on adrenaline can function on little sleep: "It all depends if one gets a buzz out of what one's doing. If you're despondent you tend to sleep more, if you're excited you need less. Margaret Thatcher was someone who felt on top of things."

The average adult sleeps seven hours a night but many sleep considerably less than this, especially people over 50. So it's possible Thatcher fell within the range of normality rather than the 1%, Horne argues.

She may have sometimes slept four hours and made up for her deficit by sleeping a little longer on other nights; "You tend to attribute great things to great people, that they need no sleep or no food and have superhuman qualities."

Parris, who was a fellow Conservative MP of Thatcher's during the 1970s and 1980s, says it was probably more like four to five hours rather than the three to four that some have suggested. It took its toll and may have led to poor decisions, he believes.

Despite her toughness, she was often tired out, he remembers. "When we were jammed into the lobby I would be looking at her from six inches away. I would often see the eyes of an exhausted woman."

Recently there's been a move away from ostentatious sleeplessness. Burning the midnight oil in Gordon Brown's case was perceived as evidence of obsessive worrying and weakness.

The work-life balance has arrived, even in No 10. Blair slept longer than Thatcher and Brown but made an exception to get up at night for baby Leo. George W Bush was in bed by 10 unlike his predecessor Clinton who worked late and got by on four or five hours.

For artists sleep deprivation carries a whiff of creative drive and raucous hedonism. Keith Richards once stayed awake for nine days - when he fell asleep he fell down so quickly that he broke his nose.

He makes a worse advert than Lady Thatcher.

[Huntlysheep]

A this shite aboot Muggie Thatcher's pitting me to sleep she's deed end of.

[tup]

How long does it take to get into the kind of deep sleep required for 40 winks?

 

Hours, that's how long.

 

I had 9.5 hours last night, I hurt my back performing a classic overhead kick on hard ground so I was goosed, slept like a lord.

 

[daytripping]

I could go a sleep, am shattered today, will be aiming for 8 hours solid tonight.

[Huntlysheep]

I could go a sleep, am shattered today, will be aiming for 8 hours solid tonight.

Nothing like a nice 8 hoors.

[jassb]

Last night fell asleep on the settee about 9.30 for an hour. Then went to bed and got up about 7.30. 10 hours on a week night. Magic. Been knackered all day today.

[zander]

Hate being on dayshift the noise of an alarm is the most annoying sound in the world. Away to catch some sleep just now so should be an 8 hour sleep for me.

[The Boofon]

I read in the dark. Books. Proper books. Not Kindle or any of that other electronic bollocks. I also eat a lot of carrots which doesn't help me read in the dark but folk seem to think it does.

 

Off to my bed now. Hoping for about a 9am wake up.

[Ke1t]

I just listen to audio books on my mp3 player. Fall asleep with the thing playing in my lugs usually within a half an hour. No need for lights, just the soothing tones of someone reading you a bedtime story.

 

At some point I'll wake up and turn it off, then immediately back to sleep.

 

Of course a half bottle of Jack Daniels has a much faster soporific effect, but the downside of that is mornings can be a bit of a cunt... best leave the JD for Friday and Saturday nights.

[Dynamo]

A solid 8 hours last night. Woke up at 6.15 feeling fresh as a daisy.

[tup]

I am sleeping like a man possessed at the moment.

 

I went to bed last night at 10:10, out straight away, and got up at 7.15am.

 

I never moved from the same position I fell asleep in, which means I am getting the best sleep imaginable.

 

If you can imagine sleeping that is, which is difficult.

 

I feel great today, as usual.

[Henry]

You said you were feeling ropey the other day FFS

[The Boofon]

You said you were feeling ropey the other day FFS

That's his mate Willie who works at the net menders in Wick harbour and not health related.