Can’t Sleep? A Guide to the Land of Nod, Part I

So, you can’t sleep and, instead of tossing around some more in bed, you got up to do some surfing on the web. You found this site and clicked, hoping for some help, eager for a few zzz’s. Well, I might be able to help you by introducing you, one at a time, to a few established principles about sleeping and sleep hygiene. If I don’t help you sleep, then maybe I can help you feel better about not sleeping and use the time you now have awake, productively.

Principle #1

You may not need to sleep eight hours a night to be able to function.

The eight hours business that you hear everywhere  is just an average, skewed by the double digit slumbers of teenagers. You remember how you slept when you were a teenager, sacked out, dead to the world until noon? Well, if you’re not a teenager, that’s not normal and you don’t need to sleep that way now to feel rested and rejuvenated. Basically, the older people get, the less sleep they need and that need varies with activity and stress level. So, if you can’t sleep, perhaps it’s because right now you just don’t need to sleep, you just want to.

You’ll never believe the number of people who toss and turn all night, trying mightily to get to sleep when they don’t really need to just because they heard that they eight hours are required. It’s better to know your own body and sleep or not sleep according to its dictates rather than trying to conform to some average.