12) "Early to Bed & Early to Rise" Makes you What?!

By Sindy Wakeham

Have you had enough? Sleep, that is. Yes? But was it GREAT sleep? Why's it so important?

Yet again, it’s back to first things first. This is my opinion, not backed up by any qualification of my own but of experience and others’ qualifications. Think about those old quotes, sayings and memes, whatever you want to call them. I love being inspired by scripture too.

One of my favourite sayings or quotes is “Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man (person) healthy, and wealthy and wise”. This one needs a deep dive of its own that I’ll be covering in a later book. First, a version and the root of it came from Aristotle in his Economics.

“Rising before daylight is also to be commended; it is a healthy habit, and gives more time for the management of the household as well as for liberal studies”. (Aristotle in his Economics on running an estate...or even a Homestead)

Since Aristotle, the saying “Early to bed and early to rise...” was mentioned in a book of English and Latin proverbs written in 1639 by John Clarke but it has also been attributed to Benjamin Franklin.

I found the idea in the Bible in Proverbs. Aristotle was born in 384 BC but the book of Proverbs spans between 970 and 697 BC. So the idea predates even Aristotle. The scripture reads, “Love not sleep, lest thou come to poverty” (Proverbs 20:13).

There's another, "The sleep of a labouring man is sweet, whether he eat little or much: but the abundance of the rich will not suffer him to sleep." (Ecclesiastes 5:12)

How is sleep connected to health, wealth and wisdom?

To me it’s holistic principles, which by now you know I’m all about. I remember a documentary here in the UK many years ago into the science of sleep. I couldn’t find the program for you but there is another one on BBC called The Truth About Sleep.

All I could find was the ‘short’ clip from that programme which isn’t available at the moment. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p051yc7s

So I’m afraid that I couldn’t even tell you what’s in it except that based on that clip, I now know I am sleep deprived.

I also found a website (which also has it's own YouTube channel), The Sleep Foundation. One sentence from their page... “It is believed that deep sleep plays an important role in recuperation of the body as well as effective thinking and memory.”

Sleep science is huge and I am NOT a sleep scientist! Look, I wake up any time between 2am and 4am. I try to be up no later than 3:30 in order to work in quiet when all in the house are asleep and there is no traffic outside.

Then by 4pm, if I sit down to rest on the couch, I’m constantly drifting off into micro-sleeps and jolting myself awake but I stay up until 8:30/9pm most nights or I’ll be awake by 2am. That's no good! I would love a minimum of 6 hours uninterrupted deep sleep and wake up refreshed. 

Menopause makes that a little tricky but if I tackle the other aspects of sleep hygiene, in other words, lifestyle, sleep should become more of what I’m dreaming of. No pun intended.

Briefly, sleep hygiene includes the times you go to sleep and naturally wake (without an alarm), surroundings (décor, materials, bedding, clothing, ventilation, age and type of bed and mattress), diet and activity lifestyle, hormones, mental health and physical health, let’s just say everything is connected.

That still doesn’t answer the question. What does it have to do with health, wealth and wisdom?

Because it's all is holistic and one aspect affects the other, all of the above have an effect on how we function daily.

When last have you awoken feeling so refreshed, energised and ready to face the day alert, sharp as a pin and feeling like The Boss?

I know exactly how that feels because only once have I experienced that as far as I can remember. I’m sure as a child sleep would have been that good because children generally do seem to wake with crazy energy after just a 10 minute sleep!!!

On this occasion, I was exhausted in the middle of the day and felt my body crash. I had to lie down. I fell asleep so deeply and woke up just 20 minutes later completely refreshed and energised as if I had a full night’s sleep. I’ve not had an experience like it since.

Everything I did after that nap was so much better and I managed to do more than in the preceding week.  I so require that kind of sleep again.

Have you ever done one of those reaction tests to check your co-ordination and reaction speed? There will be a very big difference between results before and after good sleep.

From reading, watching myriad articles, programs and experiencing different types of sleep issues I don’t want to say imagine, because it’s more than that.

Some (my) logic says that if sleep affects alertness, energy, recovery, immune system, cognitive ability, physical health, and even intelligence to a degree, then insufficient or interrupted sleep will leave you feeling horrible, tired, grumpy and negative and that will in turn affect how you tackle the day, productivity and physical health choices will match.

On the other hand the opposite. If you have that great sleep, you wake as I said energised, refreshed, renewed and your whole day will be one of productivity, better health choices, sharp awareness, ability to cope with situations and be  more positive.

I’m not saying you will be putting a fresh coat of rose tint on your perspective glasses, never seeing the bad. I’m saying you will be better equipped to deal with whatever the day throws at you or life brings to you.

It goes back to the abundant mindset opposites I’ve discussed a previous blog.

It also depends on your perception of what health, wealth and wisdom looks like to you.

You could be poor in money but the wealthiest person in everything else or rich in cash or resources can be poor in the most important aspects of life...love, connection with people and nature, time. How long the list is depends on how much time you give to counting your blessings...or maybe how much sleep you’ve had.

Maybe health is being fit enough to run a marathon. Maybe it’s not catching colds all the time. Maybe health is not waking up and enduring a day of pain. Might just being able to move, breathe, smell the perfumes of flowers, taste your food, hear the laughter of children and feel the textures of your dog’s fur or see the beauties of nature be health to you?

Wealth, as mentioned before could be more than money and materials.

Wisdom is another one. Remember those sayings? "Wisdom comes with age". Well I’ve heard and seen older folk who really ought to have known better and had more wisdom than they have at times displayed.

I have equally met young people in their teens or early adulthoods who have demonstrated wisdom beyond their years, their wisdom being indicative of experiences as the price for such wisdom.

How about the half verse quoted when little children say profound things, that sound like they come with centuries of wisdom, “out of the mouths of babes” (which incidentally has  nothing to do with wisdom)?

Clearly, wisdom isn’t restricted to experience of age but experience itself and I suggest a good night’s sleep to help sharpen those grey cells! Again, check out how that specifically happens on The Sleep Foundation’s website.

Before I leave you to ponder just how sleep deprived you may be, here’s another thought. What about too MUCH sleep? Have you ever had to deal with a child (or adult) who has had a full night’s deep sleep and wakes up grumpy, moody and lethargic?

That could have something to do with all the connecting contributing factors mentioned near the beginning just as much as it contributes to too little sleep.

Another saying... “Too much of a good thing is just as bad as too little”. We come back to balance

What’s the right amount of sleep?

We used to believe that the best and healthiest sleep was 8 hours a night. And night is the best time to sleep if we take into consideration or our circadian rhythms of sleep hormones being stimulated to come into effect when it’s dark and wake up naturally with daylight.

Of course lifestyle again can interrupt the natural cycles and hormones that regulate that vital element of life, sleep. The amount of time you need sleep is an individual matter but I suggest checking out the sleep hygiene routines and considerations listed in The Sleep Foundation and the NHS websites.

Assess your lifestyle with that information in mind and experiment. It might take some time to adjust and figure out what works best for you and in time what your natural sleep requirement is.

Conclusion

Sleep is where your body uses what it has been exposed to or taken in during the day to heal, recover, reset, recharge and grow, or not.

So how about we rethink our lifestyles, which in today’s world are so far from natural ones.   Let’s go on a journey of self-discovery that can literally change our lives if we change our sleep hygiene routines and other connecting factors.

That’s where we go from here.

See you in the next episode, chapter and article.

Sleep tight my lovelies.