Tag: sleep

Fatigue: the problem most people don’t understand

If you’ve never experienced extreme fatigue, then it’s difficult to appreciate. It’s all too easy to say that someone is “lazy” if they complain of no energy or go for a lie down at two in the afternoon. For a long time, many doctors haven’t understood it. For people who are constantly exhausted, us doctors would scrawled ‘TATT’ in the medical notes when someone said they were ‘tired all the time’. They are letters I had often scribbled, but until I felt real fatigue after brain tumour surgery nine years ago, I didn’t truly understand it. Read more

Science shows that schools should start later, so why hasn’t the penny dropped?

Alarm Clock (Public Domain image)The sun is shining, the birds are singing and it’s the start of a brand new day. Like many people, I love the mornings and consider myself an ‘early bird’ (after the first coffee, that is). It wasn’t always that way, however. During my teenage years, getting out of bed before 9 am was so difficult that the bed clothes might just as well have been made out of lead. Such slothful adolescent behaviour is common and the cause of endless parental exasperation. Youngsters may not be just being lazy, however, as something strange is happening in their brain. From around the age of 14, the childhood brain rapidly rewires as it matures and develops an adult mind. Throughout this turbulent time of mood swings and emotional angst the teenage body clock also steps back two time zones. Read more

Most people think dreams predict the future. Do you?

Falling SkywardFreud told us that dreams are the ‘royal road to the unconscious’. Many religions say that dreams are a way to hear from a higher power. But how many of us in today’s secular culture actually believe that? More than you might expect.

If you thought most people ignored their dreams – you would be wrong. Imagine that you were warned of an impending disaster – what would it take to make you do something? What if you dreamt last night that something terrible was going to happen today? As irrational as it sounds, most of us, it seems, value our night-time ruminations much more than our waking ones… Read more

Can’t sleep? Why taking the Blue Pill is Best! (Unless you’re an Italian man)

Insomnia is something all of us struggle with from time to time. Not being able to get off to sleep is perhaps one of the most frustrating and loathsome things in the world (second only to an itchy back).

Counting sheep never seems to work very well...
You can toss, turn, and even count sheep, but nothing seems to work. Sometimes your mind just refuses to switch off. Francis Scott Fitzgerald got it right when he said,

“The worst thing in the world is to try to sleep and not to.”

Do you have a solution to insomnia? My father always has a glass of milk and a biscuit (ginger nut, incidentally) before bed. I find reading a book or listening to the radio normally works or me.

Many of us resort to herbal or medical remedies. If you had to choose one, which would you go for? Did you realise though that the colour of your remedy has an effect!? Read on to find out why blue is best… Read more