HARMFUL AFTER-DINNER NAP.

Clutha Leader, Volume XXXIX, Issue 51, 7 February 1913, Page 2

HARMFUL AFTER-DINNER NAP.

There is a vory common notion Hint a good sleep after a substantial meal is mi admirable means of securing sound digestion. How it came into being (says a West Knd physician) I cannot imagine, for in ;i long practice I have never met anyone who found the practice refreshing. Regt after dinner is certainty a physiological necessity, especially for persons over MO or 35 years of age. But sleep is quite another thing. Of the two bad practices J would say that violent exercise was less harmful than a couple of hours' sleep. In sleep every organ is at its lowest state of activity. The stomach, no doubt, works automatically, so to speak. It gets its chief nervous energy from the sympathetic system which is more or less independent of the brain. But the whole bodily system is connected up, and the stomach with other organs is controlled also by the brain, so that when the brain sleeps the stomach is very drowsy. What happens, therefore, when a person sleeps alter dinner is that the meal undergoes very little digestion and is a prey to a variety of microbes which develop gases, acids and other very harmful things. Instead of Being refreshed the sleeper awakes with . a sense of something wrong inside. He feels heavy, drowsy, and is usually in a very irritable temper. Old and weak people may without hurt steal 40 winks after meals. I would limit the sleep to 10 minutes, no more. For others the best plan is to be lazy but on no account to drop into sleep. After dinner one should be comfortably warm and in a state of complete mental quiet. In winter it is best to stay indoors, and when the weather is mild nothing surpasses-carriage exercise as a promoter of satisfactory digestion.