Sleep After a Meal.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 878, 28 December 1888, Page 5

Sleep After a Meal.

There is a widespread superstition, cherished by the great majority of people, that to sleep immediately after they have taken food is to endanger health, to favour the onset of apoplexy, etc., a superstition based on the assumption that during sleep the brain is normally congested. There is, no doubt, suoh a thing as congestive sleep, but during normal sleep the brain is anaemic. When a person has taken a fairly abundant lunch or dinner the Btomaoh demands a special influx of blood wherewith to accomplish its work of digestion ; no organ can more easily comply with that demand than the brain, which, when in full activity, is suffused with a maximum amount of the vital fluid. But a derivation of blood from tbe brain to the stomach can only take place, except in exceptionally full-blooded and vigorous persons, on the condition that the cerebral fnnctions be meanwhile partially or wholly suspended. Hence many people after taking dinner feel indisposed for mental action and not a few long for sleep. The already partially anaamic brain would fain yield up to the stomach a still further supply of blood, and yield itself up to refreshing sleep. Doing so it gains new strength ; meanwhile digestion proceeds energetically, and soon body and mind are again equipped to continue in full force the battle of life. But superstition, the child of ignorance, intervenes, declares that sleep during indigestion is dangerous, admonishes the would-be sleepers to struggle against their perilous inclination, and, though telling them that after dinner they may sit awhile, assures them of the adage, ‘ After supper walk a mile.’ The millions of its victims continue, therefore, the strife to which it condemns them, and ignore the suggestions offered to them by the lower animals, who have always practiced the lessons of sound physiology by sleeping after feeding whenever they are allowed to do so. Hence the human brain and human stomach of such victims contend with each other during the digestive process. The brain, impelled by superstition strives to and demand blood to work with, while the stomach, stimulated by its contents, strives to carry on its marvellous chemistry and demands an ample supply of blood for tho purpose. The result of the struggle is that neither is able to do its work well. The brain is enfeebled by being denied its natural rest during the digestive process, and the healthy funotion of the stomach degenerates into dys-pepsia.—-Westminster Review. I