SLEEP PEACEFULLY AND BE WELL

Sun (Christchurch), Volume I, Issue 145, 25 July 1914, Page 6

SLEEP PEACEFULLY AND BE WELL

The most important aid to beauty is restful sleep. Our cities are filled with tired eyes and faded complexions due to lack of sleep. If women but realised how important it is to their general appearance, vivacity, and wit (writes Lillian Russell in the "Chicago Tribune") they would make any sacrifice to obtain at least eight hours sleep every night of their lives. Many women read at night after they go to bed. That is a Kabit, and a bad one to become a victim to. Because hours of beauty.sleep can be wasted in this way. When you have taken your bath at night, brushed your hair, cold creamed your face and hands, opened your window, and turned out the lights, sleep should come to yon easily enough.

Eating heavily at inight is not conducive to sleep. But it is not wise, either, to go to sleep with a sensation of hunger. Something simple and easy to digest will aid you in producing sleep if you are troubled with insomnia. Cold food is not easily digested. A glass .of warm milk and crackers, toast, or scrambled eggs are perhaps the best things to eat at night. Do n®t sleep on a feather mattress. That old fashioned idea is a remnant of ignorance. Fortunately, in these days of advanced hygiene, the use of feather beds is becoming gradually extinct. Have your pillow small and just high enough to raise your head on a level with your shoulders. Never let it come below your shoulders. The importance of nasal breathing is just as great at night as it is in the daytime. To ensure nasal breathing it is necessary that the posture of the body be such as to preclude the possibility of mouth breathing. If you are a "mouth breather" sleep with your arms folded, so that the jaw is supported by the wrist o? the upper arm. This position prevents and cures snoring. Sleep between linen sheets, if possible, and under light, but warm, covering. Be careful that your bed is placed away from a draft. The window must" always be open, for when you are sleeping nothing is as important as fresh air. Bedroom Needs Sunshine.

In the selection of your bedroom you should always consider the exposure, for sunlight is the best disinfectant that we have. Nowhere in the house do you need sunshine more than in your bedroom. Every day you should see that your bed and bedding are aired and sunned. Great danger lurks in damp bed clothes. Special precautions •should be taken in travelling. If you find the sheets damp and cold it is better to slip them down and lie;next to the blankets. Sleep alone, if possibley >lf y<Ju are compelled to share your- bedroom with ahotheiy separate beds should be used, leaving three feet betjvepn the two beds. Your bed should never stand against the wall. Pull it out a little, so that there may be free circulation of air on air" sides. Eelax your body absolutely as soon as you. lie down. Just imagine the bed is pushing up against you. That thought relaxes the body. Lie upon your right side, if possible. It is better to lie upon the side opposite the heart. There is a. relaxing process which has been found successful in inviting sleep. The process is to begin rapidly flexing the joints first of the fingers, then turning the wrists, then bending the arms at the elbow joints, and then swinging them at the shoulder, and so on through the various sets of joints of trunk and lower extremities. - The point is to do them easily; quickly, and mechanically a certain number of times... Those who have great cares and anxieties and have to .work hard and nerve themselves up to work have this tension uncqireciously, which racks and wears them. If nothing is done to cure, a general breakdown results. Restful Sleep 'is Dreamless.

You should train yourself in the habits of sleep. Be regular in your hour of retiring and be sure to abstain from active brain work for the hour immediately preceding going to bed. After you have got into bed an excellent practice is to lie flat on your back and take twenty or thirty full, deep breaths. You will find this no mean hypnotic. Dreams are generally associated 'with indigestion and billiousness and a general restlessness. You cannot afford to dream because you spend considerable nerve force and mental energy when you dream. Restful sleep is dreamless. So you must look to your general health and try to overcome these rest disturbers. If you are troubled with insomnia you should not take coffee after breakfast.' Hot foot baths, a warm bath or cold douche to the spine, some brisk exercise or light massage are measures that draw the blood away from the brain and give relief to insomnia sufferers. Never lie upon your face for more than a few minutes if you do not want creases to form all over your face. It is the practice of many while sleeping to place the hand or fist under the cheek and while doing so to wrinkle the face. These wrinkles often become permanent. Lying \ipon your back absolutely relaxed for twenty minutes before dressing for dinner will refresh you in every way. Burying upon your back to sleep during the night, especially if your head is high, invites nightmares and uneasy slumbers"- You also push your head forward so that the chin touches the chest arid double chin results. Persons who exercise find no difliculty in sleeping. To the persons who lead a sedentary life I would say, take an hour's walk before going to bed at night. The night air is soothing, but do not delay when you come into the house, go directly to your room arid prepare

"TIRED NATURE'S SWEET RESTORER"

for a good, sound sleep. If you do not get to sleep the first time you try this method do not give up, but persist in the practice. It will be but a few nights until you have mastered it and then you will get your regular, proper sleep. If you go to a theatre walk home' if it is possible. Dancing is conducive to sleep, as it is one of the best exercises. Late hours are more wearing upon the vitality and beauty than any of the bad habits. The darknes£ was given us for. rest and sleep, therefore get up with the day. Do all you have to do in the light of day. Artificial light will wear out the eyes long before their time, if you us® it for sewing or reading. Spending the week end in bed may seem to most people a woeful waste of time. There are, however, a few wise people who have tried it and have found so

much benefit to result that they prefer a day or two in bed to a week end of amusement. a A prominent doctor recommended this practice as" the surest means of preserving a woman's freshness and beauty. . He says that rest is, of all ordinary conditions, the most favourable to repair. Best Best Kemedy. Now, this is exactly what the modern woman most needs —Repair. Life as wc live it nowadays is exhausting. The nerves, the brain, the heart, and every part of the body is taxed to the full both by the stress of business and the still greater stress of pleasure. And while the woman of to-day, in consequence of more exercise in the open air, is physically better than the women of former generations, she is not quite as well as she might be. Wrinkles come on quite as early in life as ever, corpulence, a result of degeneration, is just as troublesome as formerly, anaemia is still far too common, and,

while there is less hysteria or nervous excitement, there is more neurasthenia or nervous breakdown. For these, and for almost every ill of womankind, there is no fruch remedy as restSuppose instead of week-ending in the country you were to stay in bed, what would happen to your body system? Every part that is tired by the week's work would be restored to vigour. In ordinary life the eyes and ears are constantly receiving stimuli. These not only wear out the organs themselves, but, travelling up by the nerves, they exhaust the br&in. In bed there would be a minimum* of eye and ear action, and eyes, ears, nerves, and brain would have rest and undergo repair. When one is up and about every part of the body has to work hard. The muscles must work to move the body and keep it erect. The nerves must work to direct the muscles." Heat has to be produced fft enormous cost of energy to keep the body warm, the heart has to labour two or three times as hard as when one is lying down; the stomach, liver, and kidneys are all in a state of great activity. Now, the more work the body does the more waste material is produced. In the daytime, while one is active, this waste accumulates, makes the blood and other fluids impure, produces a muddy condition of the skin, laxity, and wrinkles, ache and other skiri" affections, weariness, irritability, and a "host of other conditions that take from a attractiveness and a man's efficiency. But give the whole body a long rest in bed and you reduce the need for action of all the organs. Less heat is needed, less food, too, and therefore the stomach gets a rest, less waste is produced, and the blood is left purer. Eyes, nerves, brain, heart, lungs, and muscles get an opportunity for recuperation. The mind is calm. Old, worn out tissues are removed, new, healthy tissues are laid down. And the woman who stays in bed on Sunday is a new woman on Monday. There is no other remedy.- equal to this for irritability, for the depression that comes from fatigue, the nervous weakness due to the stress of life, and the heart profits especially.