I've been preaching for years that everyone needs to sleep longer than they think.
I just turned 65, and whenever I tell new acquaintances just how old I am, their jaws drop in astonishment. And it's because they think I'm about ten years younger. Personally, I think I look my age, but then I've been looking at this face in the mirror for too long.
There's a myth out there that no one needs to sleep longer than six, or maybe four hours a night. Bullshit. It's possible that some specific and frankly unusual people actually do well never sleeping more than four or six hours a night, but they're rare. And most of the time they're lying. I recall some time back reading something about Thomas A. Edison who supposedly only slept four hours a night. "He takes a lot of naps," one lab assistant noted.
Not everyone can sleep 8 or more hours straight. Especially as we get older, our sleep patterns change. But for a lot of people, if you're over 60 and still working at a normal daytime job, you can't nap in the middle of the day, even if that's what your body needs.
To all of you who are parents: Remember when your kids were little? Babies? Then toddlers? Remember what their sleep patterns were like? And for those of you who had more than one kid: Remember how different they were?
When our oldest was about a year old, someone came up to my husband and said, "So, have you had a decent night's sleep since the baby was born?" Accompanied by a mean laugh. And it all of a sudden came to me, something that had been lost in the trauma of childbirth and mothering. My husband, then age 29, did not sleep through the night. Nor did his parents, by then over 70 (he was a late-in-life child). There was a family joke that a traffic light was needed in the bedroom hallway of their house, because they were notoriously up in the middle of the night, roaming the hallways. The best part of this realization was that I no longer cared if my kid slept through the night. If he did, he did. If not, we'd deal with it. Actually, some years later I learned that all of the males in my household, which by then were my husband, two sons, and brother who lived with us, would be up in the middle of the night totally amazed that I could be asleep.
Which brings me to the problems of shift work. The brother, mentioned above, does overnight stocking at Target, so his sleep needs are different from the normal expectations.
Anyone, get enough sleep. Figure out what works for you and do it. Sweet dreams.
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