And so to Bed…

A Biblical View of Sleep

Adrian Reynolds

• Publisher: Christian Focus Publication
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781781913796

1

Night Night!

Introducing sleep

Sleep. We all need it. We all do it.

We all – at some point – struggle with it.

Few people can disagree with these three statements. I’m perhaps one of the lucky ones. For much of my life I’ve been a good sleeper. I’ve never worked night shifts, and I’ve generally had regular patterns of waking and sleeping. However, despite this, there have been painful times when sleep has eluded me. And I know I’m not alone. Anecdotally, all my friends have – from time to time (and some more regularly than others) – struggled to get to sleep.

‘The main facts in life are five,’ said novelist E.M. Forster. ‘Birth, food, sleep, love and death.’ ¹ Birth and death we can do little about. They have their appointed times and occur only once for each member of humanity. Food and love are – to some extent – within our control. At least, we think they are. But what about sleep?

Instinctively, we know we need it (an instinct I hope to show is both medically and biblically appropriate). And we also know the frustration of missing out or, worse still, finding sleep impossible.

A flock of sheep that leisurely pass by
one after one; the sound of rain, and bees
murmuring, the fall of rivers, winds and seas,
Smooth fields, white sheets of water, and pure sky –
I’ve thought of all by turns, and still I lie
sleepless;

(William Wordsworth, To sleep, 1806)

We might, perhaps, have not expressed our difficulties in quite so poetic a manner as dear old Willie. Nevertheless, surveys repeatedly confirm what he rather romantically describes: we struggle with sleep.

It’s a problem. Really.

In 2011, The Mental Health Foundation in the UK conducted one of the largest sleep surveys ever undertaken. ² They asked people to assess their sleep on a score of 0–100 per cent, 100 per cent being a perfect night’s sleep. The results were alarming.

The average sleep scores were 61 per cent for men and 57 per cent for women. This dropped below 50 per cent for those over 60. Of all those surveyed, only 38 per cent were classified as ‘good sleepers’. An extraordinary 36 per cent were classified as having possible chronic insomnia, a condition which involves serious sleep deprivation ‘for a period of four weeks or more’. ³

Interestingly, those who complained of a lack of sleep highlighted the effect this had on a variety of life issues, including:

• Difficulty maintaining healthy relationships.
• Low mood during the day.
• Difficulty staying awake during the day.

You will not be surprised at these findings. The difficulties will differ in their effect: a desk worker may not work particularly well following a sleepless night but he or she is unlikely to do anything more serious than fall asleep at the desk. A pilot, or bus driver, however…. You can see where this is going. Sleeplessness is more than an inconvenience. It is potentially deadly.

In the U.S.A., according to SleepCottage, 20 per cent of all motor vehicle accidents are caused by people falling asleep at the wheel. Doctors, they say, with less than six hours’ sleep between procedures make double the rate of surgical errors. ⁴ Whether these data are accurate or not is hardly the point; we all suspect they might well be.

Why? Because most of us, I guess, have at some point experienced at least something of this sleeplessness and its effect. Everyone’s been grumpy after a night of tossing and turning. Or worse.

It’s easy, of course, to laugh off a lack of sleep. Perhaps that’s our default position. Some people even wear it as a badge of honour. Bertrand Russell, the great British essayist, said, ‘Men who sleep badly… are nearly always proud of the fact.’ ⁵ Perhaps he is overstating his case. But we’ve all met people who like you to know how badly they’ve slept, as though it is some kind of macho qualification.

The truth is, we’re often in awe of those who seem to need little sleep. The BBC reports that Napoleon, Florence Nightingale and Margaret Thatcher all got by on four hours’ sleep a night. ⁶ (This is probably the only thing they had in common!). That makes complaining about a lack of sleep all seem a bit…well, weak and feeble. A recent article in The Spectator magazine highlighted this as a particular problem in modern America:

Our war on sleep is hard to miss . TV interviewers ask today’s hard-driving inventors how long they sleep…when the guest leaves, the interviewers bat the question around with each other, boasting about pulling ‘all-nighters’ in college or claiming ‘I’m OK with five’, revelling in a festival of one-downmanship. If the standard recommendation of eight hours a night gets mentioned, it is treated with genial contempt and the insistence that ‘everybody’s different’. ⁷

Can that be right? In order to answer that question, we’ve got to delve a bit deeper and understand exactly what sleep is.

Sleep like a….snake

On our last family holiday we visited the Cotswold Wildlife Park. I have to confess that the reptile house (which always promises much) was a trifle disappointing. Especially the snakes. The park owns an enormous reticulated python. And I mean enormous. Its thickness around was thicker than my youngest daughter’s waist, which made me rather glad of the protective glass barrier.

But here’s the thing about the python. It was quite dull to watch. Sure, its size impressed me. But it was coiled up in the corner, immovable. Researching for this book, I’ve now discovered why that is. The python sleeps for eighteen hours in every day. The chances of your visiting and seeing it move are pretty slim.

On the other hand, giraffes need only two hours’ sleep in every day. And true to form, the giraffes were a much better spectator attraction. On your next zoological visit, I recommend you head there first.

Every living creature needs to sleep. There’s great variation (as it happens, pythons and giraffes pretty much represent the two extremes). Some animals even take things further, of course. Hibernation is the name given to the reduced metabolic state that some creatures use to shut down over winter. It is extremely efficient at reducing the body’s need for those things which generally keep them alive.

Those who crave sleep may be disappointed to hear it is not normal for humans to hibernate, although in 1900 the British Medical Journal reported the curious case of peasants in the Pskov region of Russia:

At the first fall of snow the whole family gathers around the stove, lies down, ceases to wrestle with the problems of human existence, and quietly goes to sleep. Once a day everybody wakes up to eat a piece of hard bread. The members of the family take it in turn to watch and keep the fire alight. After six months of this reposeful existence the family wakes up, shakes itself and goes out to see if the grass is still growing and, by and by, sets to work at summer tasks. ⁸

As the New Statesman wryly commented, ‘the author has rather a sunny view of things… I can’t believe the Russians leapt so cheerily to their feet.’ ⁹ Such hibernation is not normal. But sleep is.

For humans, the amount of sleep also varies from person to person but the variations depend mainly on age. On average, newborn babies need about 16–18 hours’ sleep. This decreases to 13–14 hours’ sleep after about one year. (I can already hear some mums crying out, ‘Why doesn’t my Timmy sleep that much?’, to which the answer is, he probably does if you stop to add it up. It often just doesn’t feel like it.)

Children need less sleep – approximately 9–10 hours – and teenagers one hour less again (though you might think they would actually like much more if you’ve ever tried to get them out of bed in the morning). Most adults require 7–8 hours’ sleep and older adults can get by on 6–7 hours, though this is supplemented (as you may know!) by naps during the day.

Let’s make that real. If you are an average kind of adult and you go to bed at 11p.m. and it takes you half an hour to nod off, that means you should be waking at around 7.30 a.m. If your workday means you have to be up and about by 6.30 a.m., you should be heading to bed between 10 and 11p.m.

Put that way, many of our night-time sleep patterns might seem a little deficient. No wonder our sleep scores are so low.

Sleep metaphors have even entered our language. We talk of ‘sleeping like a baby’ although, as some wit has pointed out, anyone who uses that expression probably doesn’t have a baby. Anyway, we might add, what does it mean to sleep like a baby? Do you wake up every two hours crying for food? Of course not: the phrase simply reflects the relatively long and uninterrupted sleep that most babies (over a few months old) need and enjoy.

What is it about sleep that is so important? Doesn’t sleep just get in the way of a good time? Isn’t sleep the thing we do when we’ve exhausted all other avenues for a top night out? Isn’t Virginia Woolf, the famous author, correct when she says, ‘Sleep is that deplorable curtailment of the joy of life’? ¹⁰

Oh rats!

The answer, scientifically at least, is no. She’s not right. Without sleep, there would be no joy of life, no good times and no cracking nights out. Scientists estimate that – were such an experiment possible – you would die of lack of sleep before you died of lack of food. We cannot function without proper sleep.

You can observe this by conducting sleep studies with rats. Such studies are less common now due to animal welfare objections. However, in the past, scientists have observed that sleep-deprived rats soon die. By placing rats on a small platform above water, the rat is deprived of sleep. It’s still provided with food and water, it just can’t snooze. Each time it nods off, the rat loses its balance and falls into the water, shocking it into wakefulness. Soon, the rat dies.

The results of this kind of research are largely discredited today because scientists cannot be sure whether it is the lack of sleep or the enormous stress that kills the rat first. Fair point. But the two are not unconnected, as anyone who has suffered lack of sleep knows – sleeplessness is stressful whether or not you are suspended above water.

Most scientists, however, would like to under-stand sleep better. It is relatively straightforward to observe, but more difficult to understand. It is still something of a medical mystery. One scientist has described the desire to understand why we sleep as ‘the holy grail of sleep biology’. ¹¹ As one of my colleagues has dryly pointed out to me, given that they need so little sleep, it does make you wonder why giraffes are not ruling the universe.

To be a bit more technical (and more serious), there are approximately five measurable stages to sleep. (Scientists can measure these through observation and monitoring of brain activity.) Four of these are what clever types call non-REM sleep (where REM stands for rapid-eye-movement). One stage is REM sleep. In each night’s sleep (assuming it’s a good one), we go through four or five cycles of non-REM and REM sleep – back and forth, back and forth.

Non-REM sleep stages include drifting off to sleep (often accompanied by sudden body movement), slowing of breathing and heart rate, and moving into what we normally call deep sleep. These are all non-REM kinds of sleep. Then there is REM sleep, so called because it is distinguished by the movement of the eye (even when the eyes are closed). REM sleep is also part of the normal pattern of sleep and is when we often dream – or, at least, the stage from which we remember our dreams. It is not as deep a sleep as non-REM sleep. However, scientists believe it is this unique combination of different phases which makes sleep the restful thing it is.

If you’ve ever shared a bed with a spouse, or a bedroom with a friend or sibling, you may well recognise some of these stages. Ever felt that feeling of falling and being jerked awake or slept next to someone twitching? Sure, that’s called hypnic jerk and is a regular feature of early non-REM sleep. It’s not as odd as you thought.

All this is observable and describes the nature of sleep without really getting to the heart of what sleep is. For this, scientists rely on observing what happens to your body when you don’t sleep. That’s much easier than trying to work out what’s going on inside you when you do.

Studies demonstrate that sleep-deprived adults suffer – according to University of Manchester neuroscientist Penelope Lewis – from hormonal imbalances, compromised immune functions and a drop in body temperature. That suggests, she says, that sleep ...

Table of contents

• Testimonials
• Title
• Indicia
• Contents
• Dedication
• Start Here
• 1. Night Night!
• 2. Good Night!
• 3. Sleep Tight!
• 4. See you in the morning!
• 5. Hope the bed bugs don’t bite!
• 6. Feeling sleepy now?
• Other Books by Christian Focus
• Christian Focus