Maintaining Health (Formerly Health and Efficiency)Alsaker, Rasmus Larssen
Science
Maintaining Health (Formerly Health and Efficiency)
Alsaker, Rasmus Larssen
Diet; Hygiene
Before retiring all the clothes worn during the day should be removed.
The night apparel should be light--cotton, linen or silk. The bed
should be comfortable, but not too soft. There should be enough covering
to keep the sleeper comfortably warm, but not hot. Those who cover
themselves with so many quilts or blankets that they perspire during the
night are not properly refreshed. It prevents sound sleep and makes the
skin too sensitive. It reduces a person's resistance to climatic
changes. The feet should be kept warm, even if necessary to put
artificial heat in the foot of the bed. During cold weather the feet and
the legs should have more covering than the rest of the body. From the
waist up the covering should be rather light.
Sound sleep is dependent on relaxation of mind and body. Those who live
the day over after going to bed do not go to sleep quickly or easily.
This habit should be overcome. Do business at the business place, during
business hours, if you would have the mind fresh. There are days so full
of cares that the night does not bring mental relaxation, but those who
have begun early in life to practice self-control find these days
growing fewer as the years roll by. When they learn their true
relationship to the rest of humanity, to the universe and to eternity,
they are generally willing and able to let the earth rotate and revolve
for a few hours without their personal attention. They realize that
worry and anxiety waste time and energy.
Many complain that they can not sleep. This they repeat to themselves
and to others many times a day. At night they ask themselves why they
can not sleep. They do it so often that it becomes a powerful negative
suggestion frequently strong enough to prevent their going to sleep. It
is an obsession. Real insomnia exists only in the mind of the sufferer.
Every physician, sooner or later, has experience with people who say
that they can not sleep. The doctors who give such patients sleeping
powders or potions make a grave mistake. These drugs are taken at the
expense of some of the physical structures, and the day of settlement
always comes. Perhaps it will find the patient with bankrupted nerves or
a failing heart. To be effective, the size of the dose must be increased
from time to time. At last the result will be some disease, either
physical or mental.
Those who insist that they "do not sleep at all," or that they sleep
"but a few minutes" each night, sleep a few hours, but they make
themselves believe that they do not sleep. We are compelled to sleep,
and even those who "do not sleep at all" can not remain awake
indefinitely.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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