Pleasant Dreams

O sleep, O gentle sleep,

Nature’s soft nurse, how have I frightened thee,

That thou no more will weight me eyelids down,

And steep my senses in forgetfulness… 

-Wm. Shakespeare

***

I am not the world’s most sound sleeper. Reliable Husband, on the other hand, fascinates me with his ability to sleep under almost any circumstance. He makes the occasional snore or snort, but I simply touch my hand to his face or gently nudge him and he quietly rolls over and continues his slumber.

Actually my sleep habits have much improved with age and retirement. No work deadlines, no early morning meetings, no teenagers living at home to fret over, plenty of time to exercise - as physical exercise seems to be, at least in my case, the best aid to assist me in getting a good night of sleep.

Yesterday, I spent part of the evening reading about recent research from the world’s scientific experts in the studies of neurocognitive functions, neuroplasticity, oneirology, and such sciences involved in the study of sleep in humans. Despite a myriad of theories, sleep scientists/experts, to date, do not know the how's, why's or when's of the evolution of sleep, only that it’s as necessary to life as taking nourishment and breathing.

Their research (which it turns out is completely sleep-inducing) is filled with sentences like this:

This creates a transmembrane gradient, which drives the import of Na+ across the basolateral membrane possibly via the Na+ -dependent HCO3- co-transporter, NCBE and/or the Na+/H+ exchanger NHE1.

or 

From the cortical subarachnoid space it penetrates the brain parenchyma perivascularly and bathes the brain before it exits the CNS and drains into the lymphatic system.

What does it mean? The most recent breakthrough (and this can change by the time I post this) seems to be the discovery of the “glymphatic" system. Here’s how it works: When we are awake, our activities lead to a build-up of waste material in our brains. When we sleep, channels in our brains expand to allow cerebrospinal fluid to flow in and clear away all that debris; like a nighttime cleaning lady who comes through and tidies things up in our brain as we slumber. She washes or dusts the counters, mops and vacuums the floors, replaces the filter on the hvac, empties the trash cans, sanitizes the drains and toilet, etc. Heck, I don’t know, maybe she even throws a load of dirty clothing in the washer for you.

These latest findings have led to a hypothesis that sleep originated because it was so vital to flush out the nervous system, that the body originally opted for it over the vulnerability or defenselessness that comes with the semi-consciousness state of sleep. However another researcher poses that perhaps we awoke from an original state of sleep, kind of like, which came first the chicken or the egg? Which came first, a state of sleep or wakefulness?

Bottom line: The experts say you have to sleep just the right amount, and not too much mind you. The correct amount of sleep varies a bit from person to person, and heaven help you if you get it wrong! Now how does that information help a troubled sleeper? It doesn’t of course. It presents a person who spends their nights worrying with yet another thing to keep them up worrying, one more way to fail again at the seemingly simple act of sleeping.

Enter my new pal, Scooter.

“Like beads of digression on a string of irrelevance” is a favorite phrase of mine. Rarely do I have a chance to use it, but let me tell you, whoever originally coined the phase must have known someone like Scooter.

Scooter runs a podcast that I recently started listening to when I have trouble sleeping. It’s one of those things you run across in life that makes you say, “Why didn’t anyone think of this before?” The format of his podcast is ingenious. And it has the clever title, “Sleep With Me.”

As it says on the iTunes description, it is:

...a bedtime story for grownups, just interesting enough for you to forget your problems, but boring enough to put you to sleep.

Drew Ackerman (Scooter’s real name) produces 12 episodes per month, which are about an hour long each, give or take. I usually fall asleep during his mostly repetitive 15-20 minute intro. He speaks in a calm tone, yet in a somewhat erratic manner. And I’m guessing, purposely keeps his voice in a lower raspy kind of range than he might normally use when speaking. He’s somewhat mildly amusing and I often softly chuckle once or twice before I doze off. What could be wrong with that?

I don’t know but I’m certain the sleep experts would find some fault with it. It wouldn’t fall under their directives for "good sleep hygiene," like (hear my whiny, didactic voice in this quote) “Only use the bedroom for intimacy and sleep.” They’d gasp in horror at the large screen tv hanging on my bedroom wall. They’d be mortified that I occasionally read a chapter or two in a book before I nod off, or that I took a quick nap in the afternoon. And forget about that glass of wine I had with dinner! "Egad, what are you thinking, lady? No wonder you can’t sleep! You know it’s all your fault, right?”

But, not Scooter. Scooter understands. He occasionally mentions the problems he had as a youngster falling asleep on a school night. He sympathizes, empathizes with his listeners. Scooter does not judge. “There is no right or wrong way to listen,” says he.

I have a sense that he is a kind person with whom it would be fun to spend an hour or two, like at an art museum or an indoor mall. In fact, I think he recently did a podcast on a visit he made to the mall. I’m not sure because I fell asleep before he got to it.

On one episode, he asked the listeners to picture him as a reliable friend. One you'd not be hesitant to phone if you were in a jamb, one willing to come to your home and tell you a bedtime story. He first describes that he’d probably arrive wearing shorts and flip-flops and that he may have forgotten to comb his hair. He asks you to think of him as a person you could call  whenever you felt a need for help sleeping. And he’d appear, with a key that you’d given him beforehand, so he wouldn’t have to ring the door bell or knock, just let himself in, “I wouldn’t actually be in the bedroom, um, which might, you know, actually be kind of creepy, but I’d be out in the hall. And I wouldn’t touch the walls or anything, so you don’t have to, you know, worry about that kind of stuff. You could just nestle down in your soft, comfortable bed. And I’d tell you a story until you fell asleep. And then I’d let myself out quietly.” Who wouldn’t like a friend like that?

Scooter has a genius for rambling, meandering stories of which you might not really give a hoot that you may never hear the ending.

So, do I care what the sleep experts say, anyway? No. I know what works for me.

Thank you, Dearest Scooter, and good night.

I found this graphic on the New York Times site, I think? Or wait, was it the New Yorker?

the graphic speaks for itself