Dear LPG, 

I noticed the article that WD wrote not so long ago which acquainted readers with a possible Christmas present idea for those who find it hard to wake up when it is dark (►►►).

It had me asking questions about just how much we humans naturally sleep when it is dark and why that theory is turned upside down for so many as we get older.   I found some statistics which confirm the theory that darkness and sleepiness go together, and they also tell that women find it harder to get to sleep than men, and that more people searched the internet for new ideas about how to achieve getting to sleep more efficiently in August 2020 than during any other month in the UK recently, so the light must have a lot to do with it.  What I read led me to make a few observations of my own starting with the fact that a lot of our sleep problems started relatively recently in our world history.  

 While taking into account that there are always exceptions to the rule, and that the more recent statistics might be affected by Covid-19 and lockdown, I have come up with a theory of my own.  

If sleeping is easier to do in the dark, for the greater part of the six or so thousand years that man has walked the earth we have not had much choice but to work during the day and sleep during the night for most of that time.  Then came candlelight which changed things a little but, while his invention did a lot for us and is to be commended, Thomas Edison and his light bulb has not helped the cause of the insomniac.  The fact that we have been able to see all day and all night for the past hundred years means that we can work all day and all night too.  I know that I am one of the generation of retired people who spent a working life doing lots of shift work although I believe that is why I can sleep through anything (light, dark, loud noises, alarm clocks etc.) 

Then there are the other distractions, I am talking about the bedroom television and the mobile phone.  Did you know that statistics suggest that some 70% of people take a mobile phone to bed with them these days?  I think that the pandemic has taught us oldies to use them more than ever before.    But as we get older I think that it is our aches and pains that keep us awake more than any other factor.  The cold gets to our bones and the joints, and while you are lying there you only have them to think about.

On that note I think it might be time for me to stop going on about it for now, but perhaps some early-morning readers who are reading while sitting up in bed, might be so bored by now that they are inspired to turn off the device they are reading this message on, tuck up, turn the lights off and get another 40 winks… 

HJ, Mottingham

HJ found us a few facts…

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