When I couldn’t sleep, my mother would tell me to- just close my eyes. Any adult should of cause know that laying with your eyes closed and sleeping are not the same thing. However, I was a child and I believed my mother. But even then common sense creeped in. And I raised my concerns with my mother that I thought I was not getting enough sleep. But she argued if I actually wasn’t getting enough sleep, I would be dead. Because sleep deprivation wasn’t only a method of torture for the Nazis, they actually killed people that way. And dare I say she was right. But also I know I was sleeping only two to four hours a night and that is not enough for a child or anyone for that matter. So, how did I survive and of cause graduated school? Well, this resent study let me make sense of it.
Science of sleep
Reindeer who’s natural habitat is the arctic are well adapted to the 24 hours of sunlight in the summer and 24 hours of darkness in the winter. An other circumstance they adapted to is the unavailability of gras as a food source during the winter. The ground is then covered in snow. So, they eat as much as they can during the summer to sustain them through the next winter. In the summer in 24 hours of sunlight it seems like the reindeer are eating non-stop. But just like me, if they actually didn’t sleep they would die. And so researches formulated the hypothesis that while the reindeer stand and chew all day the task might be so mundane and repetitive that they might be able to reach a mental state that would be similar to sleep and add to their sleep requirements. They attached electrodes to the reindeer skulls and measured the brain activities while the animals were ruminating aka chewing. And indeed they found that the animals reached a state that was similar to non-REM sleep. This non-REM sleep is indeed what is required to recover from sleep depravation. Further experiments and analysis confirmed that the sleep like state the reindeer reach during rumination adds to their sleeping requirement.
When I think back at the time I had to live with my parents I remember doing a lot of ruminating also. The thinking and spacing out kind. Mostly in school where teachers even noticed that I alway looked like I’m interestingly following along with the lesson but rarely seemed to contribute. Well, I guess I was catching up on some sleep. But, my parents abuse did not only cause me insomnia, I also learnt to adjust my behavior to make others feel comfortable. Another clue that was missed and so I had to live another decade in misery.
Reindeer in the Arctic reduce sleep need during rumination (2024) Melanie Furrer, Sara A. Meier, Maxime Jan, …, Steven A. Brown, Gabriela C. Wagner, Reto Huber
