Author: Brandia Deatherage | Published: February 23rd, 2010

    Last night I slept nine hours on the couch and awoke feeling restless, jittery, but still groggy. The cushions were ajar, the room messy, and I felt anxious—as if I were already way behind for the day.

    I’ve decided that getting a lot of sleep isn’t the answer to stress--the biggest single burden on my health. Sleep may be restorative to my body, including my brain and nerves; but it does nothing for my To Do list. My To Do list is backed up like a traffic jam, which only manages to free five of the shiniest, best-driving vehicles each day. I just know my morning jitters are caused by the revving engines of those ignored cars, drivers screaming, "Wake up! Let us off." Ugh, STRESS.

    It is said that Napoleon only slept two hours per night, and during the day, he never sat. I may not be a great conqueror, but neither am I Sleeping Beauty, who can lay in wait for her rescuer, her Prince, to arrive panting, with that perfect kiss, that perfect solution to real-life stress. Funny (or sad) that at 28 I still have to remind myself of this.

The fairy tales I remember weren't all rainbows and puppy dogs. Happy endings were well deserved!

    A psychiatry study (University of California, San Diego, 2002) found that people who live the longest report sleeping for six to seven hours, not NINE hours, each night. Other studies report increased mortality (sounds like increased lifespan, means the opposite) in people who sleep more than seven to eight hours per day.

    At the rate I'm going, I'll be dead by November! I'd like to donate my sleep surplus to charity, please, and take a write off on my taxed health!

Caught in the act!

    Therefore, I feel compelled, to adjust my circadian rhythm. I'd like to adjust it so I wake half-an-hour before a.m. twilight, if for no other reason than to see the stars first thing in the morning. Tomorrow's twilight is at 6:19 a.m., so I'll set my alarm for 5:49 a.m. (to track the sun, go to http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/RS_OneDay.php).

    Strangely enough, some of my best memories happened upon waking from nightmares just before dawn. One morning, within the past year, I woke in a state of inexplicable terror (normal, since childhood), and all I wanted was to be submerged in water. I quietly and quickly pulled on my black suit to go swimming at LifeStyles gym. Glancing, each breath of my freestyle stroke, through the enormous glass wall of the pool room to the black sky and its multitude of stars, I started to feel so much better. The peace I found here, in this moment, alone, while all slept, was so personal and so penetrating--I was refreshed! The sky had just begun to turn tinted shades of white as I left the building to face the day.

    And once, when I was a very small child, I had a marathon crying session, which kept my parents up all night. In the sparse, spare room of my grandparents' basement in Raleigh I cried until just before dawn. Wide eyed, I remember hearing an owl hooting, then birds chirping, and my dad saying good-naturedly, "Look, Brandia, you woke up the birds." Tomorrow I'll be waking to Pink Floyd's "Sheep," full of barnyard baaaing, then I'll wake the birds again. (Thanks Mom and Dad for loving me that much.)

    Actually, I was raised among human night owls. My family has never kept an early bedtime--even when all the kids were young. To be honest, I may find it pretty difficult to go to bed by 10:49 p.m.

    It has been suggested that the correlation between lower sleep hours and reduced morbidity only occurs with those who wake after less sleep naturally, rather than those who use an alarm. This is my goal. To wake naturally before dawn, after a good seven-hour sleep. First I must locate the rhythm.

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