A spindle we need

One morning, when I woke up at 4 am, and couldn't get back to sleep, I went online for something interesting to keep my mind un-bored. In surf frenzy, between Tokyo's Harajuku street fashion blogs, Brazilian vegetarian food blogs and contemporary Capetown architecture blogs, I came to an interesting article about the deficit of sleep:

http://www.newsweek.com/2015/01/30/our-sleep-problem-and-what-do-about-it-301165.html

This image is property of The Walt Disney Company.

Really, my sleep became quite disrupted, and only use of melatonin provide me eight hours of sleep. No, I don't use it regularly, because of the buzzy head the morning after, but I keep it at hand as a first aid in times of need. I try to sleep ~8 hours a day, keeping in mind what the elders used to say about the length of it. Funny thing is, whenever I wake up THAT early, I am hungry as hell, although I have my evening routines:

1. never drink coffee after 7pm


2. don't eat after 9pm, and have a light meal


3. go to bed at midnight, and have a cup of herbal tea before


4. avoid aggressive/sad  movies (and stupid people) at night


5. sleep between midnight and 8am

Saying this, it sounds like assisted senior living, and I am happy to say I can not keep it up all the time: you gotta have some social life, and most people don't fit into this quite disciplined structure, so I am also generous and friendly :-)

Fun fact: Anyone who has suffered from jetlag has probably wished they could reset their circadian rhythm. Researchers at McGill University have found that taking glucocorticoids, a steroid hormone, may do just this, by resetting so-called ‘clock genes’ that are active in our organs. The finding could lead to the development of simple treatments for overcoming jetlag and sleep disorders.

In plenty of silly things I found these days, Melatonin shades are on top. No, seriously, one research shows the correlation between sleep length and obesity. Oh, not again, you'll say. Oh, yes again: The shorter the sleep, the higher the likelihood of being overweight, with those getting six to seven hours of sleep more than two and a half times as likely to be overweight as those getting more than eight hours.

Click image to enlarge

If you ask me, I'd say working hours and work overload is the main stressful factor, but in the constant run for another thing you desperately "need" in your life, it isn't easy to find other models of living.
So, as they say in the above mentioned article "Entrepreneurs and capitalists have known this forever, of course". Of course!?! Do they have other knowledge they don't want to share with us? They do, so this is why last two chapters of the article (get back on that link) are actually making it worse: not only these initiatives are not going to work, they will ban the after-hours working so the working load will be just compressed into regular hours, and/or legal charging will simply extend after-hours to the limit when there's no need to go home. Like, ever.