Happy Birthday 89th!
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Thanks everyone!! Very kind. Turning 38...so I have a few years left to plan the midlife crisis!
@taiwan_girl Glad to be back here, too!
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@89th said in Happy Birthday 89th!:
Just took a nap!
In "Why We Sleep," the author talks about how many societies have an "afternoon siesta." His point is that it is the "natural" way for homo sapiens to be. In other words, a period of 7-9 hours of sleep during the dark period of the day, and then a 1-2 hour "nap time" after the mid-day meal.
He cites countries like Spain, Mexico and others where this is common practice. The particularly interesting example he gives is that in Greece, where the country gradually shifted from the "siesta" model to what we have in most western countries.
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Accepting that this is our natural pattern of slumber, can we ever know for certain what types of health consequences have been caused by our abandonment of biphasic sleep? Biphasic sleep is still observed in several siesta cultures throughout the world, including regions of South America and Mediterranean Europe. When I was a child in the 1980s, I went on vacation to Greece with my family. As we walked the streets of the major metropolitan Greek cities we visited, there were signs hanging in storefront windows that were very different from those I was used to back in England. They stated: open from nine a.m. to one p.m., closed from one to five p.m., open five to nine p.m.
Today, few of those signs remain in windows of shops throughout Greece. Prior to the turn of the millennium, there was increasing pressure to abandon the siesta-like practice in Greece. A team of researchers from Harvard University’s School of Public Health decided to quantify the health consequences of this radical change in more than 23,000 Greek adults, which contained men and women ranging in age from twenty to eighty-three years old. The researchers focused on cardiovascular outcomes, tracking the group across a six-year period as the siesta practice came to an end for many of them.
As with countless Greek tragedies, the end result was heartbreaking, but here in the most serious, literal way. None of the individuals had a history of coronary heart disease or stroke at the start of the study, indicating the absence of cardiovascular ill health. However, those that abandoned regular siestas went on to suffer a 37 percent increased risk of death from heart disease across the six-year period, relative to those who maintained regular daytime naps. The effect was especially strong in workingmen, where the ensuing mortality risk of not napping increased by well over 60 percent.
Apparent from this remarkable study is this fact: when we are cleaved from the innate practice of biphasic sleep, our lives are shortened. It is perhaps unsurprising that in the small enclaves of Greece where siestas still remain intact, such as the island of Ikaria, men are nearly four times as likely to reach the age of ninety as American males. These napping communities have sometimes been described as “the places where people forget to die.” From a prescription written long ago in our ancestral genetic code, the practice of natural biphasic sleep, and a healthy diet, appear to be the keys to a long-sustained life.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=Anyhow, not trying to derail the HBD thread, just saying, keep it up and you'll live forever!
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Happy birthday.
My next birthday won't be for another seven months or so.
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HBD, 89th!
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HBD, 89. I needed some positive news this weekend, and your announcement fit the bill
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@Doctor-Phibes glad it helped a little, man
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HBD, yo!
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Wow!!!!
Happy Birthday!!!!
:couple_with_heart:
