Am I a human barometer?
I’ve always been a lousy sleeper. The last few nights I ought in theory to have slept like a log (It’s been a Haaaard Day’s Night!) yet at 3am every ngiht I’ve been wide awake, unable to get back to sleep. This has been my downfall all my life, tiredness, lethargy and the odd depression. it does ease up with regular exercise, but at Christmas this is simply impossible.
As my wife set off for work this morning she mentioned the weather. “I wonder if the low pressure we have at the moment is affecting your sleep?” she asked,. Moments later Google was my friend and I got surfing the subject of weather on sleep. It seems there may be a link between dropping pressure and sleep, according to these amazing links I found:
http://www.robsworld.org/barometer.html is a more anecdotal account of weather effects on people
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2854702/ is a more scientific study.
http://www.ciesin.org/docs/001-338/001-338.html is a more general study of the effects of climate on humans. We get a lot of Föhn here which I often hear induces headaches, which don’t seem to affect me. Mind you I was raised at sea level as a boy.
So that got me thinking – can a scientific link be found between barometric pressure and amount of sleep? Thus can there be a correlation between Jeremy going occasionally bananas and self medicating with the odd dash of alcohol and being up all night, and the weather?
I used to be interested in a sleep disorder called DSPS – Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome. I used to fill out a spreadsheet application detailing my sleep patterns. Upon analysing the sheet it became apparent I didn’t have that disorder, yet is it possible I have sleep apnea which means my breathing goes odd in the night waking me up? Perhaps. I think two approaches will help. Recording my daily sleep patterns again, yet relating this to barometric pressure may be a successful strategy.
Another will be to somehow record perhaps my breathing at night somehow using a long term tape recorder, ´to see if my breathing changes in the early hours of the morning.
Surf surf and surf again Jeremy, and look what you find! This gem of an article turned up:
http://www.bmj.com/content/332/7536/266.full
We just started going to our favourite recycling centre. and what did we find the other day? A Didgeridoo!
Without that article I might have thought this was nuts. But it sounds plausible. Sleep therapy with the didge!
