More at Macleans.ca:

• ‘Sleeping isn’t a gift. It’s a skill.’  | An insomnia expert on why you can't take a good night's rest for granted and how to train to be a better sleeper
• An insomniac's dilemma  | Two lifelong sufferers on how they spend those sleepless hours

Eluned Summers-Bremner is an English professor and cultural historian at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. Her new book, Insomnia: A Cultural History (Reaktion Books), examines our tumultuous, age-old relationship with sleepless nights.

Q: Do you believe insomnia is becoming more widespread?

A: I do. Partly because our working cycles have become globalized. I'm often working to U.K. deadlines and in Auckland, where I live, we're 12 hours ahead. Also, one didn't used to get emails from students at 3 a.m., but now we all do. People just work according to deadlines and often they don't take into account your time zone. It's just part of the reign of the market in people's lives.

Q: How else does the modern workplace feed insomnia?

A: There's a Swedish study that talks about people getting "head tired." It's where people get so tired with thinking but they can't shut it off, and because their body's not tired, it's harder for them to sleep. I suppose the more work we do with our heads, just sitting still, and the more work we do on networks and computers, the less physically tired we get and the more head tired we get.

Q: What does looking at the history of insomnia tell us about modern troubles with it?

A: Mainly that insomnia wasn't always a bad thing. And that it wasn't always as simple as we perhaps think it was. Because we do tend to think, "I can't sleep! I won't be any good for work in the morning!" We see it as something that needs fixing. Looking at the past is quite helpful in a way because it helps us to see that we've come to fear insomnia. Partly it's the way it's marketed — it's a bit like we're meant to fear depression and take anti-depressants. But I think if you look at the past, you see insomnia had all sorts of effects, some of them quite positive, and some of them were actually sought out.

Q: Like what? More work time?

A: Not necessarily work in the modern sense. Sometimes just inspiration. Sometimes just reflection. People might be thinking about their dreams, but if they couldn't go back to sleep, they might just pray.

Q: Your book questions current assumptions about sleep. For instance, as a dominant sleep model, is the eight-hour stretch relatively new?

A: It is specific to us, and it hasn't got such a very long history. A couple of centuries. Before that, there were lots of different ways of doing sleep.

Q: So how were ancient sleeping rituals different?

A: It made a big difference whether there was moonlight or not because early cultures had no real source of lighting other than the hearth or the fire. In ancient Athens, religious ceremonies were held by moonlight. With us, we really tend to separate day and night, and we regard sleep as supportive of our daytime activity.

Q: Didn't they see sleep as a way to rejuvenate for the next day's work like we do?

A: Sleep had a mystical quality. Quite often, it was seen as a time when divine messages might arrive. It was interpreted as a time when things happen that the gods intended, that were out of your control, so dreams were seen as being prophetic.

Q: Where do circadian rhythms fit in?

A: Scientists who know a lot about the history of our circadian rhythms, they say that when the light decreases, it produces an effect that tells the body it should be getting sleepy. The ancients would've followed those rhythms even more than we do because we have so many artificial stimulants. But I think the fact that they had to use light for activities was an overlay on that reality — a bit like when we have a deadline and our bodies want to sleep but we need to use the time.

Q: I suppose ancient peoples were simply too busy warding off wild animals and arsonists to worry about getting a solid eight hours.

A: Yes, there were so many dangers. Evil spirits, one's enemies, animals and all of those natural things that we've forgotten. The devil would do his work at night and a lot of bad things would happen on his watch.

Print Article    Send to a Friend    Write a letter to the editor

Digg this Stumble It!   Post to del.icio.us Seed Newsvine   Share on Facebook Technorati links