The complex path to getting a better sleep
toilets a clean, don’t you?
Now if you needed any further evidence that we are already living in a science fiction future, the aforementioned scientists genetically engineered some transparent fish so the chromosomes in their neurons carried colourful chemical tags.
They then used a special microscope to watch how the tiny fish brains behaved when sleeping and awake.
I tell you, even reading that information blows my tiny little post-fish brain.
Here I am, much the same ape as these scientists, unable to understand how a cassette tape works, while these clever Dicks are reading the minds of genetically modified fish. The only mind-reading I’m required to do in my day-to-day life is called being in a marriage and that would be much easier if my wife had a transparent head.
Not that she’s done much sleeping in our years together.
My wife was previously an insomniac. She’d lie awake while I slept like a stinky baby.
Then she was a poor sleeper. She’d drift in and out of sleep while I slept the sleep of the damned.
Now, I’m pleased to announce that she’s a light sleeper. Like a dog in a patch of sunshine.
This is a great result for a woman who was previously at the mercy of some broken-ass circadian rhythms.
And it wasn’t all the charlatans who claim to have the latest snake oil insomnia cure who fixed the problem – believe me these conmen are rife in a world where vulnerable insomniacs are desperately looking for solutions.
No, there was no magic bullet; it was a combination of diet, exercise and meditation.
So I can thank science for explaining why we sleep, but I can thank Hamish and Margo – my wife’s yoga teachers – for helping her achieve a half-decent kip.