NEVER SKIMP ON SLEEP

IF YOU needed more confirmation of the importance of a decent amount of sleep, how about the emerging evidence that our dreaming may help take the emotional sting out of memories — thus reducing the anxiety of bad experiences?

One early U.S. study found that women who had bad dreams about their divorce were less likely to be depressed a year later than those who didn’t report such dreams.

We get more of this (largely REM) ‘healing’ sleep later on in the night, between six to eight hours after nodding off. A timely thought as we struggle with the effects of the clocks going forward. It’s easy to fall into the trap of staying up because your body’s on ‘old’ time. The message is, don’t.