Dreaming about the Importance of Sleep! - Things I Can Do to Improve the Quality of My Sleep

Recently, Ohtani Fever has been amazing. Day after day, Ohtani’s successes are televised on TV, captivating fans from all over. Just two days ago, an interview with Nootbaar, Ohtani’s teammate from WBC, was shown. When asked about Ohtani, Nootbaar said, “I invited him out for dinner one night, but he turned me down, saying he was going to sleep!” He laughed bitterly. Ohtani has stated his own hobby as “sleeping”, which seems to be the secret of his power.

The most important desires at the core of human instincts are eating and sleeping. If either of these were taken away, one could not survive. The pleasure of biting into a meal when you are extremely hungry is irresistible. Everyone has experienced it. But even more than that, when you feel the irresistible urge to sleep after being awake for a long time, you jump into bed and say to yourself, “Finally, I can sleep!” and sleep soundly, it is a different kind of pleasure from the pleasure of tasting a meal. In other words, a good night’s sleep is the key to a happy life. Shohei Ohtani is a man after my own heart.

Then, I suddenly find myself pondering what the hell am I doing to myself now. I went to the barber yesterday and had my hair cut. But after sitting down once, I remember almost nothing. I must have had my hair cut, my hair washed, my face shaved, and my scalp massaged. I had no memory of any of these things, and suddenly realized that it was over: 40 minutes of pleasant sleep, and it was one of the few chances I could catch up on sleep, which I am lacking on a daily basis. With an average sleep time of a little over four hours, it is probably inevitable.

To begin with, every night I work and write until after midnight. Even if I go to bed after 1:00 a.m., I still wake up after 5:00 a.m. I wonder if I am a “light sleeper” as they say in English. Therefore, I rarely use an alarm clock these days. I think I am lucky if I sleep through the night and get six hours of sleep. But such dreams are dashed out at every turn. I sleep very little and the quality of my sleep is not good, and I only sleep a few days out of the year, if that, for seven hours a day. I am not really bothered by this, perhaps because I have become accustomed to it.

However, I am concerned that I am not getting enough sleep. I feel tired, my eyes are watery, my mind is irritable, and nothing good comes out of it. In addition, when the lack of sleep becomes too much, my hair starts to fall out and my hair on my head starts to get thinner and thinner. Old people used to say, “Doctors are bald.” It is true. They spend all their time studying, even when they don’t have time to sleep, and as a natural consequence, their hair becomes thinner and thinner. But, I hope that is not the case. “I would rather sleep than go bald!” I want to say to myself. But that is just a dream.

Despite the fact that we all know how important sleep is, today’s young people, including myself, seem to be too indifferent to sleep. As a result, they stay up late without a care in the world. As par for the course, they stay up until 2:00 or 3:00 at night, always taking care of something. That is no way to maintain a healthy body. The hormone melatonin, which improves the quality of sleep and induces natural sleep, is secreted approximately between 10:00 p.m. and 2:00 a.m. Therefore, staying awake past that time means that the quality of your sleep will suffer greatly, and as a result, you will have a hard time falling asleep. This means that you will not be able to get rid of fatigue, and it is only natural that the next day you will be in shambles.

In any case, staying up late is associated with a variety of ills. Not only does the quality of sleep decline and the body does not get enough rest, but the level of growth hormone (hGH), which is secreted during the night, is also drastically reduced. Growth hormone is the secret to staying young. It not only makes bones and muscles strong, but it also stimulates metabolism, which is the source of energy anyway. Therefore, staying up late not only makes the body tired, but also causes the body to age more rapidly because the secretion of growth hormones stops. Everyone has experienced this. After staying up all night, your body will be in tatters, your skin will be rough, and your face will look like Urashima Taro all at once.

Furthermore, staying up late has been shown to cause depression. This is not surprising, since it disrupts the natural rhythm that the human body needs, and negates the orthodox lifestyle of working during the day and sleeping at night. The quality of sleep is deteriorated to the extreme by staying up late at night, which also neglects the secretion of melatonin and stops growth hormones, and the body cells that should be able to repair themselves during sleep do not recover, so the body begins to go haywire due to stress. The result is the development of various diseases such as dysautonomia, panic attacks, depression, and anxiety. Staying up late is only a transitory pleasure, and nothing else good comes from it.

Still, today’s youth will not listen to you. Once they go home and look at their phones and get hooked on the Internet, there is so much to see and know, and not only are they all around them online, but now that they are globally linked, they can be online with friends around the world 24 hours a day. Musicians, in particular, will be poisoned by the Internet society. The Internet is a treasure trove of music and important information. If you try to write your own lyrics, you will find yourself deep in the Internet surfing through social media and no amount of time will be enough. Many music writers find that they have to wait until morning before they realize it. This is the cause of physical damage.

Let’s go back to the starting point. After all, from now on, Ohtani’s approach is the best. The secret to becoming the best in the world is to sleep more than anyone else! If you do this, you will be less sick, feel better, and be happier. Therefore, it may be possible to have a society without electricity, like the Amish in Pennsylvania, U.S.A. For example, at 10:00 p.m., all electricity is turned off in homes, and it becomes a world of darkness, and people have to go back to their old lifestyle of going to bed. Then depression would disappear. Indeed, in the Showa era (1926-1989), people did not stay up late and even the word “depression” was unheard of.

The thought that one day I will be able to sleep soundly may turn out to be a fleeting dream. I am writing this article thinking that such a dream will never come true. But, this is not the way it should be. First of all, I should sleep well and enjoy eating. Then, we should be full of energy and do the work that needs to be done. Such a positive attitude is important. It is not that dreams do not come true. Only those who are buried in reality lose sight of their dreams. But first, I would like to dream about the importance of sleeping.