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The Ergonomics of Sleep:
Integrating Yoga, Science, Nutrition and Anthropology for the Best Night’s Sleep
Part 1--The Surface
by Patrick Clark
The author testing out his hypothesis that minimal support is best.
When I searched the Internet for an intelligable, scientific article or book on how sleep works, what is the best environment for quality sleep, and what type of bed, blanket, and pillow will provide the deepest, most rejuvenating sleep, I could not find it. I tried all kinds of keywords and phrases, yet none of the articles seemed to know specifically anything. Most “authorities” seemed confused and baffled. For instance I found statements such as: “a bed shouldn’t be too hard or too soft”; "What works for some people doesn’t work for others”. Yet the advertising media is nothing but bold claims that one mattress or pillow will outperform any other. Some of the claims were tempting, promising a good night's sleep like you've never had before, for only a couple thousand dollors.
I had some hunches, which started the whole search in the first place. From restorative yoga I got the paradigm that certain positions could induce specific calming responses, relaxing the autonomous nervous system. From somatic education and the New Ergonomics I learned certain principles such as: the bones need to have some resistance (i.e. a hard surface). From science I knew about the different stages of sleep, and how rejuvinative sleep happens during REM which is the last phase of a four hour sleep cycle when we are dreaming. From nutrition I knew that certain vitamins and minerals were needed for the best sleep, and heavy metals such as mercury can disrupt sleep or certain stages of sleep by pushing out essential minerals and blocking needed homones. Yet the truth of what specific mattress or pillow would help one sleep comfortably and with the most rejuvenative effect remained unanswered.
One thing I knew, everyone is dealing with the same thing. Hardly a day passes that I don't overhear some conversation about sleep, and generally the problem with getting a good night’s sleep. Our society is addicted to coffee, which basically says as plain as the nose on your face that there is a problem with sleep. If we slept well, then why would we need something to ‘wake us up”.
I am skeptical of technological fixes, which are usually touted as the answer to society’s sleeping problems. The extent to the complexity of the bedding industry has become absurd. It is not uncommon for a couple to spend thousands of dollars on the ‘perfect’ mattress system. If all this really worked, it would seem that by now, most people at least in America would have solved the sleeping problem and be off of coffee, wide-eye-and-bushy-tailed ready to start the day. But this isn’t the case at all, as anyone who picks up a magazine or watches a few minutes of TV will soon see, with advertisements for sleep aids, sleep drugs, better mattresses, orthopedic pillows, and stimulant drugs like coffee.
According to most scientists, Homo sapiens have been around for millions of years. Common sense and a little research will tell you mattresses have been around for much less. (a couple hundred years in Europe.) Yet the paradigm of most of civilization is that a mattress is essential to good sleep, just like a chair is essential to sitting.
Why did mattresses become mainstream? When did the buffalo robe and pile of leaves go out of fashion? Could a good night’s sleep be had if, for instance, we slept on a sandy beach or the equivalent? Why did ‘they’ start saying a firm bed is best, and still provide a two to three foot thick ‘system’ of mattresses just to get you to that “firm bed” effect? Some of the questions came up as I myself experimented napping and sleeping on different surfaces, including beaches, boulders by the river, grass, and just the bare ground. My conclusion was that almost anything seemed to work, and the best surfaces were those most removed from the modern box-spring bed, the waterbed, or the memory foam bed.
Finally I started turning up some information from a former Japanese health pioneer Katsuzo Nishi. This man published a book in 1927 detailing a system of excersizes and practices which include sleeping on a hard surface such as a board, to help with spinal alignment and circulation.
His theories are characterized by the idea that, in spite of the fact that the human bone structure and positioning of the internal organs are basically the same as those evolved for the mammalian species that ambulate on four legs, human being have adopted a basically upright two-legged life style that places certain structural strains on the human bone structure, resulting in problems like obstruction of the flow of food through the intestines (constipation) due to the unnatural (vertical) positioning of the organs. As methods to compensate for these structural defects, Nishi conceived and encouraged the use of treatment through exercises such as the goldfish (movement) style spinal column rectification exercise and the Nishi-shiki health fortifying technique( (lateral vibration exercise know as the “Haifuku Undo”).
Furthermore, based on the structure of the human network of arteries and veins, Nishi refuted the heart-driven blood circulation theory of William Harvey, proposing instead a theory that the capillaries provided the true driving force of the circulatory system. And, in order to compensate for the obstruction of circulation in the four limbs resulting from the human species’ vertical posture, he proposed the Capillary Action- Inducing exercise (Mokan Undo), which involves lying on the back, raising the arms and legs and applying a slight vibrating motion.
Besides these exercises, Nishi also recommended methods making use of implements like a hard, half –cylinder pillow, design to keep the cerebral vertebrae in the ideal position from a structural standpoint and a flat sleeping platform (flat board) designed to do the same for the vertebrae of the spinal column.
Finally I have found evidence that mattresses in general are bad for our health from a structural perspective. Whether they are brand new or worn out makes no difference. The fact is, mattresses insulate us from our experience of our body. They do not allow the resistance that we need to keep us in alignment and optimize breathing and circulation. When it comes to a mattress, More is not Better. Less is better. The concept of a mattress, a deep, soft place to rest our tired bones, is mistaken. More rejuvination comes from less fluff. It doesn't take something two feet thick to provide the hardness of a simple cot or a pallet on the floor. The Japanese had it right with their sitting as well as their sleeping. Their mattresses (futons) were about the thickness of a typical quilt. No doubt, Nishi's recomendations had something to do with traditional Japanese sleeping habits.
Here is a photo and travel log excerpt of futons airing in the sun, taken by a traveler to Japan. (Click on the picture for a link to a larger view.)
Although many Japanese sleep in beds these days, it is still common to sleep on a futon mattress spread on the floor. Westerners call the small couch which turns into a bed a futon, but that is very different from the traditional Japanese futon. A traditional Japanese futon set includes shikibuton (under futon), kakebuton (comforters), and makura (pillow)... Shikibuton is usually stuffed with cotton batting and is wrapped in shikifu (sheets). Japanese uses different types of futon, depending on the season, such as light ones in summer and heavy ones in winter. Futon made from down feathers is light and comfortable but is most expensive. Kakebuton is covered by kakebuton cover. The traditional Japanese pillow (makura) is filled with red beans or buckwheat chaff... Futon is usually put away during the day in the closet called oshiire. The oshiire closet has sliding doors and usually divided into two shelves. It is best to keep the futon on the upper shelf. Japanese houses are usually small and do not have many rooms, so a room is used for dual purposes. During the day, a room can be used as workroom or guestroom after futon is stored in the oshiire. It is very convenient... It is important to sometimes dry futon under direct sunshine. You may ruin your futon if you keep them in the closet or spread on the floor all the time. Remember that Japan is very humid especially in rainy season. There is a product called futon kansouki (futon dryer) in Japan. Just place the dryer between kakebuton and shikibuton while it is spread on the floor. Airing your futon really helps you sleep well... Also, it is commonly said that sleeping on futon is better for the back than sleeping on a soft bed. The hardness of the floor seems to be good for people who have back problems.
Then I found another article in Science News--Slumber's Unexplored Landscape: People in Traditional Societies Sleep in Eye-opening Ways, By Bruce Bower. This article explains why I have had such a hard time finding real information on sleep patterns, behavior, and biology—because—according to Bruce Bower--it has been an “embarrassingly” overlooked area of anthropology.
"Adult sleepers in traditional societies recline on skins, mats, wooden platforms, the ground, or just about anything except a thick, springy mattress. Pillows or head supports are rare, and people doze in whatever they happen to be wearing. Virtually no one, including children, keeps a regular bedtime. Individuals tend to slip in and out of slumber several times during the night. In these unplugged worlds, darkness greatly limits activity and determines the time allotted to sleep. Folks there frequently complain of getting too much sleep, not too little."
My instigating hypothesis that modern beds (mattresses) are not needed and possibly counter-productive was starting to prove plausable. The article also says that a single stint of total sleep--that is the accepted norm by today's sleep 'experts'--was not the case at all for pre-industrial societies and that the advent of artificial lighting has altered the body's natural circadian rythms. From reading the few studies conducted on native people's sleep patterns, one can easily surmise we are barking up the wrong tree when we think the right mattress will solve our sleep problems.
If the mattress does play some role in improving sleep, the best mattress is not a mattress at all, but something more like a pad or a pallet on the floor--something that comes the closest to mimicking the very ground from which humans evolved.
A mattress in any true sense of the word causes the hips to sink in and the back to collapse in and loose it's natural curve. When the back collapses in on itself, whether sitting or lying down, the lungs cannot hold as much oxygen and breathing is immediately hampered. When the body does not get its optimal amount of oxygen, the parasympathetic nervous system which induces relaxation is not fully engaged. When breathing is shallow, the stress hormones adrenaline and cortisol keep the body from fully relaxing. Cush is not really cush. Paradoxical yes, but according to this paradigm, resistance is cush.
Chemicals in Mattresses
Health agencies deem exposure to some of the chemicals found in mattresses safe in small amounts. They're motto, and that of most of the scientific community is: 'If you can't see it--it won't hurt you'. These small amounts are now in every product we buy from carpets to microwaves, couches, furniture and mattresses etc. Many toxicities acumulate in our bodies, and have been found in living tissue from every corner of the eart--even in mother's milk from aborignal tribes nowhere near civilization. Prolonged exposure when your body is at its most vulnerable (sleeping) should not be taken lightly.
Long-term health effects may occur after repeated exposure to this toxicity including cancers, damage to heart, liver, central nervous system, and kidneys from Volatile Organic Content (VOC) found in a number of products including Adhesives/Glues.
Memory foam, like other polyurethane products, is inherently highly flammable. State and US Federal Laws have been enacted in the USA to require all bedding, including memory foam items, be resistant to ignition from an open flame such as a candle, or cigarette lighter. All bedding is treated with highly toxic PBDE, but memory foam gets especially high levels of the fire retardant. PBDE has been linked with Sudden Infant Death syndrome and many other conditions.
PBDE's change a child's intelligence, increase hyperactivity, damage hearing learning and memory . Flame retardant , pass through the placenta and are absorbed by the new born. The federal EPA, has jurisdiction over the chemicals but has made no move to regulate them. Two Cal/EPA scientists, writing in a scientific journals, have recommended a phase out of the chemicals.-Less toxic alternatives to the persistent PBDE flame retardant are desirable," wrote McDonald and Cal/EPA scientist Kim Hooper. Representatives of the four companies that manufacture PBDE's oppose a ban, saying the compounds' benefits to pubic safety are well known and their risks are uncertain. Several dozen flame-retarding compounds other than PBDE's exist and do not accumulate in tissues and pose less risk. Exposure to toxic chemicals are probably highest in North America because it is the only place still using the form of PBDE most likely to accumulate in humans and the environment. Excerpt taken from this website: http://www.nontoxic.com/beds/sids.html
But whether it's memory foam or any other non-organic modern mattress, the list of VOC's and other toxins in scary. For a comprehensive and eye-opening breakdown on what those toxins are, check out this website. Warning, the list is long and the names are hard to pronounce. http://www.essentiadirect.com/research/glues-toxic-components
Now you might have an even harder time sleeping.
These toxins are endocrine disrupters (or phyto- estrogens) which gradually accumulate in the body tissue and accelerate aging, leading to hypothyroidism and degenerative diseases. Since the advent of synthetic bedding material at the middle of the 19th century, bedding has gone almost entirely synthetic. The only safe mattress is an organic mattress. However, most of these are fashioned after the luxury model of today's modern mattresses, and so are usually too soft. Metal coiled boxsprings amplify electromagnetic fields, which hampers our body's own magnetic field and interferes with the Shumann resonance. (This will be explained in the next installment.)
Getting Started
Of course when first lying down and sleeping on a hard surface, you are probably going to feel uncomfortable. Unfamiliarity is not comfortable. The type of comfort one feels on a hard surface is more of an acquired taste. It is comforting in the way it helps you breath more fully, the way it grounds your body, the way it reassures you that there is something solid somewhere in life that you can always count on. You will feel your bones. At first you may feel like it's impossible to relax, because it contradicts all your ideas about relaxation. You are feeling your life energy. Sometimes this is disturbing. Give it some time. There are some tricks which make it work for people with scoliosis. arthritis, fibromyalgia and injuries.
There are several supports, bolsters, and pillows which can be propped in any number of ways depending on individual needs. For instance, for lower back pain, place a small support under the lower back (when lying on your back). A rolled up sock will work, but a flax seed eye pillow is the ultimate size and shapes just the right amount. When side sleeping, hug a large pillow and put a pillow between your kneeds--or use a body pillow. Also, make sure your head pillow is tall enough. It should be about 5 inches (for most people) when compressed. Often the "comfort" of an American mattress is an adaptive response--or shall we say psychosomatic. It looks thick and plush, therefore it must be comfortable. In reality that mattress is masking the bodies current stuructural imbalances and hampering the body from realigning itself during sleep. Sleeping on a hard surface can reshape the back and realign the body. A firm sleep surface helps the body's relationship with gravity, with the earth. This is similar to the effects of yoga and martial arts.
Unnatural sleep hours brought on by artificial lighting which disturbs the body's circadian rythms. Go to bed early. Turn down the lights in the evening.
Hypothyroidism. According to Dr. Lita Lee, chronic insomnia or lack of quality sleep is one symptom of a major health condition which leads to all the major degenerative diseases and aging. By understanding this problem, one can reverse the aging process, restore quality sleep, and get off of sleep medications. She has a great article on how to heal insomnia here.
Part two will focus on head/neck alignment and pillows, as well as the Shumann's Resonance.
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Another factor other than the mechanical and chemical aspects of the mattress plays an important role in sleep quality. Enter the world of electromagnetic frequencies.
Lewis B. Hainsworth was among the first to suggest that human health is linked with geophysical parameters by way of the naturally occurring Schumann ELF (extremely low frequencies). His hypothesis identified naturally occurring features which determine the frequency spectrum of human brain-wave rhythms. He concluded that the frequencies of human brain-waves evolved in response to these signals. If the hypothesis is correct, conditions for evolutionary changes in human brainwave patterns have now been established.
Hypothesis: "The frequencies of naturally occurring electro-magnetic signals, circulating in the electrically resonant cavity bounded by the earth and the ionosphere, have governed or determined the 'evolution' or development of the frequencies of operation of the principal human brain-wave signals: In particular, the alpha-rhythm is so placed that it can in no circumstances suffer an extensive interference from naturally occurring signals."
Further, variations in them can produce mild to disastrous health and behavioral changes. These waves probably help regulate our bodies' internal clock, affect sleep patterns (REM), and hormonal secretion. The nature of the applied stimulus makes it difficult to identify the responses directly, as they are most likely to occur in the form of stress-related conditions. They will therefore, show up as drastic increases in mental disturbance, anti-social behavior, psycho-somatic conditions, and neurological disturbances. Some electrical field phenomena have already been linked with abnormal cell growth and a decrease in immuno-competency.
The electromagnetic field around the earth can be viewed as a stiff jelly. When our bodies move and vibrate, these movements are transmitted to the environment, and vice versa. These fields not only impinge on our bodies, they also affect the charges inside our bodies. When we are standing on the ground, under normal conditions (especially when barefoot), we are grounded. Our body then acts as a sink for the electrostatic field and actually distorts the force lines somewhat. Our body also has its own electrostatic field about itself. These field lines are the result of the various biochemical reactions in the body. This resultant bio-field couples us to the isoelectric field of the planet (Miller & Miller, 1981).
In 1957, W. O. Schumann calculated the Earth-ionosphere cavity resonance frequencies, which were then named for him. He fixed the most predominant standing wave around 7.5 Hz. A "tuned system" consists of at least two oscillators of identical resonance frequencies. If one oscillator starts emitting, the other will be activated by the signal very shortly, in the process of resonance, entrainment, or kindling.
Kindling is a term applied, in particular, to the entrainment of neurons in the brain. They are ignited in coherent global patterns producing larger waves across a greater surface of the brain. It becomes obvious that in deep meditation, when waves of alpha and theta rhythms cascade across the entire brain, it is possible for the human being and the planet to come into resonance. There is a transfer of energy and information, which is embedded in a field rather than being a field. Perhaps the planet communicates with us in this primal language of frequencies. Here is a comprehensive website on electromagnetic frequencies and how they effect human and planetary health.