Dear Old Fart,

Thanks for getting in touch and suggesting that I resume our Health and Beauty column in cyberspace. I am not at all sure that existence in cyberspace is healthy or whether one can be beautiful there but I will certainly take a crack at it. As it happens I had a little column ready for The Old Fart Magazine when you collapsed it or perhaps it collapsed on its own. It is on the subject of Sleep. Old farts, worrying about the condition of the world and what they can do to worsen it, often have trouble getting to sleep and I hope that this column may be of use to them.

By the way, thanks for forwarding copies of the column to Graydon Carter at Vanity Fair in the hope that their magazine would take me on after the aforesaid collapse. I knew Graydon as a boy of course, growing up in Ottawa, and even then he had curmudgeon potential. He would be a useful addition to your staff but unfortunately he has his own magazine. He was good enough to write to me, although I don’t think he remembered me.

He wrote: “It’s good, but alas, I do not think it quite right for Vanity Fair”.

                                                          SLEEP

    A Brief Treatise

By Melinda Moorehouse

Sleep can be thought of as a refueling process. The fuel is oxygen. We use up more oxygen in the course of the day than we take in. In a deep sleep consumption of the fuel is limited by relaxation of the muscles and inactivity of the brain. The human brain is responsible for approximately 40% of total oxygen consumption. These things can be observed in a person who is sleeping deeply: deep slow breathing as the system refuels and a low heart beat frequency. The heart should rest as much as possible during sleep. 

 Many individuals seek this condition at night and have trouble achieving it.

 Here are some tips: Relax your muscles. Stop thinking; this is easier said than done but think of it as a discipline. You will get better at it with practice. One never stops thinking entirely, hence dreams, but try to send thought to the back and rear of the brain. One way of doing this, the author has found, is to concentrate on lowering the frequency of the heartbeat while breathing deeply. That is, you think about your heartbeat and your deep breathing. Deliberately imitate deep sleep. Pretend perhaps you are an actor and the director has asked you to imitate a person in a deep sleep. It is your job.

 Funnily enough, a grand niece of mine, Sophia, last summer on the dock, was trying to teach me to meditate. The process seems quite similar to the above. So now we know why Buddhists seem so peaceful; they are actually all fast asleep.

 Many people who have work to do in the morning and an early appointment start to worry; here they are awake and they should be asleep. This anxiety of course activates the brain and is counterproductive. Here is how to rid yourself of this particular anxiety: If you follow the above tips you will be getting your oxygen and your rest whether you are awake or not! So tell your system not to worry. And a successful imitation of sleep results in just that: sleep. That is my experience.

 But sometimes the brain keeps going. General anxiety can be relieved by placing the tips of the fingers of each hand lightly on a spot about one inch above each eyebrow. When one is anxious there is excessive energy in the frontal lobes of the brain; feel it drain away down your arms to your body. Close your eyes and think black.