Just in

Ooops!

I know that I am not the only contributor to the Rust who has irregular sleep patterns – in fact I think, based on an informal survey I conducted at last month’s office Christmas party, that more of them would subscribe to my quip “I still sleep the same average number of hours every day as everyone else, it’s just that I don’t do it in one big session anymore …” than would not.

My practice is to go to bed early, sleep for four to five hours, get up again … and then just about stay conscious until I have lunch, a meal which (in Pavlov’s Dog-style association) makes me feel instantly drowsy … whereupon I habitually retire to bed for a sleep of somewhere between 20 and 90 minutes, depending upon my mood, ongoing commitments and body-clock rhythms.

Not to put too fine a point on it, I have now reached the stage where I cat-nap at any time of the day and night – whenever I feel like it.

Separately, in the past year or so I have definitely detected an apparent decline in my short-term memory – well, not just even that.

Quite often – never mind the old quip about going upstairs and discovering that, by the time you’ve got there,  you’ve have forgotten why you went – in conversations these days I find myself thinking one word … and yet, when I go to actually speak it, a completely different one comes out of my mouth. And also – when trying to refer to (for example) an unexceptional everyday item I can see right in front of me – not being able to remember the obvious word to describe it.

One might put these instances of perceived  personal mental frailty down to a false impression – or indeed as a series of one-offs that don’t in themselves signify anything at all in terms of senility, ‘senior moments’ or even the onset of dementia – but it must also remain a possibility that the the opposite is true: in other words, that this is exactly what they are.

Here’s a link to a report by Jaleesa Baulkman (on the worrying conclusion of a new study suggesting that napping during the day might be a symptom of future Alzheimer’s) which appears today upon the website of the – DAILY MAIL

Avatar photo
About J S Bird

A retired academic, Jeremy will contribute article on subjects that attract his interest. More Posts