Sleeplessness (I)

Diet has a very big influence on the quality of sleep

A few days ago, one of my friends came to see me and complained that she was having significant problems to sleep properly. I asked her whether she had reported the issue to her doctor. She effectively had done it, but without any positive result, as she had not presented any organic health disturbance.

Then I suspected it could be her nutrition habits. We recalled her last fifteen days food intake and I discovered that she not only had a very unbalanced nutrition but that her meals were inappropriately distributed along the day. Breakfast was rushed and poor, lunch was taken at no regular times and generally based on junk food, and dinner was too fatty, consumed at a very late time, and without controlling the portions. At this time she generally was hungry, tired and worried.

She was also having problems at work. She could not concentrate and started to make many mistakes. Her boss had told her to go for one week holidays. This worried her a lot, as she thought she could be fired.

On top of that, she had abandoned her physical exercises, as she extended her duties to weekends, in order to compensate her work days’ low performance.

She had no intention to go for holidays. She was too worried, and I did not either encourage her to do that, as she could use this week to redesign her life and get new habits.

I invited her to stay her week at home, to follow a personal program of “lifestyle good practices”. We were going to develop a normal work week (not holidays) that should have to be continued later on. To pay my services I asked her to work eight hours a day as volunteer in a charity dining room. She will have to make phone calls to get donations, as she was a reputed public relations officer. We had to change her habits in a very similar routine and circumstances she used to have. And she should be forced to forget about her job.

I collected her at 19 at her office. She had prepared a small bag and we went home. She was not very happy with the dinner, as we had just natural fruit salad and skimmed yogurt. Later, we had a quite conversation, watched a little TV and at 23 went to sleep. She complained that she was hungry. ”Tomorrow you will see what hunger is”, I replied.

(Continue in Sleeplessness II)