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Show Do you have trouble sleeping? leading authority on sleep who recently retired from the University of Chicago dismisses dis-misses the popular notion that we have a "sleep center" in our brain that must be activated to lull us out of our normal wakefulness. Man goes to sleep when his muscles are so tired that they have to relax, Dr. Kleitman maintains, though this is complicated com-plicated by the tensing effects of muscles. Muscular relaxation relaxa-tion leads, by some mechanism that no one yet understands, to relaxation of the wakefulness center. If scientists don't know precisely pre-cisely what sleep is, they are fairly sure what goes on while you snooze. Your heart and pulse rate slow down, blood pressure falls off sharply, you breathe more slowly, deeply and regularly. Fingers grow cooler, toes warmer. Body temperature tem-perature drops considerably and your perspiration increases. In the quieting down process, your muscles go off duty as It's easy to find an excuse for delaying hard work. Do you have trouble sleeping? sleep-ing? If so, you are among the 52 per cent of Americans who, according ac-cording to a survey, have occasional oc-casional or frequent difficulty achieving the bliss of slumber through the night. Generally speaking, there are three types of insomniacs: The greatest number are those who can't get started who have difficulty falling asleep when they first hit the hay. People who wake up often during the night, then have a hard time falling back into slumber. Those who wake up much too early in the morning after af-ter only four or five hours of sleep and then toss around until it's time to start the day. The true chronic insomniac is irritable and restless, tense throughout the day. He uses up more energy than he should the brain quits assigning them jobs to do. Yet, during sleep you must move often if you expect to wake up refreshed. No one sleeps "like a log." The average person changes position posi-tion about 45 times, often 60 or more, in a night. The amount of sleep you should get depends on your physiological and psychological psychologi-cal make-up. Some people need 10 hours, others only six. Actually, Ac-tually, many people get more sleep than they realize. Dr. Walter C. Alvarez, former consultant con-sultant at the Mayo Clinic, maintains there are several depths to sleep, and many people peo-ple get enough rest from a stage in which there are either frequent short periods of waking or a slight residue of consciousness. A joke is seldom laughable to the jokee. The reputation of a good newspaper is answer enough to its critics. Car sales climb to record in March. It is surprising what a public pub-lic speaker will say to gain publicity. when he sits, stands, eats and talks. Fretting too much, his emotions on edge, by the day's end he's exhausted but his mind will not let him fall asleep or pass a restful night. The majority of those who now and then have difficulty sleeping may not know what their problem is. It could be a disturbing event during the day, or an important undone chore that prods the subconscious. subcon-scious. Dr. Francis C. Wood, Chief of the Department of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, Pennsyl-vania, observes that many older old-er people have trouble falling asleep at night. Sleep theories Many theories on the nature of sleep have been offered by brain surgeons, chemists and other researchers. One is that sleep is nothing more than a "conditioned reflex." Another is that sleep comes when the oxygen supply to the brain begins be-gins to slack off. Still others involve fatigue-caused lactic acid that accumulates in the blood, or the rise and fall of body temperature. Dr. Nathaniel Klietman, a physiologist and perhaps the |