So I've heard, twice now, that your body supposedly will sleep better (or at least get there faster) while it is cooling down. But I question the clarity of the concept, and on three grounds.

• First, from what research to which I was directed, it seemed that all subjects were essentially told to be bumps on logs. Granted, it's kinda hard to sleep while you're running—but what comes to mind first for me is that when you don't move for long periods of time, doesn't your body temperature drop anyway? Internal heat is caused partially by breakdown of sugars (or 'burning' carbohydrates) and partially by friction from muscle movement and blood movement. If you aren't moving, then you need to burn less fuel, you produce very little muscular friction, and your pulse slows which nullifies a portion of friction there. I wonder, then, if the conclusion that a cooling body facilitates sleep is not really just a non-moving body instead, and is providing a false correlation. (Also, when you sleep your body shuts down even further, so that could be misleading the information as well.)

• Why, then, do we feel exceptionally drowsy while sunbathing? Our body then is heating up because it is absorbing energy from the sun's radiation. I know I hate driving in the afternoons because the sun beating in the window makes me start drifting very easily. This evidence would seem to contradict the cooling theory, unless there is a way the body is cooling by absorbing energy of which I am unaware.
• In the previous situations and after showers, one tends to also feel very good. There are a few certain . . . other leisure activities that produce the same reactions. This good feeling is promoted by naturally-produced endorphins, and can also be triggered by strenuous exercise, receiving (or giving) a gift, hard laughing, or being scared to hell. In fact, I tend to be able to sense when I am going to sleep because right before I feel nothing at all, I feel absolutely insanely good—especially when I'm getting warm under my comforter. (Irony.) But general info aside, endorphins are triggered in each of the cases I presented earlier, as well as after showering. (Or even during a shower.) Again, it seems to me that "body-cooling", though related to sleeping, is an effect of another factor, and not a cause.

Incidentally, most of the times I have been afflicted with insomnia, it's because I just can't stop thinking. Either I'm replaying some part of the day that went very badly or very tensely, or I'm playing out some event in the future that might be very bad or tense, or my mind is just pretending it has ADD and bouncing from one topic to another for no reason at all. My usual solution in those cases is to turn on a light and do something, most often: reading, writing, listening to an entire CD with the light off, or playing something on my handheld. Every one of those things will let my head calm down and curl up in a corner, so I can black myself easier.

I also prefer showering in the morning. It just makes the rest of the day feel better. (^_^)

[darn it, I forgot to click the guest post button.]