PAINLESS EARLY RISING
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—May I be allowed to suggest that the banishment al depression may perhaps be due more to the feeding of the nerves by milk rather than to the cessation of the taking of coffee and tea ? Coffee-drinkers, notably the French, do not seem to be particularly prone to early morning depression. Nor do the greatest strong-tea drinkers, viz., working women.
My own theory of early morning depression is that it is due to poisons in the body due to lack of oxygen through shallow breathing. A very great number of people are shallow breathers, probably most middle-aged people are, and in some forms of neurasthenia there is a tendency to Cheync-Stokes breathing.
Quite by accident, through watching a sleeping person who was suffering from severe nervous depression, I saw that so far as sound and movement of breathing were concerned she might have been dead—her husband also told me that many times he had leant over her and touched her in fear while she slept. So far as we can judge deep-breathing has been the main cause o: her recovery and I have known of two
similar cases.—! am, Sir, &c., MARY BLEST.
Previous page
