THE ULTIMATE GUIDE to SLEEP

8-PAGE SPECIAL INSIDE LIVING

How did you sleep last night? Did you toss and turn, trying to grab a little shut-eye before the alarm clock rang to herald another busy, but sleep-deprived, day? For 15pc of Irish people, insomnia is a nightly reality. And it affects every part of life, from memory and mood, to parenting and work. So what works to improve sleep? In this eight-page special, author and sleep therapist

Sasha Stephens, who herself spent 15 years as a chronic insomniac, shares her three-point plan to banish sleepless nights. Writers Stefanie Preissner, Sophie White and comedian Danny O’Brien reveal their approaches, and our experts offer advice on escaping the nightmare of insomnia.

INSOMNIA is a most cruel affliction, writes Sasha Stephens, a condition that seems to sap the energy, motivation and fun out of life. My 15-year battle with crippling, incessant sleepless nights started at university. A combination of a horrendous sleep routine, allnight parties, getting up in the late afternoon, binge drinking, and falling asleep in the library were the trigger for a run of bad sleep. Mistreated with a procession of sleeping pills and antidepressants, a few bad nights became full-blown chronic insomnia.

Sleep deprivation rapidly became the norm as I struggled through life, walking around in a zombie-like state of perpetual anxious exhaustion. Most nights were spent in a sort of shallow half-sleep where I never felt truly unconscious — something I came to call ‘angry dozing’. But often I would get no sleep at all, and the night before my own wedding, I didn’t sleep even for one minute.

Overcoming my insomnia became my driving purpose, my life’s work, my obsession. Addicted to online sleep forums, I would share and commiserate every day with the sleep-deprived of the whole world. My life became a series of elaborate rules and rituals, pills, potions and gadgets, all intended to improve sleep. But it seemed the more remedies I tried to tame this monster, the bigger it grew.

It took 15 years of suffering before things began to change. These days, I probably sleep better than I’ve ever done. Usually 8-9 hours minimum. But it wasn’t drugs or doctors that cured me of 15 years of insomnia. It was an outdoor activity holiday. For one precious fortnight in the summer of 2007, I spent every day kayaking, rock climbing and stomping through the forest. Forced into a strict going-to-bed regime, I was prevented from carrying out my obsessive routines, and I had no audience for my usual complaining about sleep. With so much going on, I was able to ‘get out of my head’, stop ‘being an insomniac’ and just enjoy the business of being alive. After a few days of this, I began to sleep — normally.

It was this holiday that led me to see the whole problem afresh. I implemented some fundamental changes to my behaviour and, within weeks of this holiday, I was sleeping better than I had in years. And so began my somewhat miraculous, but wholly accidental, transformation from chronic insomnia to sleep therapist.

THE EPIDEMIC

A 15-year history of insomnia like mine isn’t that unusual. According to the World Health Organisation twothirds of adults in developed nations are not getting the recommended eight hours of sleep a night. In the UK, almost 50pc of the population gets six hours or less.

But hey, it’s only sleep. It’s not that important, is it?

It is, according to Professor Matthew Walker, a neuroscientist and director of the Center for Human Sleep Science at the University of California. He warns the current ‘sleep-loss epidemic’ is a potential catastrophe, directly responsible for a whole range of fatal diseases including cancer of the bowel, prostate and breast. And statistics released by the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention, suggest adults who sleep less than seven hours are more likely to suffer with heart disease, stroke, asthma, cancer, arthritis, depression, kidney disease and diabetes.

Car and workplace accidents, depression and suicide are also significantly increased in insomniacs (although some of these could be caused by the side effects of sleeping pills).

But perhaps scariest of all, according to a 2018 study by the UK National Institutes of Health, losing just one night of sleep leads to an immediate increase in beta-amyloid, a protein in the brain associated with Alzheimer’s disease. If missing one night of sleep increases our chances of developing dementia, perhaps we should be taking this sleep-loss epidemic a little more seriously.

WHY IS IT HAPPENING?

Life has changed a lot in the last 40 years or so. Technology has found its way into every part of our lives, even into our beds. And idly browsing the Twitter feed right before switching off the light and discovering an incendiary remark or an infuriating news story does little to prepare us for peaceful sleep. From the moment we wake and reach for our phone to read the morning emails, to that last Facebook check before switching out the light, we seem to be addicted to looking at screens, be they TVs, phones, computers or iPads.

Even something as innocuous as watching TV harbours a hidden danger. According to Harvard researchers, the ‘blue light’ given off by such devices suppresses our production of melatonin, the natural ‘sleep hormone’, and can play havoc with our natural sleep rhythms.

We also work longer hours than the previous generation and are more likely to catch up on additional work at home and even on our daily commute. Despite longer work hours, we seem to be on an unhealthy quest to survive on as little sleep as possible, even glorifying the bizarre sleep habits of Margaret Thatcher and Winston Churchill as some sort of ideal. Both claimed to get no more than five hours a night.

“I can’t get any more sleep because I work such long hours,” we protest. “If I went to bed any earlier, I’d never get to spend time with the kids/wife/ husband/guys/Playstation.” It seems that work, with all its stresses, is our number one priority. Family and fun come next, with sleep a long way down the list.

In his book, Why We Sleep, Matthew Walker highlights the way we tend to judge those who get a lot of sleep as lazy, and view long working hours as ‘heroic’. I have also noted this ‘self-congratulatory stance’ in my capacity as a sleep therapist. When I tell people I regularly sleep nine hours a night, I often get funny looks. Whether it’s boasting about the severity of one’s insomnia or highlighting that our busy lives don’t allow for such frivolities, there is a sense of achievement in not getting enough sleep.

If we don’t change this attitude, the insomnia plague looks set to worsen.