PULL THE WOOL OVER YOUR EYES
Research shows a lack of Zs is killing you. Are new pyjamas the answer?
Longer hours, more screen time and a willingness to respond to emails at any hour of the day… The prerequisites for career success mean that modern man rarely catches a full eight hours of kip. Despite experts snoring on about sleep hygiene, more than half of us in the UK now survive on six hours or less. It’s fair to say that we’re stumbling
bleary-eyed towards a public health nightmare.
According to research from UC Berkeley, a single four- or five-hour night of sleep can lower your body’s levels of lymphocytes – white blood cells deployed to fight tumours and viruses – by 70%. The World Health Organisation even calls night-shift work a “probable carcinogen”. Researchers have found that men who sleep less than six hours per night are twice as likely to have a heart attack as the better rested. Frankly, it’s enough to keep you up at night. More comfortingly, however, the solution can be found folded up in your bedroom drawer.
An Australian study in Nature and Science of Sleep says that a simple upgrade to your pyjamas could abate insomnia. Wearing sheep’s wool to bed helps you fall asleep more quickly and stay in deeper sleep for longer, when compared to cotton or polyester pyjamas. The researchers concluded that wool keeps you in the “thermal comfort zone” most conducive to a restful night, allowing the body to regulate temperature more effectively than other materials. It’s time you threw out the baggy, cotton T-shirt and upgraded to merino: put sleepless nights to bed, once and for all.