Insomnia’s not killing me. It’s catastrophising sleep experts
They’re at it again, that shadowy but enormous clan perpetually conducting utterly pointless, panic-inducing studies about our lives. In recent months we’ve been told that even moderate amounts of alcohol “damage the brain”, a low-fat diet “could kill”, and that coffee “makes you live longer”. So drink up, tea lovers, or face an early grave.
These are silly enough. But there is one genre of study that’s harder to ignore, and whose counterproductivity I observe with blank horror. These are the studies whose message boils down to: “Sleep badly? Expect a miserable life and an early, gruesome death.”
Poor sleepers have been warned in separate studies of early deaths by Alzheimer’s and heart failure – to say nothing of the research that shows sleep deprivation’s deleterious effect on mood. Hardly a lullaby.
But the latest bulletin on the perils of poor slumber destroyed any remaining peace of mind. Previously, scientists have told us about all the ways in which poor sleepers suffer over a lifetime. But at least insomniacs could still be emotionally content, and/or smugly rich. Now we don’t even have that, after a study last week found that when it comes to happiness in life, quadrupling your income is nothing next to a good night’s sleep.
A bitter irony is emerging: the biggest bar to a good night’s sleep is not the insomniac herself, nor life circumstances, but the endless slew of sleep researchers breathing down our necks with catastrophic predictions. The more the negatives of sleep deprivation are megaphoned out, the more stressed out become those who struggle. And stress does not good sleep make.
Simply telling people to sleep better over and over again is like telling them on repeat to be more intelligent; who wouldn’t want either? The point is, it’s not within our power always to change certain things, and sleep is one of them. Sleep researchers: leave it alone for a while. If anything is going to keep us tossing and turning at night, it’s you.