Insomnia

Since becoming 'poorly', I have suffered with Insomnia.  I can go days on a couple of hours sleep a night for whatever reason.  It's 02:18am, I am now wide awake after being asleep for 2.5hrs.  

The past 5 days, in utter desperation, I have downloaded an app called 'Calm' from the play store which among many things allows me to listen to a bedtime story which has sent me to sleep once being awake in a similar situation I find myself in now, on 2 occasions in the past 5 nights.  

It seems I am not alone.  We are apparently, according to The Independent in a catastrophic sleep-loss epidemic, which is causing a host of potentially fatal diseases.  

Sleep deprivation affects “every aspect of our biology” and is widespread in modern society, and yet the problem is not being taken seriously by politicians and employers.

I have spoken about a 24/7 society in previous blog posts but electric lights, television, computer screens, longer commutes, the blurring of the line between work and personal time, and a host of other aspects of modern life are contributing to sleep deprivation, which is defined as less than seven hours sleep a night.  This has now become linked to cancer, diabetes, heart disease, stroke, Alzheimer’s disease, obesity and poor mental health among other health problems. In short, a lack of sleep is killing us.  Society has to change, Things have to change: in the workplace and our communities, our homes and families.

Latest figures in 2017 shows that sleep loss costs the UK economy over £30bn a year in lost revenue, or 2 per cent of GDP. 

Professor Walker spoke to the Guardian recently and stated that "Once you know that after just one night of only four or five hours’ sleep, your natural killer cells, the ones that attack the cancer cells that appear in your body every day drop by 70%, or that a lack of sleep is linked to cancer of the bowel, prostate and breast, or even just that the World Health Organisation has classed any form of night-time shift work as a probable carcinogen, how could you do anything else?”

While healthcare workers, employers and politicians all needed to pay greater attention to the benefits of sleep, Professor Walker said people need to do so on an individual level.  He believes anxiety plays a major part in this, he believes we are lonelier and he even goes as far to say that we are living in a more depressed society. 

I know just in my area of the NHS that I work in, that there is a tendency to boast about needing little sleep to function. Margaret Thatcher, who developed dementia in later life, was famous for functioning on a few hours a night. 

When I think about all this logically, why do we deprive ourselves of sleep? Especially when we have enough studies now to show it is making us Ill. 

I have had countless studies, latest done in February 2017 on my brain and chemically how it affects my condition and being monitored for 2/3 days, I have seen that the brain is active while we are asleep especially during REM sleep, the brain is in an incredible active state while during deep sleep it switches itself into a processing state and runs almost silent. 

Never before has it been clearer, especially to me, that a sound night’s sleep is absolutely essential for a long and healthy life.