Why sleep sometimes eludes us

为什么有时我们无法入睡

The Forum

社会与文化

2024-10-19

49 分钟
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Do you find it difficult to get a good night's sleep? If you do, you are not alone. According to the US National Institutes of Health, between 6 and 30 per cent of adults suffer from insomnia or lack of restorative sleep. Since the establishment of sleep medicine a century ago, we have learnt a lot about the causes of sleeplessness. And yet, as the continuing development of new sleep aids demonstrates, its prevalence remains high. Persistent lack of sleep can have serious consequences for your health but despite this some writers, and other creative people, seem to welcome it. Franz Kafka famously claimed that if he couldn't pursue his stories through the night, they would "break away and disappear". Iszi Lawrence discusses our changing understanding of insomnia, and its hold over our imagination, with Dr. Manvir Bhatia, the vice-president of Indian Society for Sleep Research; science journalist Kenneth Miller, author of Mapping the Darkness; the Scottish writer – and self-confessed ‘intermittent insomniac’ - A L Kennedy; and World Service listeners. (Photo: A woman lying awake on a bed at night. Credit: Pony Wang/Getty Images.)
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  • welcome to the Forum from the BBC World Service.

  • I am Izzy Lawrence.

  • Absolutely no coffee after midday.

  • I need a cappuccino just before bedtime.

  • A hot bath before bed does the trick.

  • I need to have a cool shower.

  • No electronics in the bedroom.

  • I play solitaire or Sudoku on my phone.

  • These are some of the things that help World Service listeners to fall asleep.

  • I could list many more examples, but I think you get the idea.

  • Different things, even complete opposites, work for different people.

  • And if I can draw any conclusion from the hundreds of responses to our call outs on Facebook and on radio,

  • it is that getting a good night's sleep can be difficult wherever you live,

  • and that some people have wonderfully imaginative strategies to help them drift off.

  • Here is what works for Forum listener Annette what I do is I imagine a huge big pile of ironing that.

  • Needs to be done and so I. Have to pick up the ironing one by one.

  • Iron the sleeve, iron the front.

  • There's so much more ironing to do.

  • And then before I know it, the alarm goes off and it's the morning.

  • Adequate sleep is clearly important for all of us if we're to function well,