50 | August• 2017
7 SURPRISING WAYS TO GET MORE SLEEP
Fortunately, you don’t have to
swear off coffee, rely on sleeping
pills or buy a fancy mattress to get
a good night’s rest. These practical
tips may help improve the quality of
your slumber.Ditch your smartphone
Studies show that up to 60 per cent of
adults keep their mobile phones in the
bedroom at night. You’re more likely
to stay up too late texting, emailing or
using social media, and consequently
feel drowsy the next day.
“We know from research that us-
ing one app leads to another, so you
are likely to spend more time on your
mobile phone than you have intended
to,” says Liese Exelmans, a researcher
at the School for Mass Communica-
tion Research at the University of
Leuven, Belgium. “People over 60
who use their mobile phones at night
have a shorter sleep duration.” Older
people are more likely to be morning
persons, with a biological tendency to
wake up earlier, or they may need to
rise early for work or other activities.A
N INSOMNIAC FRIEND UNWITTINGLY HIJACKED MY
sleep recently. I’d never had trouble staying asleep
before, but my friend started texting at 2am to pass
the time. I keep my mobile phone on my bedside table,
so his texts disturbed me, even with the phone onvibrate – the buzz, accompanied by a lit screen, jolted me awake.
Eventually I activated a do-not-disturb setting: my phone remained
blissfully silent and dark when I received unwanted texts between
11pm and 8am, and my sleep returned to normal.
Mobile phone alerts, trips to the
bathroom or other things spoil many
people’s nightly rest. Research by the
Sleep Health Foundation has found
between 33 and 45 per cent of Aus-
tralians have poor sleep patterns that
lead to fatigue and irritability. Inter-
national guidelines suggest that adults
should sleep between seven and nine
hours nightly.
Chronic sleep deprivation isn’t just
making us groggy; it can harm our
health. Research shows that adults
who don’t sleep enough are more
likely to be sedentary and obese, and
are at greater risk of diabetes, heart
disease, depression and common
illnesses such as colds.
“Sleep is so important to physi-
cal and mental health,” says Brit-
ish sleep researcher Dr Neil Stanley.
“Anything that causes poor sleep
on an every-night basis can have
associations with risk factors for
diabetes, obesity, depression and
other problems. You have to look at
things that you potentially can do to
improvethe situation.” ILLUSTRATIONS BY JOHN ED DE VERA