Source: 2016 Sleep Health Survey of Australian Adults by Sleep Health FoundationWORK
11.2%WATCH T V
40.3%HAVE
SEX
3.6%EXERCISE
5.5%LISTEN TO
MUSIC
8.8% DRINK
ALCOHOL
3.3%HAVE A HOT
BATH OR
SHOWER
20.4%SEE FAMILY
AND FRIENDS
10.4%GO ONLINE
51.1%READ
9.9%How do you spend the hour before bed? Here,
the night-time activities of Aussie womenI s Dyson Pure Hot +
Cool Link Purifier
Alex Davies,
WH Features Editor
“My unit can get hot but I hate
noisy fans, so this silent cooler
(a n d h e a t e r, F Y I ) w i l l b e a
dream as the weather warms
up. Plus, you can download an
air-quality app to see how well
it captures pollutants and
allergens.” $799, dyson.com.authink if we have anything short
of an eight-hour block of blissful,
uninterrupted sleep, we’ve slept
badly,” explains Feld. In fact, we
all naturally wake up several times
a night in between sleep stages- my problem is that when I realise
I’m awake, I start stressing about
how I’m going to be useless the
next day. It’s a miserably triumphant
thought process: “I knew it; tomorrow
is going to be a total nightmare.”
Under threat
This sort of stress around sleep
is actually a form of performance
anxiety, says Feld. “We worry that
if we get less than our eight hours,
we’re not going to be able to cope
with the day ahead.” I’d never
associated my bedtime anxiety with
my perfectionism, but suddenly it
makes sense. When you struggle
with imposter syndrome and a sensePower hour
of not being quite good enough,
the prospect of a crap night’s kip
making you even more inadequate
feels like a serious threat.
And am I imagining things, or
do anxieties seem so much more
gut-wrenching at 3am than at 3pm?
“There are reasons for feeling this
way,” says Feld. “You’re alone, and
you don’t have distractions likeIMPROVING SLEEP QUALITY LEADS
TO HAPPINESS LEVELS EQUIVALENT TO
SOMEONE WHO’S WON A JACKPOT
OF AROUND $300,000.
Source: University of Warwick, UK
Netflix to help you push negative
thoughts out of your mind.”
And let’s not forget, adds Law,
that for thousands of years, night
was a time of danger and threat
for humans. “It wasn’t that long
ago, in evolutionary terms, that the
night was a time of vulnerability –
feelings of anxiety associated with
falling asleep are perfectly natural,
potentially advantageous, from
an evolutionary perspective.”
I’ve always thought of my
night-time anxiety as perverse and
twisted, an unhealthy and self-
sabotaging impulse. It’s a huge relief
to learn that it’s actually perfectly
natural; in fact, it was once useful
for survival. As is learning that all
those people who think they sleep
an uninterrupted blissful sleep from
11pm to 7am are wrong – we all wake
up. This gives me one less thing to
be stressed and frustrated about
at 3am – and it might be the thing
that makes all the difference. WH109