Pillow talk

A quarter of all Kiwis have trouble sleeping, unable to find solutions to this age-old problem. And researcher Dr Michael Mosley says it can be fatal.

- RUTH BROWN

‘How do people go to sleep? I’m afraid I’ve lost the knack,” writer Dorothy Parker once said, no doubt regretfully. Then, as now, she was not alone. A quarter of Kiwis have trouble sleeping and the confirmed insomniacs among them will not appreciate your sleep tips and supplement suggestions. They will have tried them all.

British doctor Michael Mosley, though, is not to be put off. After great success with guides on diet, exercise and healthy living, he’s polished up his 2020 book Fast Asleep, which went rather unnoticed during the pandemic, and released 4 Weeks to Better Sleep, with updated evidence and his own personal experiences.

After 20 years of intermittent insomnia, Mosley has been enjoying improved slumber for at least nine months. Last year, he put himself through a clinical trial on sleep at Flinders University in Adelaide and went on to create a four-week schedule to get the sleep-deprived snoozing better. His sleep regime had long involved getting up in the night (as he explains in our extract, page 18) but, he told the Listener, those occasions are getting rarer.

Mosley’s new schedule starts with things like keeping a sleep diary, following a Mediterranean diet, and breathing exercises if you wake up in the middle of the night. It gradually includes more intensive regimes, such as sleep restriction therapy, resistance exercise and boosting gut-friendly foods. Weight loss can also play an important part.