For a Good Night's Sleep

Most urban Indians dread bedtime. Sleep disorders ensure that 93 per cent of the people living in cities don't sleep well or worse, are not able to sleep at all. This sleeplessness results in diseases, which can cost their health and the country's economy dearly. What is causing us to lose sleep? And how can we sleep well again? VIBHA VARSHNEY and KARNIKA BAHUGUNA make sense of latest research.

- Vibha Varshney and Karnika Bahuguna

Thomas Edison, the inventor of the light bulb, once said, “Sleep is a criminal waste of time, inherited from our cave days.” His invention helped people work more easily after dark. Even today, many people, including world leaders and celebrities, boast of getting by with less sleep every night. But scientists and doctors have started seeing adverse health effects in people who deprive themselves of sleep and are trying to understand why this happens.

Dictated by our body clock, sleep allows us to rest and rejuvenate. Studies have shown that areas in the brain involved in the repair and restoration of the body’s physiological processes are more active when we sleep. They have also shown that the brain processes and consolidates memories as we sleep and the body winds down for a few hours to save energy. Sleeping takes up a third of our lifetime.

Research is on to explore all the functions of sleep. We are trying to find what happens to our biological and cognitive functions when we do not sleep enough, or when we change our sleeping time due to our lifestyle, jet lag or shift work. “There is still much work to be done to fully appreciate sleep and the consequences of not obtaining sufficient sleep,” says Gemma Paech, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Rush University Medical Center’s Biological Rhythms Research Lab in Chicago, USA. Understanding these aspects would help doctors devise treatments for people suffering from sleep disorders, of which there are more than 80 kinds. The most common disorders are insomnia (trouble falling or staying asleep), obstructive sleep apnoea (when walls of the throat relax and narrow, blocking the airway and disrupting breathing) and restless leg syndrome (an urge to move one’s legs). (See ‘Why we should sleep’, p33.)