Exploring and understanding the importance of sleep

Getting eight hours a night has gone from being mandatory to a luxury. Find out why people are sleeping less and the long-term havoc the lack of sleep is creating in our bodies.

Avoid exposure to LED lights at least an hour before bedtime, since they make the user feel more alert and awake. iStock

Sleep. For many, it’s a favourite weekend pastime as we look forward to catching up on lost hours. We turn off our alarms, tightly close the curtains, crank up the air-conditioning and fall into what will hopefully be a lengthy state of dreamy bliss.

But why are we saving our sleep for the weekend? Are we not getting enough during the week? A 2014 survey for Intercoil by YouGov found that UAE residents sleep an average of just 6.5 hours a night during the week and 7.8 hours during weekends. We’ve long heard experts claim that we should be trying to sleep an average of eight hours each night, but 25 per cent of Emiratis and Arab expatriates claim to get less than four hours. What’s more, two-thirds of survey respondents acknowledge that lack of sleep affects their daily functions.

While the lack of sleep may make us feel tired and cranky, it has a growing list of implications, both in the short and long term. For a start, we are more prone to accidents when we’re tired and that’s not a good thing, especially when we’re driving. Being tired can cause us to overindulge in high-energy foods, which may cause weight gain and can lead to health problems over time. Not getting enough sleep can also affect the way our bodies process and store carbohydrates, and may also alter immune function, which means we’re prone to getting sick more often. Research released in March this year also suggested that long-term sleep deprivation could lead to damage of brain cells. That’s enough bad news to send us rushing to bed at 8pm.

But getting enough sleep isn’t always as simple as going to bed earlier, or waking up later. There are often social and medical reasons for poor sleep patterns. The YouGov survey found that stress and daily life worries affected the sleep of 84 per cent of respondents, while 77 per cent (significantly higher for women) complained that bedroom temperature was a leading cause of poor sleep. Noise upset 74 per cent of people (although more women than men) .

Dr Khaldoon Mozahem, neurological consultant and sleep specialist at the American Center for Psychiatry and Neurology in Abu Dhabi, says poor sleep patterns in the UAE can also be attributed to the weather and culture.

“In the UAE, people often stay out late into the night, socialising or doing activities, either because the heat stops them from doing these things during the daytime or because work does,” he says. “The problem is when they have school or work the next day; often they will try to take naps or sleep late on the weekends. This disturbs the body’s biological rhythm – our brains like organisation and routine.”

Dr Mozahem also attributes poor sleep patterns to modern life. Before electricity, people would sleep when it got dark, but now artificial light allows us to override nature. “We are staying up later, rather than going to sleep when it gets dark,” he explains.

“Rather than listening to their bodies and preparing for sleep, people are using TVs and laptops and for many, the glare of the screen stimulates their brain, which wakes them up more.”

In 2011, the Journal of Applied Physiology published research that looked into the effect of LED-backlit computer screens (such as tablets) on the body's production of melatonin (the hormone that regulates sleep patterns), alertness and cognitive performance. It found that the amount of light emitted by LEDs was so significant that it caused a reduction in melatonin secretion and sleepiness levels. Put simply, using LED screens makes us more alert and awake. While that may be great for those under pressure to meet a looming deadline, it's not so great if we're using a tablet computer before going to bed, and unfortunately for our sensitive biological rhythms, technology use is becoming more prevalent.

A recent survey by UK communications regulator Ofcom found that Brits now spend more time using technology, such as smartphones and tablet computers, than they do sleeping. They spent an average of 11 hours and seven minutes consuming media on smartphones and tablets, listening to the radio and watching television. It represented a jump of more than two hours since 2010 – up from eight hours and 48 minutes. It all points to less sleep and more sleep-related problems for many people, not just in the UAE, but around the world.

What we should be doing is improving our “sleep hygiene”, says Dr Mozahem. “We need to develop good sleeping habits and prepare ourselves for sleep. A lot of people try to fight sleep, but this is a problem because your body eventually moves from drowsiness to activeness and then we have to wait for the tiredness to come again before we can sleep,” he explains.

“I explain to my patients that it is like a train. If you miss one, you have to wait for the next one to come along.”

He says that we can prepare ourselves for sleep by ensuring we have good sleeping conditions, also known as sleep hygiene. “For a start, we should relax for about an hour before bedtime. That means switching off the TV and laptop, and reading a book or listening to music instead. Have a hot drink or a hot shower. Keep your bedtime and wake-up time around the same each day, whether it’s a weekend or a week day.”

And exercise, while being necessary for good general health, is also important for sleep. “It is better to exercise in the morning because the natural light helps the body wake up. Even if you are exercising inside, if there is a window, your body will be exposed to the natural light and it will help you wake up. If you exercise late at night, it can be stimulating and stop you from being sleepy.”

Dr Mozahem also advises against eating large meals at night, while other sleep experts recommend avoiding caffeine, nicotine and other stimulants close to bedtime.

And as for whether we can really catch up on lost sleep, the answer, according to researchers at Penn State University College of Medicine in the United States, is yes and no. While we can recover from short-term loss by sleeping longer on the weekends or taking an afternoon nap, the effects of long-term sleep deprivation are difficult to counteract and over time can contribute to more serious health problems.

So, the moral of the story is that we should be aiming for between six and 10 hours a night and paying attention to how we feel. If we’re always tired, we need to look at our sleeping habits and make a concerted effort to get more shut eye. Put away the iPad, close the curtains, spray some lavender oil – sweet dreams.