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Pique'n'yer interest

Sleep is overrated

I’ve never been a very good sleeper.

I remember arguing with my parents for sending me to bed one night in the summer when it was still light out, and then tossing and turning until I at last got up and started playing with my toys. I was probably four years old.

It wasn’t just that I wanted to stay up, like other kids who would beg and plead for another half hour only to fall asleep sitting on the couch 10 minutes later. I really couldn’t sleep, and if I knew I wouldn’t sleep then I sure couldn’t see the point of lying awake in bed when there were so many other things to do.

My problem has always been an overactive imagination, combined with a lack of mental discipline. For some reason my brain always seems to wake up the moment my head hits the pillow, and if I have any trouble or stress, or I’m excited about something, I can’t seem to shut my brain down long enough to fall asleep.

To boot, I’m also a light sleeper — any noise, movement, or light in the room will rouse me from the deepest sleep. And while it’s usually easier to fall asleep a second or third time in a night it’s not as automatic as closing my eyes again.

For a while there I decided I was a night person by nature, but I never slept in long enough in the morning to make up for all the sleep I missed the night before. I’d be in bed, pushing the snooze button for hours at a time, lying comfortably in that blurry world between sleeping and waking. All my best dreams are between snooze alarms.

I can be tired all day after not sleeping but that doesn’t make it any easier to fall asleep that night. I have to be really sleep deprived before my body and mind will give up and I can collapse into sleep.

When I was younger I learned a few habits to kick insomnia. Some of them actually work, when I remember to put them into practice.

One habit is to brush my teeth and wash my face at least an hour before going to bed, in case my subconscious associates the same activities with waking up. Eating is the same — you’re not supposed to eat two to three hours before bed because you engage your metabolism, run out of fuel, and wake up in the middle of the night feeling hungry.

Another habit is to make a list of all the things I have to do tomorrow before turning in, and writing down a few things that happened during the day so I’m not thinking about them when I turn off the light.

Yoga breathing is also good at relaxing the body and clearing the mind — breathe in for four seconds, hold for five, exhale for seven.

Some people read before they go to sleep but I get so sucked in by books that I can find myself awake for hours turning page after page. Setting a limit of one or two chapters a night and sticking to it is the only way I can get myself to put a book down.

I also find that I don’t sleep well without getting any physical activity during the day. I never actually do it, but I think I’d sleep a lot better if I spent some time on the exercise bike or did a few push-ups before turning in.

Other little tips and tricks include trying to sleep with one eye open, physically contracting and releasing every muscle from your toes to the creases in your forehead to relax your body, meditating 15 minutes sitting up before turning in, and enforcing quiet time — turning the television and stereo off at least half an hour before bed, being silent, and talking in whispers when it’s necessary to speak.

I’ve used all of these tricks over the years, but sometimes they don’t help. For example, I still don’t sleep the night before travelling, or events like running races or bike races — the last three years I’ve run Comfortably Numb it’s been on less than an hour of sleep. The week before my wedding I probably slept about four hours a night, which destroyed my voice and made for some rather pale wedding photos.

You’d think with a newborn baby at home keeping me up half the night I’d finally be getting to bed early and dropping off to sleep whenever I have a spare moment, but it hasn’t worked out that way. Every time Elly sighs or stretches in her bassinet I wake up, just as I wake up every time she cries to be fed or changed. All that’s happened is that I’m getting less sleep, and have more on my mind when I turn out the light.

In recent years pharmaceutical companies have announced trials for drugs that make it possible to go almost without sleep, ensuring all the processes that take place during down time still happen while you’re awake. I think I would take those pills if I could — my problem has always been that there aren’t enough hours in the day, and I have too many hobbies getting neglected while I sleep away one third to one quarter of my life.

I’m not the only person wrestling with sleep issues — one study found that roughly 75 per cent of adults suffer at least one symptom of a sleep problem at least a few nights a week. Up to one in five people take sleeping pills, while one in seven will drink alcohol to nod off.

People go to extraordinary lengths to get sleep. I think I’d go just as far not to have to.