How many hours of sleep were lost at Cannes? From getting dressed to partying into the wee hours, a glamour-filled schedule takes its toll on your sleep pattern. As complaints of chronic fatigue, tiredness, stress and sleepless nights rise, we once again ask: are we getting enough sleep?
By Susan Devaney
‘It is extraordinary to me that we as a species feel that we can do whatever we want, whenever we want, wherever we want without any consequences. In our genes we have three and a half billion years of evolutionary baggage and we feel that we can simply abandon or override our biology without any consequences. We simply can’t do that.’ says Russell Foster, Professor of Circadian Neuroscience at the University of Oxford. As one of the industry’s leading experts on sleep, he cannot place enough emphasis on the value of sleep for both our mental health and general well being.
‘The normal range of about eight [hours] is fine, but some people, (only a few) can get by with as little as six,’ says Foster. Gaining eight hours of sleep every night was once viewed as an over indulgence. However, in recent years there has been a noticeable shift in attitudes. The ‘you snooze, you lose’ stance of the Eighties has been pushed aside, and in its place a firm focus has fallen on the importance of rest. ‘I think for so long, particularly during the Eighties and Nineties it was thought that sleep was for wimps, and that nothing important was going on during sleep,’ says Foster. It was Margaret Thatcher, then British Prime Minister, who famously claimed sleeping was for ‘wimps’. Surviving on four hours of sleep per night, she became somewhat of a template for many business figures, especially women. Last year Arianna Huffington, the founder and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post, explained why we all needed more sleep. After experiencing major health issues due to trying to survive on as little sleep as possible, she made it her mantra to change this attitude in the workplace. ‘In the years since that wake-up call, I’ve come to understand that it’s not enough to treat sleep – and especially lack of sleep – as a stand-alone issue. Sleep is something that encompasses many aspects of our lives, from technology and leadership to our relationships, careers, creativity and stress’, she wrote in May 2014 for the Telegraph newspaper. Tuning into our body clock appears to be essential: ‘the key thing about how much sleep we need is for each of us to listen to the needs of the body ... Our grandparents taught us to sleep on the problem and we now have scientific evidence to show that if you do sleep on a problem you are much more likely to come up with a novel solution to a complex problem,’ Foster says.
