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Having a cheeky lie-in on a Saturday can kill you. Who knew? Apart from every couple on the planet, that is?
Sleep, already a marital battleground (aka the Theatre of Snore) has just been weaponised further with research, actual scientific research, revealing that having different sleep patterns from weekdays to weekends can increase gut bacteria linked with obesity, heart attacks and strokes.
That means that my husband’s extra shut-eye isn’t just annoying and selfish. It’s annoying and dangerous!
How dare he potentially rob his children of a father by prioritising a long lie-in over a long life? As for the symphonic rasping and wheezing sound effects, I have just three little words: insult to injury.
According to experts at King’s College London, who run ZOE Predict, the largest ongoing nutritional research programme in the world, an extra 90 minutes in bed is enough to disrupt an individual’s internal body clock. In this instance, two little words will do it: reckless endangerment.
If I’m coming across as unnecessarily aggy, then you must be young. Or single. And definitely child-free.
Hand on heart, something happens once you have a baby. I don’t mean the protectiveness or the extraordinary quasi-spiritual awakening. I mean the ordinary sort of awakening and with it the need – the greed – for sleep.
And lo, there arises a competitive exhaustion that supplants all other emotions and fills you with murderous resentment at the sight of your other half nodding off on the sofa.
Hollywood would have us believe your first instinct is to smile indulgently and gently drape an expensive cashmere throw over their supine form.
I have never once seen the heroine wrench the smelly dog blanket out from under his head in fury while yelling: “Why must you absolutely insist on watching obscure Flemish-noir on Walter Presents if you’re just going to fall asleep before we’ve even reached the lead detective’s troubled backstory?”
A girlfriend used to say, with frightening earnestness, that she’d much rather her husband was sleeping with another woman than just sleeping; the betrayal would feel less momentous.
Her twins are teenagers now, but the sleep deficit persists. As does her reproach; she will never get those hours back.
Then again she should consider herself fortunate that she can actually sleep; others in the wider population suffer from such crippling episodes of insomnia that they can barely function.
Tiredness takes its toll. Economically, the cost to the UK economy of sleep deprivation has been put at £40 billion a year.
Little wonder then, the sleep business is booming; wearable tracking gadgets, lavender pillow sprays, noise-blocking headsets, weird-tasting tea.
Figures from Statista show that in 2009 the industry was worth £39 million. Last year, it was valued at £64 million.
Earlier this year, the Australian Government Office of Road Safety revealed it was trialling roadside “sleep limit” blood tests to ascertain whether drivers are rested enough to drive. If it proves a success it may well be emulated here.
It may sound punitive but data from the RAC suggests as many as one fifth of accidents on motorways may be caused by drivers falling asleep at the wheel, with 18-30-year-old males most at risk when driving late at night.
For those who don’t fall into the category of pumped-up man child, stress plays a huge role in fatigue. Maybe that’s why we’re all so obsessed with sleep?
How, when, how long. Quality versus quantity; sleeps interrupted, great sleeps we have had, great sleeps we plan to have. How we sleep but are tired. All the time.
I have a hunch sleep trumps even the weather as a conversational topic. Then again, it’s a more universal experience; everyone needs it, it impacts on our health and mood – and, to return to the concept of competitive exhaustion, there are clear winners, “good sleepers” and losers “bad sleepers”.
At one extreme, those people who require very little sleep (Margaret Thatcher, Elon Musk) tend to be terribly smug, equating it with superior energy and efficiency. Rude.
At the other, those people who require a lot of sleep (Winston Churchill “remained in bed for a substantial breakfast and reading of mail and all the national newspapers” then dictated to his secretaries, while still in bed, before rising to bathe by noon), revel in that too, equating their ability to carve out so much time with status and luxury. Even worse.
The rest of us, meanwhile, are shattered. Shattered, I tell you. We are the sleep-deprived majority; almost three quarters of people in the UK don’t get the recommended seven-nine hours of sleep per night, according to a study last year by insurance group Direct Line.
It found that one in seven were getting less than five hours, which presumably prompted a disgruntled chorus of “five hours? Five you say? I should be so lucky”.
But come the weekend, we, the peevish under-sleepers, now have carte blanche to rouse them, the self-indulgent over-sleepers, under the guise of medical reasons.
The smirking schadenfreude is just a lovely bonus.
That extra hour of sleep is annoying and selfish – not to mention highly dangerous
The latest scientific study gives us carte blanche to rouse self-indulgent over-sleepers, under the guise of medical reasons