health and fitness: In search of sleep: ‘I am a night owl who desperately wants to be up with the lark’

lundi 1 février 2016

In search of sleep: ‘I am a night owl who desperately wants to be up with the lark’

We’ve all experienced those nights when it’s difficult to get to sleep and even more so getting up in the morning. But what if, like busy GP Farrah Jarral, your body clock is permanently stuck in night-time mode?

For years, I have been trying to score the perfect night’s sleep in the face of a body clock that perks me up like a hyper-alert raccoon the moment the sun goes down, and a career that demands serious mental acuity. I would love to have the carefree sleep of my borderline-narcoleptic mother, to be able to drift into oblivion anywhere, any time. Instead, I have a distinctly unpoetic relationship with an array of devices that make up my bedtime ritual. Electric toothbrush. Useless scented candle. Satin eyemask. Silicone earplugs. Acrylic biteguards. Memory-foam pillow.

I have tried cutting down on the blue-light brain poison of a scrolling Twitter feed and clamping down on disruptive feline co-sleeping. I used a sleep-tracking app for a while, until I realised that keeping a phone in my bed, connected to the entire, exciting world in all its timezones, was a big mistake. I ditched it, but only after learning that I require seven and half hours’ sleep. This magic number has become an obsession, as I run tense calculations of my projected sleep quota every time I get into bed. I have even tried waking up at my usual weekday time of 6am at weekends to avoid “social jetlag”, but it made me feel like the pig in the cage in that Radiohead song.