If you get a decent night’s rest regularly, you’re likely to be slimmer, happier and healthier. So why are we getting worse at sleeping, not better? The Times science editor Tom Whipple investigates. Back when commercial sleep trackers were new, Simon Kyle, from Oxford University, decided to conduct a study.
He gave wearable devices to people who already had sleep problems and told them he was going to see how their performance in the day was affected by their sleep the night before. He knew and his subjects knew just how important sleep was. By this time - 2018 - good sleep had already joined diet and exercise in the holy trinity of a healthy lifestyle.
Study after study had shown how sleeping badly affected our health, both physical and mental. It impaired both day-to-day and long-term cognitive performance. Poor sleepers got fatter, sadder, sicker and stupider.
So it was not surprising that “eight hours” had become the new “five a day”. Six years later and we now have watches, eye masks and rings that have been repurposed to log sleep. We can put phones under our pillows to listen out for sleep apnoea, and smart mats under our sheets to track our tossing and turning.
Then there are the remedies. You can buy weighted blankets to put above you and temperature-controlled mattresses for below - heating and cooling to match your core body’s requirements for each cycle of sleep. TikTok influencers promote the “sleepy girl mocktail”, a (supposedly) sleep-inducin.