Insight: May 10

This week Insight looks at the topic of Sleep and asks if we are doing it right and getting enough (no!)?

Are we getting too little, too much, too many hours in a row?

Is napping just for nannas?

We spend about one third of our lives sleeping. There’s no other activity we engage in more, and it’s as critical to our health as food and water.

So are we getting enough? And when we are snoozing, is the quality sufficient to sustain the demands of our busy lives?

How each and every individual manages their sleep can have a massive impact on their life and those around them.

This week, Insight meets the experts and the sufferers and hears their stories.

We explore the gamut of sleep problems plaguing Australians and the effects these have on our bodies, and in turn the impact it has on our lives.

We learn why 70% of teenagers are sleep deprived and examine the link between sleep and mental health.

From shift workers to new parents, from anxious HSC students to genuine insomniacs, sleeping habits vary with every individual.

Is there an effective and fool-proof way to re-set our circadian rhythms, and how do we counteract the impact of so much stimulation in our lives?

Guests available for interview include:

Experts:

Prof. Shantha Rajaratnam – Professor of Sleep and Circadian Medicines, Monash University’s Institute of Cognitive & Clinical Neurosciences

“Being without sleep for 24 hours can parallel the effects on the brain can be similar to being drunk… 17 -19 hours without sleep equates to, you know, performance impairment of about .05 blood alcohol concentration, so the legal limit. 24 hours gets closer to .08 or .10, so it can be pretty significant cognitive or neuro behavioural impairment.”

Fiona Kerr, organisational and neural complexity specialist

“There’s really interesting work done on not only taking a nap, but the length of the naps… the best nap is really the 15 – 25 minute nap… it increases alertness, increases memory, cognition, mood.”

Dr Chris Seton, paediatric & adolescent sleep physician

“70% of teenagers are sleep deprived… bad sleep in adolescence predicts later problems both related to moods, heart disease, diabetes, obesity.”

First person stories:

Dr. Michelle Johnston, emergency physician, first-hand experience being sleep deprived.

“Emergency departments, critical care areas are 24 hours… we don’t give enough credence I think to the real fallibility and humanness and what we expect to be provided by our critical care staff.”

Alex Forbes, shift worker, first-hand experience being sleep deprived.

“(I probably had) twenty odd hours sleep over the seven days… I was admitted to the stroke ward and observed for a few days… I returned to normal and by the time I left hospital after four days pretty much completely back to normal.”

Ally Nicolopoulos, psychology student, suffers from insomnia, alternates between alcohol and sleeping pills to overcome the issue.

“I can go three or four days, so two full nights, no sleep… I have some very severe sleep issues, but also attributing it myself to kind of my mental health.”

Judy Sahay CEO of a digital analysis company. Very active and thrives on minimal sleep.

“I actually sleep about four to five hours a night… if I sleep around eight to nine hours I actually feel more tired.”

Mark Serrels & Scott Kevill, conducted a sleep experiment, sleeping for 20mins every four hours.

“I almost fell onto train tracks…..I started to have hallucinations, extreme psychological difficulty. That’s when I gave up” (Mark)

Tuesday at 8.30pm on SBS.