Increasing number of people suffer from insomnia

A researcher working at an international health research organisation conducted a mini survey on Facebook on 20 February. She had asked her friends on Facebook how they slept on the night before. A total of 53 people responded and 26 or 49 per cent of them had said they had trouble sleeping.  

On the same day, the researcher had asked 11 of her colleagues about their sleep. In response, nine of them said they didn’t sleep well on the night before. The researcher had run this survey to investigate the reasons for her troubled sleep from the previous night.

Problems like not sleeping well, having trouble sleeping or not having a sound sleep are common topics of discussions at office, school, college, university and in the family these days.

World Health Organization (WHO) says no matter for what reasons, if you don’t sleep well at night, the next day becomes disorderly. Without having enough sleep at night, an officer can fall asleep at work, a student at school or a driver can fall asleep while driving.

People feel tired while their concentration and caution get hampered without a good night’s sleep. Lack of sleep leads to people suffering from memory loss at times. Insomniacs are usually short tempered and some suffer from depression. People who have trouble sleeping are more at risk of having accidents or getting injured.

Insomnia became more prevalent during the Covid pandemic. Even research showed that people’s sleep was hampered during the pandemic. Last year, the Nature journal’s Scientific Report published a research article on people’s sleep in Bangladesh.

Information on sleep was collected from 9,730 persons in April of 2020. Alongside Jahangirnagar University, Jashore University of Science and Technology (JUST) and UK’s University College London, total seven universities from China, Saudi Arabia, Taiwan, USA and Canada were involved in the study.

The research showed that 64.7 per cent people have slept seven to nine hours at night while 29.6 per cent slept less than seven hours and 5.7 per cent people slept more than nine hours.

Researchers compared the results of this study with the findings of another study done prior to 2020. Information was collected from 3,968 people in that research from earlier.

That study had showed that 87.4 per cent people used to sleep seven to nine hours at night. Meanwhile, 8.9 per cent people slept less than seven hours and only 3.7 per cent people slept more than nine hours at night. The comparison show that the number of people sleeping lees has increased.

Sleep is linked to health. Adequate amount of sleep is required for good health. Lack of sleep is associated with the risks of cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, diabetes and several types of cancer.

To reduce the risk, physicians advise people to get enough sleep or take medicine for sleep. However, there’s no national or international decision on how much sleep is adequate.

Back in 2015, American Academy of Sleep Medicine and Sleep Research Society after reviewing several thousand research articles from the past proposed time limits of sleep for people of various age group.

In it, children aged one to two years were advised to sleep for 11 to 14 hours. Meanwhile, 14-17 year olds were advised to sleep for 8 to 10 hours and 26 to 64 year olds 7 to 9 hours. People aged 65 and above needs to sleep for 7 to 8 hours.

Various reasons and issues are detrimental to sleep. These includes children, pets, sound, light, heat, type of bed, pain, sleeping partner, type of profession, habits, narcotics, medicine, television, radio, computer, cellphone and so on.

Oxford publication’s booklet ‘Sleep: A Very Short Introduction’ advises that television and computer must not be kept in the bedroom, arguments or hard physical exercise must be avoided before going to sleep and caffeinated food or beverage must not be consumed late in the afternoon or in the evening.

It added that one must not go to sleep in an empty or too much filled stomach, sleeping medication prescribed to others must be avoided, sleeping medicine must not be brought on one’s own or become anxious about sleep.

The booklet also stated that for sleeping well one must go to sleep and wake up at the same time every day, the bed room has to be used for sleep only, one has to do physical exercise in the morning and in the afternoon and one must come in regular contact with natural light.

The temperature in the bedroom has to be endurably cool, the environment in the room has to be calm, the room has to be completely dark at the time of sleep, the hands and legs have to be warm while sleeping and the light in the room has to be dimmed out as far as possible one or two hours before going to bed, it added.

The directorate general of health has no activities or programmes to address the issues with sleep in Bangladesh. And, there’s almost no discussion on sleeping troubles in the civil society or in the media.

Under such condition, World Sleep Day was observed Friday (15 March). The Association of Surgeons for Sleep Apnea, Bangladesh organised a seminar on this at the Officers Club in Dhaka next Monday.

Secretary general of the association, professor Mani Lal Aich told Prothom Alo, “Trouble of sleep is becoming more predominant day by day. Awareness on this issue is at a dangerous level of low among people.”

“People have become dependent on medication. The directorate general of health services should start public awareness campaign and separate programmes on the topic of sleep," he added.