Column: Well, slept well? | BRIGITTE.de

I don’t actually have any sleep problems, I said when I was asked to write this text. Maybe a few that have to do with menopause, and occasionally with the phases of the moon, I imagine, but otherwise: everything is fine. And at the same moment I realized that I was ignoring that some days a week I wake up at least three times during the night and can only fall back asleep with the help of audio books.

This is usually relatively quick, but there are also nights in which I keep setting the timer for another 15 minutes of radio play time and yet I only slip into a half-awake state in which the problems of the radio play staff – the sex is no longer that either what he once was, the father of my best friend has died, the husband has moved out or the jam that has been boiled down has become nothing – suddenly become mine in confused half-dreams or mix with my own problems. Did I actually answer my tax advisor’s email yesterday? Why didn’t my best friend call back? The dog keeps scratching his ear. Don’t I have to take him to the vet tomorrow? But then I would have to postpone the Zoom meeting with the client. And then an avalanche of everyday things arises that seems to overwhelm me.

This usually happens at three o’clock: the hour of ghosts and the ever-faster spinning carousel of thoughts. I once read somewhere that evolution has placed this black emotional depression, which is caused by falling serotonin levels, in the middle of the night so that we sleep through it. I would like to thanks to the melatonin, which replaces serotonin and cortisol at night and is supposed to promote sleep, but it only works to a limited extent. So not only am I awake at three, but also two hours after falling asleep at one, at five and finally an hour later.

The fight for sleep

In recent years I have become a bit of a sleeper, standing in the park with the dog at six in the morning and already thinking longingly about my afternoon nap, which I hope can be pushed somewhere into the day. Wrong, my mind knows, because even the afternoon nap can prevent sleeping through the night, but the longing for it remains. And so it begins, the vicious circle in the fight for sleepwhich has become a fleeting bed partner for more and more people.

Research proves that adequate sleep makes you happier, vaccinations work better, you are less stressed. In addition, you don’t age as quickly because a growth hormone is released during sleep that helps with regeneration. Cell division, new cell formation, reproduction, muscle building, resetting the brain – sleep helps here too.

Lack of sleep, on the other hand, makes you more willing to take risks and fat, because if you sleep less, you eat more. It weakens concentration, people get sick more often, which in turn affects the gross national product. Insomnia costs 27 billion euros annually because 40 percent of adults in Germany say they sleep poorly, including more women than men. 80 percent of working people between the ages of 35 and 65 say they sleep restlessly. Sleep disorders have increased by 66 percent in this group since 2010, and more and more children and young people are also affected. Around six to ten percent of the German population, i.e. at least five million people, now suffer from a difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep that requires treatment, have anxiety disorders, depression, addictions, conflicts with friends and family or withdraw completely.

Good sleep comes and goes

There are people who seem to have no problems with all of this and even boast that they can get by on a maximum of four hours of sleep and still be able to rule the world, see Trump or Thatcher. This is actually possible, but it is a gene mutation that a maximum of one percent of the population has.

Everyone else is trying to attract sleep so that it stays the whole night and ideally eight hours. We insomniacs no longer eat pasta before bed, avoid coffee in the afternoon and alcohol in the evening, and no longer watch Netflix in bed. Manchester City soccer star Erling Haaland wears blue light-blocking glasses three hours before bed and tapes his mouth shut so he breathes only through his nose while sleeping, which is said to make him feel fitter the next day. Gwyneth Paltrow also seals her lips at night and sells it to her followers as a unique bio-hack for regenerative sleep. It helps me now to write down the bad thoughts that come to me at night. In the morning I read it and think: What was that, why am I thinking about things that I can no longer change, why does the future loom like a gluttonous polar bear when a lot of it is almost ridiculous.

Besides, bad sleep is something that can appear and disappear again and again in life. There are phases in life when everything comes together at once. Between the ages of 21 and 45, training, career and family planning, buying an apartment and small children suddenly become the focus. In this phase I felt for the first time that there is no customary right to a good night’s sleep. I used to be able to sleep anytime and anywhere, on long-haul flights, on trains, all I had to do was collapse into a seat and my eyes would immediately close. When the child came, I, who considered myself to be the owl chronotype, became a compulsive lark and initially counted the days until he graduated from high school, because then I could finally switch back to being an owl.

Waking up at night: why is it so bad?

The next phase from 46 came, I still slept easier, although I no longer had to point my ear towards the children’s room at night. And I remained a lark who suddenly got along wonderfully with a maximum of seven hours; my internal clock had gotten used to it in all that time. But gradually I noticed that hormonal changes, coffee and alcohol were having a more negative impact on my sleep than before. He came and went several times every night as he pleased, and I no longer made up for sleep deficits as easily.

But this constant waking up is half as bad, says sleep research, if there are no medical causes. There are even experts who claim that we humans never slept through the night anyway, that in earlier times we were constantly in alert mode and that we couldn’t afford to sleep through the night because of the wolves and bears in front of the cave. This cannot be proven, but the thought that people have apparently been waking up several times a night for thousands of years is reassuring. If you change your expectations of sleep, trust it more and take it as it comes, that alone will allow you to sleep better again.

At the same time, I have learned to appreciate being awake at night again because it can also open your eyes to yourself. Because the night shows us vulnerable, but also true and undisguised: I actually had the most important and open conversations of my life at night.

What we dream about

Bridget