Night shifts: Waking up to a global sleep emergency

“Tuck you in, warm within
Keep you free from sin
Till the Sandman he comes”

Sadly however, the Sandman doesn’t seem to come for many of us. I am ready to admit that the moments before I sleep are spent either staring into my computer screen or at my phone. I seem to be having a terrible affliction, of being tired in the mornings and active in the evenings. That made me wonder, am I the only one?

Sleep is split into five stages. There’s rapid eye movement (REM) which is stage 1, and following with there are four stages of non-rapid eye movement (NREM). As soon as we feel the Sandman’s dust, we enter the first stage. Here is where we experience vivid dreams, and then we slip into the rest of the four stages of NREM. Soon after which we jump back up to REM once again and maybe experience another amazing dream. This is called a Sleep Cycle, and we need to have at least three to four a night.

Thing is, the brain reacts differently in different lights. Blue light keeps us awake and red light helps us sleep. This is evolutionary, as the mornings are generally bluer and the evenings generally redder, so our natural biologies began to change accordingly to allow us to sleep at night.

Now that I hope I’ve explained the science of sleep, let’s delve into the reason why so many of us are sleepless. Our phones are made to generate more blue light. We stare at phones with a much higher brightness in the evening, and make our brains more afflicted with all that blue light. We’re so exposed to the blue light on our screens that in comparison the morning light has more red.

But that’s just the start. Our nocturnal nature has derailed our evolutionary process. As our lives became more hectic, we begin to delay the time for all natural activities. We eat late, exercise late, work late — all activities which were meant to cease at the setting of the Sun.

Sleep is precious; our brains require a moment of peace so that they can recharge. But while our generation feuds with this sleepless epidemic, people are devising ways to combat it. Some sleep for 20 minutes every four hours, in an almost ingenious strategy called Polyphasic sleep. However, I prefer not to be as drastic, and I think a better remedy is some meditation, a sip of water and all my handheld devices turned off.

The author can be reached at bhairav.shankar@gmail.com