CAN A 9PM BEDTIME CURE ME OF MY CONSTANT EXHAUSTION?

I try and finish work at 5.30pm, so it gives me time to race home from my offices in Leicester Square to my rented flat out in West London. When there, I swiftly change into my fitness gear and walk six minutes down the road for my 7.30pm gym class. After an hour, I walk back, and leave soup to simmer on the hob while I scratch shampoo into my scalp in the shower. Dinner guzzled and freshly washed, it’s now 9pm. At this time, I usually catch up with messages, stick on a Netflix series or read. Not tonight. I now have to get into bed, sans phone, and catch some ZZZs.

My new regime, which I find myself hurtling through at breakneck speed, is the routine du jour of Gen Z, who are hitting the hay much earlier than their predecessors to the extent that businesses are now adjusting to youngsters’ beauty sleep. Restaurant and bar bookings between 4pm and 6pm now make up 31% of Yelp reservations, up from 19% in 2017, while later bookings have started to decline. Meanwhile, one unhinged bar in New York City opted to have their 2024 New Year’s Countdown at 8pm, to allow revellers to get to bed at a reasonable time. According to the Wall Street Journal, the waitlist for that particular event was made of 200 beauty sleep disciples.

Data from 2022 find that people in their 20s are getting an average of nine hours and 28 minutes of sleep - nearly a 10% increase from the eight hours and 47 minutes they reported in 2010.

As a nation, we are obsessed with sleep. The 2024 ResMed Global Sleep Survey found that a third of people in the UK are not happy with their quality (38%) and quantity (37%) of sleep, with only 44% staying asleep all night. As a result, us Brits are collectively spending £8 billion annually on sleep aids to help us get a decent night’s kip.

It's easy to understand why we’re willing to fork out quite so much – a lack of sleep is linked to certain health risks, such as poor mental wellbeing, heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes – even an early grave, if it’s really bad.

In an increasingly health-conscious world, the new generation of wellbeing warriors (who are more likely to eschew vices such as drinking, drugs and nightclubs) clearly prioritise the importance of feeling well-rested. So, are the kids all right about getting an early night? This tired old millennial decided to find out.

My new 9pm bedtime, ahead of my usual 11pm shut-eye, meant I was going to be getting around 10 hours' sleep every night, which calculated as an extra 14 hours in bed a week. As someone constantly on the go, I couldn’t deny this sounded positively dreamy.

However, around three days into my week-long trial, I found myself getting increasingly frustrated at my early bedtime, like a teenager with a curfew. There simply didn’t seem to be enough hours in the day for a schedule to be this militant – after eight hours at work, plus time commuting there and back, in addition to cooking and gym, I didn’t have time to do anything else but go to bed and sulk.

Was I feeling more refreshed? I wasn’t sure. I did find myself feeling sluggish, my brain struggling to generate fresh new ideas for articles. For all the endless discourse about not getting enough sleep, I started to wonder whether you could sleep too much. It turns out, you can.

“Extensive research indicates that both insufficient and excessive sleep can profoundly affect physical health, impacting everything from cognitive function to metabolic processes,” explains Heather Darwall-Smith, psychotherapist and author of The Science of Sleep. “The balance is delicate, and tipping too far in either direction can lead to adverse health outcomes.”

“A considerable amount of research evidence shows that, relative to those who sleep around seven to eight hours per night, ‘long sleepers, or those who sleep more than nine hours, have a higher risk of heart disease due to inactivity and ‘stasis’, obesity (long sleep impacts appetite hormones) and all-cause mortality (i.e. over a given period, long sleepers are more likely to die than 7-8 hour sleepers,” adds Professor Kevin Morgan, leading sleep expert at Loughborough University. “Opportunities for longer sleep can also impact the circadian rhythm leading to a ‘delayed sleep phase’ (this is what teenage students do in the school vacation if they don’t have a job – sleep gets longer, bedtimes get later, rise times push into the next day).”

But I don’t think my slowing brain was symptomatic of too many hours in bed – I’d put it down to just being bored. Going to bed early meant I had to give up many of my life’s more frivolous pleasures – I couldn’t grab dinner with friends, I couldn’t go on dates where conversation flows into the early hours, and I certainly go dancing all night, trekking home at the sun starts to bleed through the clouds.

I know I’m not alone in my reluctance to give up socialising for sleep; in their sleep study, YouGov found 44% of Brits believe they’re night owls, preferring late nights and later bedtimes compared to 33% early risers.

“We’re humans not robots,” agrees Eve Menezes Cunningham, sleep expert and registered member of British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. “Getting to know your own energy cycles can be a wonderful way to help you feel as brilliant as possible every day.

“Recognising that exciting as the 24/7 world we live in can be, it also puts stress on the nervous system and we can improve our sleep by putting measures in place to have the best of both worlds, enjoying the nights as well as feeling rested and refreshed when it’s time to wake up.”

Instead of inflicting a permanent 9pm bedtime on ourselves, maybe it’s simply about accepting what actually works merely varies between each individual. I’m not adverse to the occasional bed rotting sesh. But for the most part, I’d rather forgo some extra zzz’s and embrace my dark circles as a sign of a good time.

2024-03-15T07:09:55Z dg43tfdfdgfd