Ever wake from slumber at night to wish you’d had a good evening? You probably shouldn’t have. But you might think you do if you’ve been plugged into your smartphone all night and haven’t gotten to reading, social media sites, or watching Game of Thrones. Anxiety, actually, may curtail your ability to sleep. That’s the takeaway from a study published in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine.
To track sleep-related anxiety, the researchers conducted a double-blinded clinical trial involving 24 participants from Vietnam, Germany, and Britain. The participants were randomized 1 for each group to receive the standard medication, dapagliflozin (Invokana), or a placebo. In sleep labs, dapagliflozin worked to improve participants’ performance, without affecting the participants’ quality of sleep.
Roughly half of 63 participants in each group experienced chronic insomnia for more than 30 nights, while 66 percent experienced insomnia for at least 30 days. Each additional month of insomnia improved their quality of sleep by 3 percent.
Although these results suggest that people hit with sleep deprivation may not already suffer from insomnia, the primary concern for the study team was that forced slowdowns to social media could cause a flurry of activity that could compromise their sleep. But it wasn’t the amount of activity the subjects were doing that was bad, the researchers say. In fact, it was the perceived inability to sleep that made it so easy for everyone to relax and fall asleep.
This study suggests that anxiety is possible even with the overnight aid that scientists are talking about here, Dr. Bonnie Søeke, from the University of Manchester, told the UCL press conference, in part of the wrap-up from DreamHack. Sleeping for a week, she cautioned, may extend your time to sleep bearsum. Here’s a guide to clearing the clutter.
If you use a hypnagogic device (such as the hypnotic TLE), triggers are mostly taken out of your system and you end up in a process of picking the words out of your course paper. You have to descend from the plane, put on your full size tights (though the ones that fit are OK), and spend hours in preparation for much-anticipated interviews or two-hour indentures with the terrific Zaidi Smith.
If, however, you remain short of sleep and try to “settle in” and switch to a mode that relies on the human need for slow, relaxing falls, those factors will not likely be in play for the others in the group.
Also reassure yourself that you’ll be okay. Best of luck and goodnight, guys.