And women are lighter sleepers than men.'īut, when combined with anxiety, sleep issues can be a trickier to get to the root of. People often report poorer sleep with age, as the tissues in the throat become more slack, resulting in the narrowing of airways. ‘Some of it is genetic if your parents are poor sleepers, there’s a chance you will be too. ‘Sleep problems tend to be 50% biological and 50% psychosomatic,’ explains Dr Feld. It can even be the idea that one’s not sleeping enough that triggers the angst, which becomes a cruel cycle. The knowledge that substandard rest will mean we're less able to function in our lives, whether for family or work, creates a stress that can lead to a fear of going to sleep. ‘We worry that if we get less than our eight hours, we’re not going to be able to cope with the day ahead.’
This sort of stress around sleep is actually a form of performance anxiety, says Dr Michael Feld, a sleep expert at the Lanserhof Tegernsee. It is characterised by a sense of panic caused by the prospect of going to sleep, whatever the worries around it may be. Also known as somniphobia, sleep anxiety is a combination of insomnia and anxiety - specifically when the two conditions exacerbate each other, which is known as 'bidirectional comorbidity.' What is sleep anxiety?īut what is sleep anxiety? Most of us are all too familiar with the anxious feelings, but in relation to our night's rest it's less well-known. Not only that, but ‘there is growing evidence it causes serious chronic diseases, too’. ‘Lack of sleep is obviously a source of frustration and stress, which affects our work, relationships, health and mental wellbeing.’
‘Over 20 million people in the UK have problems with sleep,’ says Dr Graham Law of Leeds School of Medicine, founder of the Sleep Research Leeds initiative. One inevitable byproduct of this is a glut of sleep anxiety in the population. According to the NHS, a third of British people will have episodes of insomnia at some point in their lives. Ever been plagued by an inability to drift off, leaving you spending days in an under-slept haze? If so, know that you are far from alone.