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Research reveals that the
average Brit wakes up 3 times in the night
AH, drifting off to sleep… that
wonderful feeling where you're drowsy, cosy, and looking forward to a good 8
hours of shuteye, ready to rise, refreshed, the next morning and take on
whatever the day has to throw at you! For some lucky people, this is their sleep
pattern, every night. But more of us than you might imagine suffer from
disturbed sleep, waking up in the night once, twice, or more.
Mattress company Tweak Mattress carried out a survey of 2000
British adults, to find out how well we actually sleep at night, and made some
interesting discoveries.
Firstly, they found that the average Brit wakes up nearly 3 times (2.8) a night.
And 11% of us fare even worse, waking up between 7 and 10 times a night. None of
this is conducive to a restful night, so it's no wonder we're tired, and
therefore stressed, the next day.
The reasons we wake up during the night vary, however. For 47% of us, it's
needing the loo. This, obviously, happens more often if we've had liquids before
going to bed, and functions as nature's own little alarm clock. Unfortunately,
it usually goes off around 3am… Secondly, 19% of us are woken up by discomfort,
or from pain from a bad back. Then 17% of us are disturbed by our partner;
mainly from snoring; which is as good excuse for separate bedrooms (or even
houses!) as any. Bad dreams or nightmares affect 11% us, who wake up sweating
about the bogeyman under the bed. And plain old anxiety; worrying about the
next day at work, about bills, about relationships, about waking up in the
middle of the night and not being able to get back to sleep; affects 6% of us.
Back to our partners (well, it's good to have someone else to blame for these
things), and again, snoring is the main reason they keep us awake at night, with
41% of us fed up of having to poke them till they turn over. A quarter of us
wake up to find ourselves occupying a sliver of space on the edge of the bed,
about to fall off, as our partners have managed to conquer our side as well as
theirs in the middle of the night…Tossing and turning affects 10.5% of us too,
10% of us have to put up with our partner talking, or making other weird noises,
in their sleep, and another 10% of us are woken up by our partner looking at
their phone; no matter what manufacturers say, the light that emits from them
at night is still enough to wake people up. And 4.6% of us are woken by a
partner who is (highly inconsiderately) watching TV or reading.
Leading Psychologist Robert Stewart added:- "There are two main reasons
our sleep is good or poor and these are our sleep hygiene and our sleep cycles.
Sleep hygiene relates to our 'before bed' routine. Not drinking or eating
a lot, choosing the same time to sleep each night, and not looking at phones,
laptops or TV in bed to name a few. Getting these right should help in getting
you off to sleep, but more importantly, there are the sleep cycles you go
through. A person will go through 5 stages of
sleep in a night and each of these vary in depth. Stage 5 or rapid eye movement
(REM) stage is the lightest stage of sleep and this is where people are most
likely to stir. Whilst we cannot control this, the surrounding environment, such
as a partner snoring, other noise or discomfort, will impact on whether we
return to sleep smoothly or are awoken. So to drift back to sleep seamlessly and
without disturbance, ensure you have the best environment to aid this, whether
it be earplugs or a comfortable mattress."
But you can increase your chances of not waking up in the night by having a good
mattress, to start with!
Please email us your views on this. Do you
agree with Tweak Mattress findings? |
