By John Hearne

Monday July 25 2011

WHEN you’ve a new baby in the house, sleep takes on mystical significance. You count the hours you get. If the kid puts in a good night and you get four hours on the trot, you spend the day marvelling about it. If she doesn’t, you spend the day zoning out in the middle of things. You keep . . . What was I saying . . . Oh yes, sleep.

Dr Catherine Crowe is a specialist in sleep disorders at the Mater Private Hospital. She says that sleep is as fundamental as food and water. “It is important that people sleep well, and that’s for physical, emotional and intellectual well-being. A good sleep allows you to concentrate well and be focused, and it keeps your short-term memory functioning properly.”

Since my new daughter, Cathy, arrived, my short-term memory has gone to seed. At night time, I go to lock the door and discover that I’ve already locked it. I drive to the wrong places, I put the wrong clothes on the wrong children, I go out wearing odd shoes. If I get put on hold, by the time the person eventually comes on the line, I’ve forgotten who I called.

Actress Scarlett Johansson had become so starved of sleep that her mother ordered her to go on holiday. She admits her mother kept saying: “Take a vacation, get some rest, go to sleep, what’s wrong with you?” But she admits that even when she is on vacation all she thinks about is work.

“There’s huge variation from person to person,” says Dr Crowe. “Most of us can put up with one bad night. It’s when you get a series of bad nights, that’s when it can have a real impact.”

American sleep expert Dr Lisa Shives says that sleep deprivation reduces productivity at work and at school. “Some studies,” she says, “also link poor sleep with increased susceptibility to ulcers, heart disease, obesity, depression and a host of age-related ailments.”

Then there’s driver fatigue. According to the Road Safety Authority, 4,000 people are killed per year throughout Europe because of tiredness, while driver fatigue contributes to one in five road deaths in Ireland.

But there are also less obvious consequences. In their recent book, Nurture Shock, Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman looked at many myths surrounding child-rearing. One of the key findings they discuss is that sleep deprivation is directly related to obesity.

“There are at least seven hormones that we know of that are produced during sleep and a number of them relate to metabolism,” says Ashley Merryman. “These hormones are responsible for hunger and satiation, and they become disregulated if you don’t sleep.” You wonder why you get so hungry if you’ve been up all night? It’s because your brain panics.

“Three-to four-year-olds should be getting about 10 hours sleep a night. If they’re getting less, they are 300pc more likely to become obese,” she says, and adolescents need 9.25 hours. “For every hour of sleep they’re not getting, their likelihood of becoming obese increases 80pc per hour . . . One of the researchers we spoke to found that when secondary students fall below eight hours of sleep, they double the likelihood of clinical depression.”

Merryman suggests that the whole sullen teenager thing may all come down to the fact that they’re simply not getting enough sleep. “All of the symptoms of teen moodiness — short tempers, erratic behaviour, short-term memory loss, impulse control problems, all can be related to sleep deprivation.”

If you have trouble sleeping there is a range of things that can help turn it around. A regular routine is important. “Try to follow the same routine during the week and on the weekend so that your body clock stays in synchrony,” says Dr Crowe. The body clock, she says, is not a vague concept. It’s an actual series of cells located in your mid-brain. “Your body clock send commands to your sleep/wake cycle, it controls the timing of different hormones as well as your body temperature and your ability to concentrate.”

If lack of sleep is becoming a serious problem, go see your GP. “If you wake up a few times but you’re still functioning fine the next day, I wouldn’t be too concerned, but if you’re finding yourself nodding off in quiet environments and you’ve had adequate sleep, you should get checked out. If you sleep with someone, ask: Am I snoring very loudly? Are my legs jigging in the middle of the night? What do I look like when I’m asleep?” These may be symptoms of sleep disorders.

Dr Crowe has no magic bullet for my sleep deprivation. “If you’ve a baby who’s crying, to a certain extent you just have to put up with it.” In time, she says, it will pass.

For the moment, I’ll just have to keep passing out.

- John Hearne

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