Sleep. Without it we’re grouchy and foggy. Lack of sleep makes us emotionally fragile… and fat. But when we’re well rested, we feel as though we can do anything.
Back in the day, people tended to wear sleep deprivation as a badge of honour: many of us bought into the rock ’n’ roll idea of ‘I’ll sleep when I’m dead.’ These days, we know it isn’t that simple.
‘Some people would like to say that we sleep less than we used to do 80 years ago,’ says Dr Dale Rae, director of Sleep Science and a senior researcher at the University of Cape Town. ‘They’ll point to changes in lifestyle, like increased technology, as the cause.’
