Sleep cures all

How much sleep is too much sleep? And is too much sleep bad for you?

I sleep a lot. I mean, like, A LOT. Sleep seems to be my answer to everything. I’m tired, I sleep. I’m bored, I sleep. I’m ill, I sleep. I’m stressed, I sleep. I’m sat still for more than half an hour, I sleep.

Last year some time, on an incredibly rare Saturday when we had nothing in the diary, we decided to have a lie in, so we didn’t set an alarm. We’d gone to bed about midnight the previous day, and presumably, I’d already had a nap on the sofa before bedtime. So, we woke up around 8am I guess. Really late for us, even on a weekend. I got up, had a shower and got dressed. I sat on the sofa waiting for C to get showered and dressed and had a nap. We wandered in to town a bit later in the morning and when we got back I had another nap. He woke me up for lunch after which I had another nap. He then woke me up for dinner, after which I settled for another nap, before being woken up in time to go to bed… and sleep through until the 7am Sunday alarm.

I’m generally ok of I keep going. If I have an evening meeting, or a #bellringing session, I’m ok and can stay awake, and then I’m usually still buzzing afterwards and that means I can stay awake until midnight or beyond. The moment I stop and sit down is when I could fall asleep fairly instantly.

I have also been known to fall asleep in the cinema. One time I was with a friend watching one of the Pirates of the Caribbean films and I’d said that there was this really clever bit where they walk on the sea bed in and out of the moonlight, and keep changing from humans to skeletons, but then managed to sleep through that very part of the film.

Apparently our metabolic system doesn’t like it if we sleep to much. Sleepfoundation.org suggests that between 7 and 9 hours sleep is ideal for most adults, with some needing around 10 hours kip. Their study suggested that sleeping more than the suggested amount could lead to increased risk of obesity, heart disease, back pain and headaches. An NHS review of this study did find that as a cross sectional study, it could not draw a direct cause and effect relationship between sleep and disease risk, as it could be that the symptoms of heart disease were causing people to sleep more rather than the other way around. They said that the study also didn’t take into account other factors that could have influenced the results such as chronic disease risk, lifestyle choices e.g. smoking and drinking habits. It summarised that having the occasional long snooze is not something to lose sleep over.

I wouldn’t say that I suffer from excessive sleepiness itself, but the act of sleeping seems to cure everything. I’m not necessarily tired but I can’t be hungry, anxious or bored if I’m asleep. 💤