Don’t get me wrong. I don’t get good sleep. I don’t get enough sleep. In fact, I believe that, if given the chance, I could sleep for the next 48 hours. If given the choice between a new car and a few months of guaranteed good sleep, I’d probably go with the sleep. But I attribute most of this to having an infant in the house. I think that makes sense.

I know that many, no most, people have some sort of sleep issue. In fact almost everyone I know complains about one thing or another: waking up in the middle of the night, having trouble falling asleep, running thoughts, etc. What I didn’t know was that Sunday deserves the official title as the “worst sleep” day according to a BBC report. In that article, almost 60% of 3,500 people surveyed said that they got the lousiest sleep on this day.

It’s not hard to see the causal relationship between starting the work week and fitful rest. Most people have some type of unpleasant work issues they have to face when Monday rolls around… and those stressors impact them, even many hours before they actually have to deal with the situation. Even if we don’t deal with yucky work situations, can’t we all relate to living in the future instead of the present?

There’s more. Over 20 million British workers say that they dread going to work the next day. Dread! In fact, they dread work so much that they say they lose an hour of sleep every night because of the anticipation. 20 million people who dislike their jobs so much that they hate the thought of going in to work. And that’s only in Britain! I have two words to say to anyone in this situation: NEW JOB.

Although work related reasons receive most of the blame for bad sleep, Dr. Neil Stanley, the sleep expert cited in the article, is quick to point out other reasons Sunday receives the bad grade. Among those reasons, according to Dr. Stanley (along with many other sources), the best thing for our bodies is to go to bed and wake up at the same time every single day. This sounds good but have you ever tried it? Very few people have lives that stop and start at the same time, like clockwork, each and everyday of the week. Isn’t it a shame that our body and our life just can’t work together?

Knowing that millions of people share my sleep issue plight does not make me feel any better. After all, I won’t always have a baby in the house. It just seems like such a shame that Sunday is blamed for bad sleep when really, we have some control over the situation.

Reference

Sunday ‘worst sleep’ of the week. BBC News, 2008.

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