Do you find it difficult to get a good night's sleep? If so, you are not alone. According to the US National Institutes of Health, between 6 and 30 percent of adults suffer from insomnia, or lack of restorative sleep. Since the establishment of sleep medicine a century ago, we have learnt a lot about what causes sleeplessness. And yet, as the never-ending proliferation of sleep aids demonstrates, its prevalence remains high.
Persistent lack of sleep can have serious consequences for your health and yet some writers and other creatives, seem to welcome it. Franz Kafka famously claimed that if he couldn't pursue his stories through the night, they would "break away and disappear".
On this edition of The Forum, Iszi Lawrence discusses our changing understanding of insomnia, and its hold over our imagination, with Dr. Manvir Bhatia, the vice-president of Indian Society for Sleep Research; science journalist Kenneth Miller, author of Mapping the Darkness; the Scottish writer – and self-confessed ‘intermittent insomniac’ - A L Kennedy; and World Service listeners.
