Modern life is rubbish? Sleep is just the same as ever, say scientists

This article in the Guardian is quite interesting. However, they aren’t talking about people with insomnia. They don’t address that issue until the end of the article. Then they say this:

“We shouldn’t forget that there are real sleep problems out there. There are people with insomnia, and these people cannot get to sleep even though they have the opportunity to. They deserve treatment, though whether that should be pharmacological or not is an important area of research,” he [Professor Derk-Jan Dijk] added.

Seems that the problem with insomnia is the amount of stress we in the modern world are under, and treatment with medication is highly controversial. A previous paragraph is also interesting:

Several studies have linked the chronic use of sleeping pills to a shorter life, but the pills might not be to blame. It may be that people with underlying health problems sleep worse and so take more sleeping pills. But even so, Siegel [professor of psychiatry at UCLA] points to the massive use of sleeping medicines in the US, where in 2008, pharmacists wrote out 56 million prescriptions for the pills.

And that’s just in the USA. Insomnia is an international problem. I hope when it is published In Pursuit of Sleep can help.