Meditate Awake

In 2017, the Nobel prize-winning research in medicine was all about sleep. Subjects were confined in a room for two weeks with no clocks, windows, TV or internet. The point was to remove any way for them to know what time it was, or how much time had passed. This allowed scientists to identify a mutation of a gene dubbed the ‘night owl gene’, which governs the circadian rhythm — the 24 hour sleep/wake cycle found in all mammals. The mutated gene makes our internal body clock run slower; and it’s estimated to cause sleep disorders in forty-seven million US adults. What causes the night owl gene mutation? There’s an element of ‘being born with it’, but the research shows that using screens shortly before going to bed aggravates the condition. So overuse of phones, tablets and computers is thought to be a key reason why so many people in America struggle to sleep well.