FROM THE EDITOR
How do apps and computers ‘get bugs’? –›p75
COVER: JIAQI WANG THIS PAGE: BBC, GETTY IMAGES, DANIEL BRIGHT
Everyone I know is tired. I’m tired. I bet you’re tired! It feels a bit like a bug that everyone’s caught. According to a YouGov survey last year, one in eight of us feels TATT, Tired All the Time, stuck in a state of constant exhaustion. Furthermore, another 25 per cent of the people surveyed said they felt tired most of the time.
So what’s going on? Mobile phones, a non-stop lifestyle and, in the last few years, a daisy chain of global crises, can all share some of the blame for keeping us up at night. But more serious issues, like sleep disorders, are on the rise too. This sleeplessness adds up – it doesn’t just hinder our ability to enjoy life, it’s a major risk factor in a number of chronic diseases. Sleep, as the neuroscientist and author of Why We Sleep, Dr Matthew Walker, puts it, is like our superpower. It helps us form memories, and recovers and resets our body and brain in more ways than we understand.