What time do you go to bed? How many hours do you sleep? What time do you get up? And what about on weekends? I’m asking because people never quite believe my answer, and the truth is – I feel guilty about my solid 10 hours a night.
I’m a night person, and while it’s normal for me to get into bed at around 10ish, my sleep hygiene is abysmal. I sit on my phone finishing emails, editing work and plotting what’s happening next in my life. I lose two hours while half-watching something, scrolling Instagram and playing the odd game of Solitaire. My cats pop up for treats and cuddles, and eventually I put my phone away, slightly manic and trying to start huge conversations with my exhausted boyfriend. I take my medication – a sedative for cyclothymic disorder –and a bite of a sleeping pill, and then I sleep for 10 hours straight. I also don’t set an alarm, unless I need to. This is the routine of a manic, ADHD businesswoman.
Yes, I wake up at about 10am. For many of you that will sound strange. Lazy, even. But I think there are far more interesting questions to ask than whether I’m simply spending too long in bed. I’ve simply always needed a lot of sleep. And I get it. I love being in bed and I feel happy there, but this isn’t laziness. I think it’s recovery.
I run on an extraordinary amount of energy from the moment I wake up. I pace all day, rarely sitting down. Most of my job is cooking, recipe development or running between meetings, but it’s not just that. I have ADHD and, while I tick pretty much every diagnostic box, I’m far more hyperactive than inattentive. I can’t take a phone call without marching around the room. When I’m working through a project, movement makes my brain clearer.
The truth is, there is never silence in my head. Ever. When I become overstimulated – and that happens easily when I’m overworked – the only thing that truly resets me is sleep. I go to bed exhausted in a way that I suspect many neurodivergent people will recognise. It’s not just physical tiredness. It’s like my brain has been running a marathon.
Of course, I know parents are exhausted too. I don’t have children, and I know that raising them is relentless. I also know I’m fortunate that my life is structured differently. My partner Matt is a musician, so our work often happens later in the day. We’ve built lives that mostly fit our natural rhythms. Of course, I still have 9am meetings and early shoots that require two hours in hair and make-up, but if I’m regularly up before nine, you’re simply not getting the best version of me.
So, as ever, I ask social media: “how long do you sleep?” I’m shocked to discover that most people get between 5-7 hours, but should I be embarrassed? Celebrities like Tina Turner, Beyonce and Roger Federer have all claimed, like me, that they perform better on 10-12 hours sleep and even Einstein used sleep to preserve his brain
So, what is all this sleep actually doing? We hear endlessly about early mornings, sunrise routines and the cult of the 5am wake-up. There is good evidence that morning light helps regulate our circadian rhythm.
Light is the biggest circadian cue, particularly that first blast of morning sunlight, which tells the brain to stop producing melatonin – the hormone that makes us sleepy – and starts the cascade of hormones that tell us it’s time to wake up. As someone who naturally sleeps later, I know I’m missing some of that early light, and that’s probably not ideal. Circadian rhythms influence everything from metabolism and hormone production to immune function and mood. In a perfect world I’d probably wake earlier. In the real world, my body seems to insist that recovering properly matters just as much.
But sleep itself is where the real maintenance happens. REM sleep is where memories are consolidated and creative connections are formed. Deep sleep is when growth hormone is released, helping repair muscles, bones and tissues. It’s when the immune system replenishes itself and the brain clears away waste products accumulated during the day.
We also know sleep debt is real. Miss enough good-quality sleep and your body keeps score, even if you think you’ve adapted to functioning on less and, according to sleep expert Professor Guy Leschziner, you can never make up the debt. I know that years of cheffing and partying will have affected this.
Sleep debt is exactly what it sounds like: every night you don’t get enough sleep, your body keeps a running total. You can survive on less, but that doesn’t mean you’re functioning at your best. Concentration drops, mood worsens, reaction times slow, and over time the risks to physical and mental health begin to stack up. You can repay some sleep debt by catching up, but not all of it, and if you’re chronically sleep deprived there’s evidence that your body never completely forgets. Which makes me wonder whether my ten hours isn’t indulgence at all, but simply what my brain has always required.
I do have to ask myself two major questions: Do I sleep more because I take a sedative? While there’s evidence that people who sleep too little may wrestle later with brain disease, there is also evidence that my 10-year sleeping pill addiction is doing the same. Can the volume of sleep I get counterbalance this? It does worry me that my sleep comes with chemical assistance. I’ve relied on sleeping pills on and off for years, and while they help me get the rest my brain clearly craves, they’re hardly without controversy.
Long-term use of sedative sleeping medications has been linked in some studies with an increased risk of cognitive decline and dementia, although researchers still don’t know whether the drugs themselves are responsible or whether the underlying insomnia is the real culprit. Either way, it’s an uncomfortable trade-off: is consistently getting enough sleep better than regularly relying on medication to get it? I don’t know the answer. I just know it’s a question many of us are asking in a panic at night.
Sleep is complicated and unique to each person and what I’m sure of – is that most of us are getting too little. What I feel after going headfirst into this, is that, for me, there isn’t such a thing as too much sleep for your health (although sleeping too much can be linked to depression, and we often sleep heavily when we’re ill) and that it’s more how we’re programmed, with school and office hours warping our natural inclinations.
I also know that I’ve always made my own rules, been driven by my own motor, and still been able to overachieve, so I’m going to try to ignore my guilty feelings. I know how, and why, I sleep at night.
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