Why do we sleep? The short answer is: because we can’t stay awake. But there is still much left to find out about the phenomenon of sleep. This week the Nationale Slaaponderzoek is quietly collecting data about sluggards, short sleepers and insomniacs, writes the Nrc.

Forty years ago people in Western countries spent an average of 8.2 hours asleep, a full hour more than today, writes the paper. How did this happen and what are the consequences?
Clock genes
The national sleep research project, initiated by the Netherlands organisation for scientific research NOW and broadcasters NTR and VPRO, is inviting people to make a record of their sleeping patterns on the internet for a week, recording the number of hours they sleep, when they sleep, if they consume alcohol or coffee before they go to sleep and how they feel during the day.
‘To some extent it’s the so-called ‘clock genes’ that are regulating sleep’, researcher Eus van Someren tells the paper. ‘But research into sleeping patterns usually takes place in a laboratory. We don’t know very much about the environmental factors that influence sleep.’
Unhealthy and inefficient
It seems that some people don’t need very much sleep. Napoleon said men need six hours a night, a woman seven and a fool eight. He himself only needed four to five hours and the rest is history.
Thomas Edison, the paper writes, thought people slept too much because they liked it. Sluggards are unhealthy and inefficient, he said before going on to invent the light bulb.
Goethe proves him wrong, however. He slept ten hours a night, sometimes longer, and loved every minute. He called it ‘pure happiness’ and an ‘unraveller of serious thoughts’.
Weight gain
So how much sleep do we really need? 1 to 3 percent of people need at least ten hours, Van Someren tells the paper, and the same percentage need less than six. ‘But most short sleepers simply don’t sleep enough’, he says. The consequences are a lack of concentration, a diminished ability to make decisions, weight gain and a shorter life expectancy.
Van Someren hopes his initiative will attract a great number of guinea pigs: ‘If enough people participate in the research we will be able to pin down the effect on sleep of subtle differences in behaviour. Does one cup of coffee more or less really influence sleep? And does a glass of wine keep you awake or send you to sleep?’, he says on his site.
So if you find yourself awake and want to find out what is making your clock genes tick join the other insomniacs at www.wetenschap24.nl