Young insomniacs bond online

Published in Deccan Chronicle (Vizag), Friday October 6, 2006

Garjraj Singh Rathod, 20, is fourth student in IIT, Roorki and what his friends call, a ‘nocturnal’. He stays awake most nights up late until 3 to 4 am. In fact, for the past three nights the young man has been sleeping not before 6 am and waking up at 1 pm in the afternoon. Garjraj though, belong to the genre of youth who finds it perfectly normal to be catching up on sleep as and when he can. ‘I am unable to sleep during night and so I stay up all night either on net chatting away with my friends or catching up on something else. But I try and make up for my sleeplessness in the morning hours.” Says Gajraj. Gajraj attitude, however, worries his friends who think that the performance of the former has definitely been affected by this strange routine, since he misses classes in order to make up for his lack of sleep at night.

Lack of sleep, or insomnia, is a phenomenon on the rise especially amongst the youth, many of whom are part of online communities dedicated to insomnia. Gajraj chats with other sleepless youth on one such community on orkut.

An indicator of how pervasive this problem has become is that the orkut community gets thousands of visitors, many of who are in their early twenties.

Most of the complaints of inadequate sleep are due to lifestyle changes where ambitious youngsters are studying or worship longer than ever before and sleeping less.

Says Arjun Chandran, 24, a guitarist and musician with various bands in Hyderabad, “I used to have chronic problem of sleeplessness when I was about 14 until I reached the age of 17. And those days I used to go to bed only because everyone else told me it was time to do so. I couldn’t sleep.”

He was fortunate to have been weaned off this problem by doctors. Insomnia, which was known to occur more frequently in the elderly and women, has now stealthily made its way to youngsters. Where a teenager needs nine hours of sleep a day, an adult requires about seven hours of mental and physical rest. This is far less than many youngsters are actually getting.

The medical fraternity is concerned about this problem. Dr Ariban Deb pulmonologist, Seven-Hills Hospital in Vizag says, “Insomnia is an indicator about one’s sleep hygiene. It is just as important that a person gets enough sleep as it is for him to get the right kind of nutrition and physical exercise. Sleeplessness at night can induce one to doze off during the day while at work or in his bike while on the road. Such dangers cannot be taken lightly.

While many young insomniacs take pride in the fact that they need very little sleep to function, doctors feel this is a dangerous attitude says Dr N.Ramakrishnan, senior sleep specialist and director of Nithra Institute of Sleep Sciences, Chennai, “The body needs its complete quota of sleep and when it is postponed on a regular basis it could to not just hypertension and high BP, but heart disease and stroke.”

Apart from this, there are also psychological problems such as fatigue, mood swings and inability to concentrate. Rather than go online for this problem, doctors recommend that youngsters should seek medical help instead.

Lifestyle and work-related factors are leading to sleeplessness in youngster who are turning to the net for company late night.