If you’ve been feeling tired every day, the science proves that it is actually very tough for us to sleep
Hands up if you’re like me—before sleep aid medicine, staying asleep in bed was an intense workout in itself.
I used to live in a place that was right behind a popular Makati bar and grill, and after that in a condo along busy Shaw Boulevard where all the cars and honking could be heard even up in the 16th floor. In the province, we’d have our dogs, roosters, a grade school playing the national anthem in the morning, and the occasional neighbor singing. The Philippines is not kind to those who sleep light, and if you’re an athlete, it can have adverse effects on your performance. It can even open you up to injury.
Apparently, this isn’t just all in my head—it does turn out that sleeping in the Philippines is hard. Australian bed manufacturer Onebed did a study on which countries have the worst sleep habits, and we came in third, just behind Australia and the US.
The study found that Filipinos get an average of 6.13 hours of sleep every night, and deal with noise pollution levels of 55.60 as well as ranking top 10 in the world at being really stressed out
The study found that Filipinos get an average of 6.13 hours of sleep every night, and deal with noise pollution levels of 55.60 as well as ranking top 10 in the world at being really stressed out. We also have 156,250 in Google search volume for the keywords “sleep deprivation” and 43,100 for “insomnia remedies.” We’re really having trouble out here.
Beyond that, the study doesn’t really say much about how to deal with insomnia or even sleep better. Of course, it’s one way to recommend better mattresses and beds, but it’s an even bigger indicator of how tough life in the Philippines is.
Consider these scenarios and let me know if you can relate: If you don’t have air conditioning, you’ll have to deal with the heat in summer. If you don’t have your own space, you’ll have to deal with other people. Many of us have to deal with early work times and leaving even sooner just to mitigate the effects of heavy traffic. And even if you have the means to deal with these problems, almost all of us end up getting home late anyway because of the same traffic and lack of decent public transportation, leaving them little time to do things—or even get to sleep at a decent hour.
So what’s the play, then? The easy answer is that you can only really apply quick solutions to try and fall asleep. The harder solution is that you’ll need to carve out a better life for yourself, whether that means investing in air conditioning, working at home, or eliminating all the stressors you deal with. The hardest solution—one we can’t fix with blue-light filters and chamomile tea—is to change the entire system to give us all better circumstances. Tough luck.
And if you are an athlete who’s dealing with a bad sleep situation, please don’t forget to take it easy on yourself. If the choice is between going on a workout and getting a few more hours of sleep to feel better in the morning, it’s often better to stay in bed. But if this choice comes up a lot, then you’ll have to change something in your situation if you want to continue performing at your best.
Until things get better, though, the rest of us will just have to try our hardest to sleep as soundly as possible. Who’d have thought that something as basic as sleep was such a luxury?