“Eat, sleep, work, repeat.” The amount we work and eat is theoretically within our control, but sleep is fickle and doesn’t always come when we switch off the light. Everyone knows problems magnify themselves in the dark; nights spent flipping the pillow and rolling spit-like beneath an uncooperative duvet are familiar to many of us, but for some, it’s a cycle they can’t break. Part of the problem comes from knowing how a bad night’s sleep affects our daily lives: it clouds concentration, dampens our mood, and makes us feel out of sync. So how can we overthrow insomnia’s tyranny? I spoke to Cambridge students who are learning to live with it and the experts working hard to help.

Ed* has struggled with insomnia since he was 10. He puts this down to his ADHD and PTSD, a combination which leaves him either “too restless” to unwind, or “exhausted” but too full of adrenaline to fall asleep. When he started at Cambridge, he found his insomnia became more of an issue. Though the “insomnia itself” didn’t get worse, the demands of student life “meant that more pressure and priority [was] put on sleep.” This, in turn, led to a vicious cycle of feeling he needed more sleep to get through the day, then lying awake worried about not getting enough of it. Ed felt “very isolated” in first year since he was in an “unfamiliar environment” with “unfamiliar people” and tells me, “I had to zombie my way through my first set of essays.” Above all, he recalls feeling “irritated at myself for not being able to fulfil such a basic bodily function.”

“I had to zombie my way through my first set of essays”

Alex* similarly felt that Cambridge exacerbated his struggle with insomnia. Having struggled with insomnia since childhood, he says that the normalisation of all-nighters or staying up until 3:30am only to wake up at 8:30 for 9ams “encourages, or at least suits” a lack of sleep. He tries not to let it affect him since he has learnt to thrive on five hours per night, and says that after years spent “staring at the ceiling” and “pacing around” his room, he now sees sleep as “transactional.” It’s something he’ll “always trade to spend more time with the people [he] love[s].”

Both Ed and Alex have made lifestyle changes to promote better sleep. Ed likes to “find some kind of noise to fill the silence,” such as white noise or a low-stimulation podcast, and has cut out coffee with its “start-stop of caffeine highs and crashes.” He says he would “recommend a detox to anybody who finds themselves coffee-dependent.” Alex also avoids caffeine and uses sport to regulate his sleep schedule. He says he exercises daily to “tire [himself] out” and tends to stay awake working “until [he] physically can’t.” He finds this technique, which he calls “crafted exhaustion,” more helpful than the years he spent turning off screens at 7pm and going to bed at 8, only to fall asleep at 1.

“It’s known in behavioural sleep medicine that one of the key traits [of insomniacs] is a level of perfectionism”

But what do the experts say? Dr Michelle Ni Raghallaigh, NHS-trained insomnia specialist and founder of The Sleep Sphere, says that the “good news” for insomniacs is that “our brains and physiology learn to adapt to an extent.” She is keen to debunk some of the “very scary headlines in the media” which link lack of sleep to shorter lives and actually perpetuate sleep anxiety. Michelle tells me “It’s known in behavioural sleep medicine that one of the key traits [of insomniacs] is a level of perfectionism,” which might explain why many Cambridge students suffer from it. She says that two habits that can benefit all of us are waking up at the same hour every morning, and “getting daylight into your eyes” first thing to set our circadian rhythms and programme our melatonin release. Interestingly, Michelle said that, while “wind down routines” are helpful, the morning is the most important time of day to set us up for a good night’s sleep.

Michelle is quick to add that she doesn’t want “students to feel overly anxious” about perfecting their sleep routine since “when it comes to sleep, […] the more effort we put in the more it runs away from us.” Her sleep clinic offers Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBTI) which aims to “reframe our perspective around sleep,” and encourages clients to “let go of the reins a little bit.” For students struggling to sleep, she suggests some minor tweaks can be made. These include stopping caffeine at midday, leaving two hours between your last alcoholic drink and going to bed, and wearing blue light glasses or angling your screen slightly away from your eyes if you have to stay up late to study.

With exams looming, some of us might find it more difficult to fall asleep. Michelle explains that a combination of higher cortisol levels and muscle tension due to stress can keep our bodies awake for longer but says there are practical strategies we can implement to help. She says muscle relaxation techniques can be a good “shortcut” since it’s easier to relax your muscles than to still your mind.

The Sleep Sphere offers bespoke, one-on-one CBTI sessions, but currently, NHS waiting lists for CBTI are very long. Patients can wait around a year to receive treatment. Thankfully, there are scientists, like Dr Sam Nallaperuma-Herzberg, Senior Research Associate and Bye-Fellow at Murray Edwards, who are working on insomnia treatments which can be implemented more widely. As part of the Brain Twin project, Sam and her team have “developed AI-based music generator models” which produce relaxation music. Participants in the study will be asked to listen to this AI-generated music and report which tracks make them feel most relaxed or sleepy. To test this “subjective feedback,” Sam and her team are running a clinical trial which will allow them to compare people’s reports to “objective psychological feedback.” Sam tells me that she hopes “music therapy could be a tool to lessen the burden on the NHS by providing an easily accessible digital treatment” for those with mild insomnia. Though the NHS doesn’t currently offer music therapy, she says “there is scientific evidence to show music can have a positive effect on insomnia.” But she adds that current studies on the effect of music on relaxation aren’t insomnia-specific, a gap the Brain Twin project hopes to fill. Sam and her team are still looking for participants, so insomniacs are invited to register their interest if they’d like to get involved.

Struggling to sleep can be incredibly lonely. Alex tells me he finds going to bed to be a “pretty scary thing” as “you know it means only two things: to sleep or not to sleep.”

On the bright side, Alex and Ed have both found ways to manage their sleep patterns and no longer allow sleep schedules to dictate their lives. This seems to be key: by accepting that you can’t force sleep you remove the pressure surrounding it. There is no such thing as a perfect eight hours and many of us cope well with far less. Above all, it’s important for those struggling with sleep loss to know that they are not suffering alone; there are people and resources waiting to help.

*Names have been changed for anonymity