According to the British Sleep Council, if you don't sleep for at least six hours a night, you're 12% more likely to die young. Lack of sleep can trigger a range of health problems. It can give you heart disease. It can give you diabetes. It can make you obese. It can ruin your concentration, your memory and your youthful good looks in one fell swoop.

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The problem is now so bad that the government has actually had to intervene on our behalf. The middle-aged will soon be targeted with a campaign designed specifically to make them go back to bed. The most chilling line in Public Health England's description of its own campaign is this: "Only around 20% to 30% of what we think of as 'ageing' is biological; the rest is 'decay' or 'deterioration', which can be actively managed or prevented." Essentially, if you're aged between 40 and 60 and you don't get enough sleep, you're rotting your own body.

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Hey, i will go to sleep right now if you let me. I love sleeping. I just hate going to bed, which is an important distinction. But once i'm asleep, i will happily stay that way for many, many hours, so the six hour minimum is no problem for me. I'm also lucky in that i don't have kids to disrupt my sleep schedule, i don't have crazy work hours, and i don't have a sleep disorder. I dunno what the rest of you people are doing. Bed is lovely.

This amused me:

Since we had a baby earlier this year, I've physically aged by about three decades. I've somehow managed to become both sunken and paunchy, the vast majority of my sentences now begin with the word "Nyuhh" and it takes a superhuman level of effort to pay attention to anything, which is why I just had to take a 15-minute break from this sentence to look at photos of watermelons on the internet.