News Archive

COVID-19 has changed the way we work, play and sleep. There are different strategies to better cope, says Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine’s Michael Chee.

Insomnia can persist and when entrenched can be a misery. So start sleeping better now, says Duke-NUS Medical School’s Michael Chee. SINGAPORE: Mark Tan, a driven 40-year-old, was a competitive athlete in school. Academic success egged on by like-minded classmates took him to an elite university where it was a badge of honour to sacrifice sleep for grades and activities. He graduated to a good job but one where he was under constant pressure to perform. He engaged in fortnightly inter-continental travel and never said no to conference calls.

Health Check Ep 10: Can schools and parents help boost the cognition and well-being of sleep-deprived Singaporean teenagers? Synopsis: In this fortnightly podcast series on Tuesdays, The Straits Times guides you to healthier living, debunks the myths, and examines the impact of national policies with expert guests. To discuss why teenagers and students need to sleep more and how insufficient sleep affects them, ST correspondent Joyce Teo and podcasting head Ernest Luis host Prof Michael Chee, the director of the Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience at the Duke-NUS Medical School who is a prominent sleep expert.

Health Check Ep 9: Why sleep habits need to be formed when young Synopsis: In this fortnightly podcast series on Tuesdays, The Straits Times guides you to healthier living, debunks the myths, and examines the impact of national policies with expert guests. ST correspondent Joyce Teo and podcasting head Ernest Luis host Prof Michael Chee, the director of the Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience at the Duke-NUS Medical School, a prominent sleep expert who wants to change how we think about sleep.

Studies have shown that better sleep benefits health, productivity and cognition, say two sleep experts. SINGAPORE: If there is one topic most Singaporeans often talk about, it’s that a huge number of us feel tired and sleep deprived most of the time, but can’t seem to do anything meaningful to escape our situations.

The move by Nanyang Girls’ High to start school later helps adolescents get appropriate rest, argue Duke-NUS Medical School experts involved in the initiative. SINGAPORE: Channel NewsAsia recently published an article featuring the move by Nanyang Girls’ High School (NYGH) to a later school start time. As the researchers involved in this initiative, we have been following the response to this article on social media with interest. Feedback from the public seems to be largely positive, but there have also been concerns raised about the potential costs of starting school later. Our team is not blind to these challenges and we would like to share why we believe that starting school later is advisable in spite of them.

Depriving a person of sleep is, literally, a form of torture. The United States’ Central Intelligence Agency made suspected terrorists stay awake for days in order to gather intelligence from them. Indeed, just one night of inadequate sleep is enough to irritate us. We feel tired and are unable to function properly or learn and retain information. Yet, many of us often happily sacrifice some sleep in exchange for time to go clubbing, watch TV or go on social media.

Today is World Sleep Day, an annual celebration of the importance of sleep. While sleep is essential for health and well-being, many people in Singapore are not getting enough of it. Results of a study released by scientists from the University of Michigan last year showed that Singaporeans clocked an average amount of 7 hours 24 minutes of sleep per day – tying with Japan as the country with the least amount of sleep among 100 nations.

In the past year, there has been a slew of local articles about sleep, the health risks of sleep deprivation, the need for work-life balance, as well as letters calling for action to improve students’ sleep. While there appears to be genuine recognition that something needs to change, the needle has not moved much on a societal or policy level. In this instance, instead of waiting for government action, change can and should actually begin with individuals. Here are five pointers to get us to the tipping point.

Earlier this month, Duke-NUS Medical School researchers were featured in a first-of-its-kind study in the United States journal Sleep. In the study, 56 teenagers, mostly from “elite” high schools and aged between 15 and 19, stayed in a boarding school for two weeks to assess how insufficient sleep could affect cognitive function. For seven nights, half the teens received five hours of sleep, while the other half had nine hours – the recommended sleep duration for this age group.