Work worries equal sleepless nights

At least once a week, I find myself staring at the ceiling at 2 a.m., my mind racing with exciting work ideas. The other night, I decided I might as well get up and go on the computer—perhaps putting my thoughts down would help me rest. Not!

I didn’t end up falling asleep until 4:30 a.m. that night—plus, my coworkers thought I’d lost it when they saw e-mails from me with a 3:30 a.m. time stamp. Hey, I would have tried reading a novel but I love reading so much that I probably would have been up until 7!

But at least now I know I’m not alone.

Ten to 40 percent of the U.S. working population suffer from poor sleep quality, say University of Michigan researchers. Furthermore, they found that daily work hassles were more likely to keep workers up at night than long work hours, night shifts or job insecurity.

Previous research has shown that lack of sleep can have serious consequences ranging from traffic accidents to health problems, chronic disease and mortality, adds the University of Michigan news release.

As a mother of two children under five, I had to laugh at another point in the study: “However, negative work-to-family spillover and the presence of children under three are substantial and significant independent predictors of negative changes in sleep quality and deserve further exploration in future studies.” Uh, no kidding.

So, I’m going to try some of the sleep tips from Dr. Rachel Morehouse, medical director of the Atlantic Health Sciences Sleep Centre in Saint John, N.B. That means light dinners, eyeshades, and no work thoughts. And letting my husband get up if either of kids cries out, of course.

How about you? What are you losing sleep over?