To those given to dreaming big, sleeping big might be a necessity. The Indian Olympic Association (IOA) seems to have understood this well. At the July 26 to August 11 Paris Olympics this year, the Indian contingent will be accompanied by Dr. Monika Sharma, an expert in optimising sleep for performance and recovery in sportspersons.
The connection between sound sleep and improved cellular repair—and therefore recovery and athletic performance—is well-established. Sport at the highest level is all about thin margins, and if 30 to 40 extra minutes of deep sleep can give an athlete a hairline advantage the next morning, it is something worth looking at seriously. Sleepkillers like the anxiety of competition and a sense of occasion pose potent challenges, which is why having an expert becomes all the more advisable.
While reading about Dr. Sharma’s appointment in The Indian Express, my attention was drawn to an observation by her, one made after some initial conversations with the athletes, in which she said that “ignorance about sleep is quite profound.”
On consideration, this wasn’t particularly surprising. The non-cricket-playing Indian athlete works without much help, let alone scientific help, in their formative years. Most of our Olympians have become what they have become after overcoming various kinds of scarcities. And they have overcome them only by dint of effort and stubbornness. This overcoming can be such a constant enterprise, with hard work its only currency and everything else set in a trade-off against it, that rest and recovery struggle to arrive at the centre. This may happen despite an innate understanding of the two as essential to high performance. And this may happen till the sportsperson reaches the limit where the simple truth of “what got you here won’t take you there” presents itself as a challenge.
Leave aside Olympian jousts, this isn’t much different from how we as a people behave in any area of achievement. Students studying for competitive exams like NEET are coached into extending their study hours at the cost of sleep. College students (the MBAs are the worst here) gloat about exam-time all-nighters. Corporate workers fetishise long hours, it being no secret where the extra hour or two comes from. Even novelists like myself steal hours from the night when a book nears its meatier parts. None of the activities mentioned—study, work, or creative endeavour—gain from a state of sleep deprivation, yet we are all doing what we are doing. The stresses and anxieties of contemporary life are, no doubt, to blame. But popular culture, with its injunctions of chasing one’s goals, its imperatives of burning the midnight oil while doing so, and its narratives of linking success with sacrifice, has its role to play here too. Not everyone is pursuing anything close to an Olympic medal, but the environment ensures we all see ourselves as frantic pursuers. Months ago, I wrote (‘Kota’s failed promise’, IE, September 21, 2023) about student suicides in the coaching centres of Kota, Rajasthan. Sometimes, the sacrifice is total.
Sleep deprivation has no benefits — none, even, to the work that putatively causes it. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) described sleep deprivation as a “public health epidemic” way back in 2014, linking it to hypertension, diabetes, depression, obesity and cancer. There is no reason to suspect that this is only an American phenomenon. What led the world to this point?
Sometimes, the conspiracy theorist in me wonders if sleep has been imperilled globally for business reasons—so that good sleep can be sold as a premium product. The conspiracy theory, admittedly, may not find its feet in evidence, but the fact of sleep becoming a product cannot be denied. There is, in fact, a well-defined category called “sleep products” in existence; these include melatonin strips, gummies, face masks, eye oils, eye covers, pills, foot patches, and so on.
Since sleep is a product, it might even be up for some tech-based disruption. Online furniture seller The Sleep Company, for example, talks of SmartGRID mattresses and smart recliner beds. Jim Sarbh and Anil Kapoor appear in the (smart?) TV ads. The company raised Rs 184 crore in Series C funding in December 2023, and mentions ‘changing the way people sleep’ as part of its vision. The Sleep Company’s competitor, Wakefit, talks of XpertGRID™ mattresses. Wakefit’s vision talks of “offering highly innovative sleep solutions at affordable prices, thus democratising sleep in India”. If one didn’t understand company vision statements as vulnerable to dashes of hyperbole, one would imagine a lot of change and democracy in the future of Indian sleep.
Perhaps, in time, we will see more businesses grounded in the simple insight that people are willing to pay more to sleep better. It’s a simple case of economics, really: The lesser the supply of a thing, the pricier it becomes. One place, however, where one wishes the supply of sleep to be adequate is the Indian contingent at the Paris Olympics. Here’s to hoping that Dr. Sharma’s efforts aid our athletes to put in their best.
Tanuj Solanki’s last novel is ‘Manjhi’s Mayhem’ (2022)
