Sleep is and always has been crucial to humans. Most of us demand at least six to nine hours of it per day. Beds have become impeccably comfortable over the past fifty years, so why are those vital hours of rest proving so God damn unobtainable? Ground-breaking research has been undertaken to reveal why you might be struggling to land those vital hours of shut-eye.

You are sleeping in the wrong position– Sleeping on your front? This is not good enough as it puts pressure on the small of your back, which may result in the body folding up into a permanent right angle, making movement and travel almost impossible.
Sleeping on your side? This can be even more dangerous. Humans who do this on a consistent basis have been known to lose their vertebracy. Leaving the joints in an asymmetrical position can be known to have disastrous effects on the back. A man recently consulted his GP after 37 years of side sleeping, and was staggered to discover that his hands and feet had disappeared completely and he had turned into a mollusc.
Sleeping on your back? Good. Sleep flat on your back at all times, with limbs spread out in a star fish pattern. Imagining you are a starfish is optional and works for some people but can prove disconcerting to others. Give everything a try and see what works for you.

Your bed might not be vast enough- With global obesity rates rising in the UK, double beds are no longer sufficient to accommodate the breadth of an average person. Furniture stores all over the country have been forced to rapidly adjust the size of all ‘King-sized’ beds in order to suit the global average size of Kings, which is estimated to have increased by 45% in recent years. Make sure you have enough space to move, as falling out of bed at this rate could at best wake you up in the middle of the night, and at worst result in a heart attack and death or at the very worst floor penetration and death.

You are sleeping with too many pillows- Recent surveys reveal that 92% of people think it is acceptable to sleep with more than one pillow. They are wrong. The truth is that it is extremely hazardous to the neck and back to sleep with even one pillow. In order not to permanently impair these parts of the body and to secure an efficient night of sleeping, sleep with no pillows at all and fight the urge to use your upper arm, as this may violate the terms of the first heading.

You are sleeping with another person– If you are trying to sleep alongside another human being- perhaps a partner- then this may well be the cause of your inability to sleep. These circumstances allow for sex to potentially happen, which is a notoriously confusing and potentially uncatholic experience. To avoid being perturbed into lack of sleep you must sleep alone at all times.

You are sleeping with your mouth open- Sleeping with your mouth open could be threatening to a good night’s sleep for two reasons, firstly because it can leave you dangerously dehydrated and liable to get up in the middle of the night for water (or dehydration could always lead to death, of course). And secondly because it means you are leaving an opening for the arrival of all kinds of unsavoury creatures, from lethal microbes to small rodents and potentially life-threatening birds. Alternatively you must breathe through your nose at all times. The nostrils work effectively as a human sieve from unwelcome creatures, and are designed to protect the body from these, whereas the mouth is designed to welcome them for food.

You don’t have water sufficiently close at hand- Stupidly, many people wonder why they get no sleep and spend half of the night getting up to go to the bathroom for mouthfuls of water to prevent them from death. This entails waking up and moving from the bed and therefore should be avoided. To avoid this, keep a 2 litre bottle of water in bed with you at all times with the cap screwed on (to avoid water disturbance and dampness which could also lead to drowning and death).

The temperature is incorrect for sleeping- One of the most common causes for insomnia is an incorrect temperature. We find that anything in between 0 degrees Celsius and 37 degrees is optimum temperature (if you are unfamiliar with this 21st century unit of temperature, then it is likely your house is too cold and you should address this as a matter of urgency). If you are sleeping outside of this range then you will almost certainly encounter at best sleeping difficulties and at worst- death.

Your life might be too busy and/or stressful- Do you often have future events and occasions which cause you to lie awake in anticipation? If so you might need to cancel these events, in order to ameliorate the frantic state of mind that prohibits you from grasping those sacred hours of rest. Your lack of sleep might be entirely due to a failure to ‘get your shit together’. If you have any personal issues you must try to get rid of them and become a happier person. Also if you have depression- get rid of it. Making these transitions will result in less soul-shaking nightmares, and generally much more pleasant almost utopian dreams that barely relate to your own disappointing life at all.

You’re counting the wrong animal- Throughout its existence the latest species of hominid has always been told that the counting of sheep will result in a greater likelihood of sleep. This has been proven by scientists to be incorrect, as sheep have been proven to be too disturbing as creatures to make this theory viable in practice (their larynxes produce preposterous vibrations, if you haven’t noticed).
A psychological study incorporating a wide range of British creatures concluded that the most effective one to count in order to induce sleep were ferrets. The counting of all other animals proved to be ineffective for all participants. Psychologist Pauline Scuddlen-Fid of Oxford University stated: “It is not clear why ferrets are the best animal to count but they definitely are. So we should count them instead probably”.

Now if you follow every single one of these steps to the letter, you might just start getting those forty winks you deserve. But you must take this seriously or risk wasting your precious time.

Happy sleeping!