Solicitors manage to sleep more than a variety of other workers, such as dustmen, teachers and politicians, a snapshot survey released this week revealed.

The Sleep Council research involved 20 people in each of eight different walks of life and found that solicitors managed an average of 7.8 hours of sleep a night, just ahead of architects. On-call hospital doctors, unsurprisingly, fared the worst, with just 4.5 hours. MPs were the next most sleep deprived, with an average of 5.2 hours a night.


The survey found that 20% of the solicitors involved slept for ten hours, the highest proportion of any of the occupations. Humans need around eight hours sleep per night.


Psychologist Dr David Lewis, who analysed the findings, said the inability of half of the respondents to fall asleep with 15 minutes of going to bed indicated that while they were mentally exhausted, they were not sufficiently tired to fall asleep. ‘As a result their heads are filled with circulating thoughts and worries which conspire to keep them wide awake,’ he said.


More than a quarter of all those surveyed reported a general inability to fall asleep, while a similar number said they woke up early. Frequent waking was a serious problem for around seven in ten, with 20% saying they woke up between three and six times each night.


‘This may not seem all that serious until we realise that even a momentary wakening can result in up to ten minutes of lost sleep,’ said Dr Lewis. He added that while short-term sleep loss is nothing to worry about, ‘running into chronic sleep debt can have a serious damaging effect on our mental and physical health’.


The Sleep Council said that research carried out in Canada in 1999 indicated that each hour of sleep lost per night is associated with a temporary loss of one IQ point.


The council claims that a weekly sleep debt of seven hours can result in burning eyes, blurred vision and waves of sleepiness. It listed a variety of disasters which it said were caused by lack of sleep, such as Chernobyl, Exxon Valdez and Bhopal.


The survey was released to mark the start of national bed month. The Sleep Council is a promotional body funded by the National Bed Federation.