Publishing heroine Arianna Huffington is as passionate about sleep as she is about her burgeoning Huffington Post empire, leading the New York-based editor-in-chief to launch her first book on the subject.
The Sleep Revolution was released this month, a book that charts the importance of adequate rest and society’s growing sleep deprivation crisis. It was inspired by Huffington’s own experience – in 2007, she was functioning on three to four hours of sleep a night which led to her hospitalisation. The incident urged Huffington to reassess her own lifestyle, as well as the impact a quality night of rest has over our public and personal lives.
"No matter who we are or where we are in the world and in our lives, we share a common need for sleep. Though this need has been a constant throughout human history, our relationship to sleep has gone through dramatic ups and downs. And right now that relationship is in crisis," she explains to Sunday Life.
"Nearly 5000 apps come up when you search ‘sleep’ in the Apple App Store, more than 15 million photos under #sleep on Instagram, another 14 million under #sleepy, and more than 24 million under #tired. A quick search for ‘sleep’ on Google will bring up more than 800 million results," says Huffington.
Huffington is not without warrant in her ambition to reshape how society looks at sleep – The Sydney Morning Herald reports that sleep deprivation is a major cost to the economy, public safety and personal health. Australian sleep disorders cost the nation $5.1 billion per year and regard anything from lost productivity to workplace accidents.
