Comment: Poll revelations send us to sleep

We knew it couldn’t last. Having had a couple of brief days of respite from anti-alcohol "news" this week, Britain has today been helpfully informed by a “government-funded poll” that drinking alcohol can disturb your sleep.

In a revelation that’s only slightly less shocking than the daily occurrence of the sunset, more than half of the 2,000 drinkers surveyed by YouGov said they felt a bit lethargic the day after exceeding their recommended daily booze limit. They may even experience a headache.

You and I probably know this to be a ‘hangover’. We’ve all had them and we probably will again. One can only hope the government is proud of its investment in this ground-breaking research.

The survey says that many people didn’t know that the dehydrating effects of alcohol can cause you to wake up in the middle of the night gasping for a drink of water, or needing to go to the toilet.

Jessica Alexander, spokesperson for the Sleep Council – no I couldn’t believe such a body exists either – said: “Although many people may feel alcohol helps them get off to sleep, it is also a major culprit for disrupting your night as it can interfere with the body’s chemical processes needed for sound sleep.

“Waking up deprived of the vital sleep your body needs will leave you feeling drained and, if experienced night after night, can seriously affect your health and wellbeing.

“If you find yourself drinking above the recommended daily limits most days of the week, your body may be constantly trying to catch up and then it’s likely you’ll never feel fully alert or equipped to deal with the stresses and strains of daily life.”

So, to summarise, you might be a bit tired the morning after a night on the tiles and drinking every night is likely to do more harm to your body than good.

One has to ask where YouGov managed to find so many people who were unaware that drinking may cause a hangover. A primary school?

We are also not told how exactly the questions to the surveyed drinkers were posed, leaving plenty of room for scepticism over the agenda this survey was laden with when it was commissioned.

Would this story be plastered over the BBC (yep, them again ) website this morning if the survey had found that, in fact, the majority of those questioned were well aware of the implications heavy drinking can have on their sleep? I doubt it, because that wouldn’t portray British drinkers as ignorant of the negative impact alcohol has on your health.

The results of this survey, funded by public money that is so desperately needed by other areas of our society, have not and will not make the blindest bit of difference to anything. One can only conclude that the perceived value the BBC and the government saw in this story was yet another chance to portray alcohol as a danger to mankind. Most of us, however, will merely look at this ‘news’ and think "so what?"

Alan Lodge, 19.08.2009 

Do you agree with db about the irrelevance of this survey? What value does such a poll actually hold for the public? Or were you also unaware that drinking can have a negative effect on your night’s sleep? Email your views to debate@thedrinksbusiness.com

Peter Bowyer, director, Marlborough International (UK) Limited

"Again Alan Lodge is accurate in his assessment of this. It is presumably funded – on behalf of the ever harder pressed tax-payer – by the Department of the Bleeding Obvious…
 
Why do we allow this sort of abuse of our money to go on? Why don’t we all collect on the streets and protest? One can safely assume that in nearby countries, France, for instance, that such wastes would be met with blockades of tractors and manure spreading etc. I suppose the reason is that we all have to spend every waking hour working in order to pay all of our taxes and other levies to fund these things?
 
We really do need a complete turn-around in the way in which this Nanny State wants to influence every aspect of our daily lives, and does so in the belief that;
a) we actually care about the results
b) that someone is actually going to take on-board what they find out as some new way for them to lead their life when previous experience had completely them passed them by.
 
If anyone really is going to find this useful they should;
a) not be allowed the vote – they are obviously completely out of touch with reality and should not be allowed to have contact or effect on the rest of us
b) be completely removed from all form of authority – in particular any form of authority over how tax payers funds should be spent.
 
We need political In-Correctness, we need strong people to stand up and be prepared to be heckled by the do-gooding, beardy, vegetarian, lesbian social worker types who come up with these ideas and commit our hard earned to these reports.
 
We need a revolution, please form an orderly queue behind me."

Martin Campion, Laithwaites

"I don’t think they found the interviewees at a primary school; more likely they interviewed a troupe of macaque monkeys, AKA the government." 

Russel Gillwald, marketing director, Wild Africa Cream

"Aha, so that’s what causes the headache. I thought it was my head hitting the pavement – I feel much better now I know the real reason."