On the 10th weekend of the Auckland lockdown, the situation has been linked to some struggling to get a good night’s sleep.
Auckland Sleep director Sumit Samant said the clinic has seen around a 30 per cent increase in the number of general practitioner referrals or self-referrals from patients since the Delta outbreak began.
He said insomnia disorders are the most common problem he’s seeing.
“Going to bed and not being able to fall asleep or waking up in the middle of the night and then struggling to go back to sleep and that can be either an acute, new thing or exacerbation of an already pre-existing thing.
“People are having less time to relax and unwind in the evenings and so they're going to bed… minds are still thinking about the day and the following day,” Samant said.
He said other patients are seeking help for snoring or sleep apnoea, which can affect not only the sleeper but those around them.
“When people are stuck within a bubble and with a lot less escape outside the bubble… that interpersonal frustration or magnitude of the problem is getting bigger and worse for people.”
Samant said the situation has put more pressure on an already-stretched sleep workforce.
“Funding for sleep issues is virtually non-existent in New Zealand so there’s definitely something that we need to do about that.
Samant said Government funding to help people in financial hardship afford treatment would provide a significant boost.
“Not everyone can afford even relatively cheaper treatments so absolutely more funding would be a huge help.”
“We have set up a phone helpline at Auckland Sleep where people can call and have a good, lengthy 20 to 30-minute conversation about their problems and get some free advice and some things to try at home, ways to help their sleep themselves without having to go anywhere, without having to spend anything,” he said.
Massey University Sleep/Wake Research Centre senior lecturer Dr Rosie Gibson said some people are being affected by losing their daily routines, which is affecting their natural body clocks.
“During lockdown, what we’ve found is people have more time in bed so there’s more sleep opportunity and we’re not governed by our alarm clocks so when we’ve got more time in bed, what we see is our sleep efficiency, the time we’re actually spending asleep tends to reduce,” Gibson said.
She’s helped create sleep advice for specific groups of the population during the pandemic.
General advice includes people getting outdoors for some sunshine, even on cloudy days, to regulate their sleep-wake cycle, bringing routine back into their lives with scheduled socialisation with friends rather than checking social media constantly and a set sleep and wake time.
Advice also includes avoiding coffee after lunch and alcohol before bed to improve sleep quality and keeping phones out of the bedroom if possible, and avoiding their use for a couple of hours before bed if possible.
Gibson said people should seek medical help if their situation is not improving after trying to change their sleep hygiene habits.
She said compared to the 2020 lockdown which showed fragmented sleep and disturbed dreams were linked to anxiety and general poorer moods during the first lockdown, this time anecdotal reports are of insomnia symptoms, particularly for people in Auckland who are experiencing a “very long” lockdown.
“If we're anxious during the daytime we are more likely to… the brain remains in a higher state of anxiety during the night-time, it's a lot more difficult to get to sleep and stay asleep,” Gibson said.
The Sleep/Wake Research Centre’s survey of around 700 Kiwis during the 2020 lockdown revealed 45 per cent of respondents believed their sleep had got worse, while 22 per cent said their sleep had got better.
Gibson said the effects of poor sleep are wide-ranging, from poorer mental health and physical health to a weaker immune response to a vaccine.
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