‘Rest and Digest’ Versus ‘Flight or Flight’: A Commentary on Arousal and Sleep in Non-Clinical Populations

Increasingly in modern times workers are finding it difficult to shut down at night and go to sleep. Work-related demands can continue long into the night keeping a person awake instead of asleep and then there are the pressing anxieties relating to what the employee will face the next day, which can often wake a person in the middle of the night. In essence, the parasympathetic (rest and digest) and sympathetic (fight or flight) systems of the body are trying to operate in tandem when the body was not designed to function in this manner. Much of this population refuse to seek treatment as do not think their sleep problems are serious enough to need it [1]. For many, being sleep deprived may even be seen as a good thing as fits the profile of being a ‘hard worker’.