NEW parents and bad sleepers may have noticed a glut of wince-inducing headlines in the newspapers recently.

According to research, if you don’t get a full eight hours of perfect, uninterrupted sleep each night, you face myriad health problems, both physical and mental.

Non-sleepers are apparently more susceptible to everything from heart attacks to dementia, obesity and strokes. As well as, of course, nodding off at their desks at work the following day or having unusually savage rows with their partners over issues that wouldn’t normally bother them at all, like Debbie McGee’s chances of winning this year’s Strictly Come Dancing competition.

It’s possible that these news stories on the dangers of not resting are potentially salutary for those who choose not to go to bed until the small hours.

But for those of us who often find ourselves unable to sleep at all, it all makes for galling reading.

There is something especially lonely about a night without sleep.

The long hours of darkness hold sharp corners of vivid anxiety.

As the hours peel mercilessly away, stress freezes the shoulders, then the spine, until the whole back is rigid with miserable tension, making it almost unbearable to lie in bed.

But, thanks to these articles, lying awake throughout the night - already a uniquely difficult and frustrating experience - takes on added edge as we recall the ways our mad, sleepless brains are harming our health.

In recent years, sleep has become a commodity so precious neuroscientists argue it should be prescribed, so valuable it is the subject of innumerable best-selling books.

Night-time has seemingly transformed into an art that can only be successfully learned by the most diligent students.

Phones must be switched off, baths taken, lavender pillow sprays atomised, candles lit.

We must take so many deep breaths that we become light-headed.

We are advised to listen to hypnosis CDs narrated by nasal Australians who play panpipes at shrill and hideous volume.

Sometimes, performing these little rituals doesn’t work and we eventually abandon the idea of sleeping altogether.

On these nights, we haunt our own homes, moving restlessly from room to room like ghosts.

Arianna Huffington, the co-founder and editor in chief of The Huffington Post, says she believes we are in the depths of a “sleep deprivation crisis”, the result of which is general dysfunction that affects everything in our lives.

Lack of sleep, she argues, strips us of a form of vital nourishment, and she has crossed America telling her well-rested disciples to “sleep their way to the top”. A good night’s sleep has become a status symbol.

Other authors tell us sleep is a science which we can manipulate to create better outcomes.

I once read a memorable article on how to ‘hack’ our circadian rhythms to help us sleep for longer.

All of these writers, however, are in agreement that resting is essential for your health and happiness.

But the sleepless already know this. Sleep is the simplest form of magic, capable of transforming a whole day.

And so, after a lot of thought, mainly conducted between 3.14am and 5.27am, I think we should stop reading about the ways we harm ourselves by not sleeping. All it does is add to the stress of going without sleep.

I also think we should stop reading well-intentioned but useless articles on things we can do to help us sleep.

All the pillow sprays and sleepy teas in the world don’t always make a difference, and sometimes the routine itself reinforces the idea that sleep is a learned skill, like algebra or tango dancing.

Instead, the only things that seem to be worth doing are trying to stay as anxiety-free as possible before bed and not looking at phones or clocks during the night.

It’s not a theory that will sell a million books. But it might transform a day.