Can’t sleep in a hotel bed? This is the reason why

YOU’VE gone on holiday to an absolutely fabulous destination where everything is just perfect, yet when you hit the hay you just can’t sleep.

But why is your sleep rocky on the first night at a hotel?

Apparently, this sleeplessness might be caused by the left side of your brain staying partly awake and alert for threats as you adjust to your new surroundings.

In his book ‘The Doctor’, Dr Karl Kruszelnicki explains that this ‘First-Night Effect’ is well known to sleep scientists and he even goes on to say that experts tend to discard the data for the first night’s sleep of volunteers in their sleep laboratory - because their sleep is so restless and disturbed.

In a neurological night watch study, it was noted that on the first night the volunteers took longer to fall asleep.

Dr Karl added: “In addition, their left hemispheres stayed more “awake” and kept watch on the outside world.

“This is quite unusual — normally, in humans, both hemispheres fall asleep in synchrony with each other.”

“The disadvantage of being more rousable on that first night is that you won’t get a perfect sleep. But the advantage is that you are more likely to survive a threat.

“This pathway might be related to parents being able to sleep through a thunderstorm, but snapping awake as soon as their new-born baby makes the slightest noise.”

And while animals are able to get a decent amount of kip while remaining alert, this is something that just doesn’t happen with humans.

He writes: “Now here’s a clue as to what they found. Dolphins and some birds are known to sleep with half a brain at a time, while the other hemisphere stays awake.

“This lets them simultaneously both snooze and migrate and navigate. But we had never seen this in humans before.”

So, what can you do to combat this annoying restlessness and get some decent shut-eye in the process?