When Charlotte Thornton was young, she’d watch her Nanna fall into a 10-minute sleep almost as soon as she sat down. “She would be so tired because, although she routinely went to bed at 10:30pm, she’d be awake from half past one. Rather than fight it, she’d just get up, put her pins in her hair and go downstairs to watch reruns of Countdown ,” says Charlotte, now 35 and a civil servant.

Although she used to laugh at her relative’s sporadic sleep schedule , Charlotte has ended up developing the same habit. “I do what I call ‘sleep tapas’ – little and often. I’ve never felt good on a lot of sleep, and I honestly think I could function fine on one hour a night,” she says, putting her own erratic sleeping down to ADHD .

The condition is associated with sleep problems , including ins

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