If you want to hit the sweet sleep spot, you’ve got to show it some respect

Ditch the phone, ignore the emails, don't touch the biscuit tin ... and settle down for the recommended seven hours of zzzzz

How much do you get every night? There are people in this world - and I might have been one before I bedded more comfortably into middle age - who are attracted to headlines about how much sex we all have. These days, though, as I approach my half-century, nothing excites me as much as a juicy discussion about sleep.

How to fall asleep, how to stay asleep and when we should wake up. I love it all, and the more granular detail on offer the better, so I was well stuck in last week to research that suggests that seven hours is the-optimal amount for cognitive wellbeing. The study had nearly 500,000 participants aged 38 to 73 and used brain imaging and genetic data on 40,000 of them. My own research methodology might not be so scientific - I start my diary every day with a reflection on the previous night - but my results tally. Seven hours is the sweet spot.