What a trip to Antarctica teaches sleep-deprived Hong Kong about need for rest

It’s a perfect day in Antarctica – the sky is blue, the sun is bright and there’s not even a whiff of wind. Penguins glide through the crystal clear water and from the deck of your expedition ship you watch them come ashore noisily.

Even though it’s long past dinner time, the exhilaration of this otherworldly landscape keeps you up and since it never gets properly dark – the midnight twilight is enough to see the glaciers that roll down to the sea – you stay on deck long past bedtime, absorbing it all. This a common temptation for many first-timers to the polar regions, but old hands know the importance of keeping a good sleep routine.

“At the beginning it is very elevating and you stay up to midnight, one in the morning, and you will feel fantastic. And then you might get up at 4am or 5am because you are in the pack ice and you feel you have to look out for polar bears. But after three or four days, if you are not getting enough sleep, you have to be careful because you realise you are not making the best decisions,” says Hannah Lawson, who leads expeditions to the Arctic and Antarctic for the tourism company Polar Latitudes.

This is critical for the expedition team, who drive the inflatable dinghies and are responsible for guests, but it’s equally important for visitors who run the risk of exhaustion and doing things that may put their lives at risk in the harsh environment.

“Because of the 24-hour daylight you don’t feel like it’s the middle of the night, especially in the Arctic where the sun is just going around in a circle over the horizon, it’s not dipping at all. There’s hardly any difference between midday and midnight in Svalbard,” says Lawson.

Most of us rely on the sun to dictate our daily sleep-wake cycle. As the evening wears on we begin to feel sleepy, and are wakeful when the day begins. This pattern is part of our circadian rhythms, which are controlled by the body’s internal clock. But the pattern doesn’t hold true for those living at the poles, where during the summer there are 24 hours of sunlight and, during winter, 24 hours of darkness.