Often, I feel helpless at night - the number of sheep I have counted could fill a dozen pens, but I am still alert and perky as if I am about to watch a horse race.

There are hundreds of ways to get sleep, I am told. The recommendations include some weird ones such as eating caviar with mustard before bed time, slapping one's feet until they go numb or listening to the noise of an electric fan. However, I have tried many of these methods, all to no avail.

I don't know if insomnia is a sign of aging. When I was younger, I could fall asleep easily.

I remember when I was preparing for the entrance examination to university in 1993, I used to be jealous of my classmates who could study until midnight without any coffee or tea, while I used to start feeling sleepy at 9 pm. Once, my mother suggested that I use toothpicks to keep my eyelids from closing tight so I could read more books. She no longer gives me such creative advice.

Doctors say insomnia can be caused by high work pressure, especially in today's highly competitive world.

I totally agree. The pressure feels like a flood, spreading in all directions. To fight this stress, my brain is always active and cannot seem to rest, leaving me exhausted, no matter how long one I have stayed in bed.

It took me a while to accept that insomnia is an illness. One day I went to see a traditional Chinese doctor, who gave me some herbs for a nightly feet soak.

I rushed to a supermarket and bought a wooden basin as well as a big boiler. As I was trying to squeeze all this into the elevator, my neighbors came up to ask if I was about to start a foot massage service.

Preparing the brown liquid for the soak was a disaster. It took hours to get the amount as required, and the smell turned my house into a chemical factory. By the time I finished the foot soak, it was about 2 in the morning.

I gave it up a few days later.

My colleagues are deeply sympathetic. Rather than recommending more medicines, they ask me why I don't set up an insomniac club, like in the West. It may seem like a good idea to some but I am just afraid that I might get worse if I were surrounded by so many desperate people with the same experience.

As yet, there are no statistics on how many Chinese suffer from insomnia. I bet the number must be huge among white-collar workers. Why else would the Internet and magazine be full of advice for a good night's sleep?

My generation is indeed lucky to be enjoying the offerings of a fast-developing, hi-tech society. But we are losing out on what nature has to offer - good health and fertility, for instance.

What will we lose next?

Just thinking about this, I am wide awake, once again...

(China Daily 04/03/2008 page20)