Sleep deprivation is a problem for an increasing number of Americans in this 24 hour a day world. Some people do not get enough sleep because they have a sleep disorder, such as sleep apnea, but many people tend to stay up too many hours during their work or school week, thinking they can make it up with a good night’s sleep on the weekend.
New research shows that chronic sleep loss may not be corrected by a long night, or even a weekend, of rest. Dr. Daniel Cohen of Boston’s Bringham and Women’s Hospital indicates that sleep loss is not easy to recover from.
Sleep is essential for human beings, but is often sacrificed because we have too much to do. Before the days of electricity, television and computers, humans usually went to bed when it was dark and awoke with the sun’s light. Now there is temptation to stay awake past our bedtimes, whether working, studying or playing.
Sleep is essential for health reasons and safety reasons. According to a press statement by Dr. Cohen, staying awake for 24 hours in a row impairs performance to a level comparable to a blood alcohol level beyond the legal limit to drive. This indicates that people who are sleep deprived can be a hazard to themselves and others on the road, operating equipment or in a multitude of situations when their fuzzy thinking impairs reaction time and solid decision making.
Some people may pull an occasional all nighter when meeting a deadline or partying, which is an acute sleep loss. Other people consistently short themselves of sleep, meaning that they have a habit of going to bed too late, resulting in a nightly lack of rest. If one shorts themselves of two hours of sleep a night, that two hours is a deficiency that builds up to ten hours in a five day period. This amount of sleep loss is nearly impossible to make up in a weekend.
Effects of sleep deprivation appear to be progressive. In the study by Dr. Cohen, volunteers stayed up for 33 hours and slept for 10 hours at a stretch, interfering with their circadian rhythms. Subjects were able to recover pretty well after the first segment, but their ability to recover from the sleep loss got consistently worse during the three week period.
The amount of sleep required varies, according to the National Health Institute. Infants may need about 16 hours of sleep per night. Teenagers may need about nine hours of sleep per night. Adults require an average of seven to eight hours of sleep nightly, although some adults need less and some require more for peak functioning.
Sleep hygiene is an important health topic, as sleep affects our physical and mental functioning. Instead of fitting in sleep when we can, we should make getting proper rest a priority by scheduling a regular sleep schedule based on our individual need for high quality, restorative sleep.
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