Sleep Deprivation and Health Effects
Mon Mar 17, 2008 at 04:36:01 PM PDT
We've talked a lot here about sleep, and here is a piece from 60 Minutes talking about just how critical sleep is, and how dangerous sleep deprivation can be:
One thing that's clear, says Walker, is that sleep is critical. In a series of studies done back in the 1980s, rats were kept awake indefinitely. After just five days, they started dying.
Walker says they started dying from sleep deprivation. "In fact, sleep is as essential as food because they will die just about as quick from food deprivation as sleep deprivation. So, it's that necessary," he says.
Sleep isn't just for the lazy: it's critical to proper body function. A study restricting sleep to four hours a night had dire effects:
The study's subjects were on the road to diabetes in just six days, and that’s not all - they were also hungry. Van Cauter has made a radical discovery: that lack of sleep may be contributing to the epidemic of obesity in this country through the work of a hormone called leptin that tells your brain when you’re full.
So, we feed our nation full of High Fructose Corn Syrup, have them work at sedentary jobs near a refrigerator, allow them breaks from work only to eat, and we don't give anyone time to exercise or sleep. The researchers feel that adding sleep deprivation to the list of key diabetes risk factors may be in order, and that it may even be a factor in many disorders we currently associate with old age.
They found that even a single night of four to five hours of sleep has a distinct and dramatic effect on cognitive ability, and that the accumulation made it worse:
"So, overall, how do you think not having enough sleep for five nights has affected you?" Stahl asked Hacina.
"Well, my - I- I'm quiet - quieter, definitely," she replied.
"And - and - uh- what else did you ask?" Hacina asked after a long pause, seeming confused.
The testing for alertness and reaction time has real-world relevance. Virginia Tech's Transportation Institute did a study of what causes car crashes. They got 241 volunteers to agree to have their cars wired with five cameras each. Over a year's time they found that driving drowsy was the riskiest behavior of all.
"You only need two seconds to have a lapse, in driving a car at 60 miles an hour, to drift completely out lane," Dinges says. "You're off the road in four seconds. And those kinds of lapses and slowed reaction times begin to appear fairly early."
Sleep deprivation is associated with many major accidents, including Three Mile Island and the Exxon Valdez.
"Many people want something associated with morals or management or…alcohol," Dinges remarks. "Those are far more glamorous. But, in reality, many of these disasters involve poor judgments and slowed reactions at a time when people were basically tired and made not complicated mistakes. Simple ones. And that is the hallmark of sleep deprivation."
Hacina, the sleep-deprived French woman in the Penn study, thought she was maybe alert enough to give Stahl a lift.
"What really struck me is that she didn't know how impaired she was. It was clear, but she didn't know," Stahl remarks.
"That has been a finding in all of our studies. They tell you they've adapted. They're okay," Dinges says.
Doctors are the worst. For years they've insisted that medical training take place with residents on absurdly long shifts. I can't understand how anyone can feel comfortable about residents on the end of a 24 hour shift attempting to practice medicine on a routine basis. I can't understand how anyone can be comfortable with them driving home afterwards. You'll hear older doctors saying they've "trained" themselves to function in that state... but frankly, that has never made sense to me.
Dinges says people who are chronically sleep deprived, like people who've had too much to drink, often have no sense of their limitations. They believe they've trained themselves. "I think it's a convenient belief. For the millions of people who don't get enough sleep because their commute to work is too long, or they spend too many hours at work, or they just want this lifestyle of go, go, go, it's convenient to say, 'I've learned to live without sleep.' But you bring ‘em into the laboratory - and we have an open challenge to any CEO or anyone in the world, come into the laboratory - we don't see this adaptation," he says.
It's a terrific article, well worth the time to read in full. So how do we change the world from one where sleep is viewed as a frippery, a distraction, to one where everyone understands that sleep is important to proper function and good health? People who have their full quota of sleep are smarter, healthier, and better workers.
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