I can't sleep
Researchers figure that most adults need at least seven to eight hours of sleep a night, and children need even more. But a 2002 poll by the National Sleep Foundation found that 70 percent of American adults get less than eight hours, and 40 percent sleep less than seven hours a night. The poll also found that more than one third of respondents experienced symptoms of insomnia nearly every night. The National Center on Sleep Disorders Research estimates that as many as 70 million people in the United States suffer from sleep problems. And another 30 million Americans suffer from excessive daytime sleepiness caused by inadequate sleep.
Hunt and other researchers blame the country’s swelling sleep debt on a combination of factors from increasing life pressures to the Internet, which allows users to shop, surf the Web, or e-mail any time of the day or night. “A lot of this has to do with the way our society has evolved,” says Dr. David M. Rapoport, medical director of the Sleep Disorders Center at New York University. “We are a very sleep-deprived society.”
That’s not just a personal issue, but a public-health one, too. Researchers at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health and the Obesity Research Center found last year that the less participants slept each night, the more likely they were to become obese. Subjects between the ages of 32 and 59 who slept four hours or less per night, for example, were 73 percent more likely to be obese than those who slept between seven and nine hours each night. Researchers now believe that shortened sleep cycles are associated with decreased secretion of the hunger-suppressing hormone leptin, which can prompt the sleep-deprived to consume as many as 1,000 calories more per day (particularly sweets and salty carbohydrates). People who sleep less also produce less insulin, which helps moderate blood-sugar levels, according to the National Center on Sleep Disorders Research.
“There’s still a lack of insight as to how clinically impaired people can be when they are sleep deprived,” says Dr. James Herdegen, medical director of the Center for Sleep and Ventilatory Disorders at the University of Illinois Medical Center in Chicago. “Fifty years ago, no one even talked about sleep. It’s still a relatively young field.”
To be sure, anyone who’s stayed out late on a work night knows that a lack of sleep can make it harder to focus and function the next day. But research has shown that sleep deprivation can also affect memory, emotional stability, learning and even immunity to other diseases. It’s also been associated with high blood pressure, heart problems, diabetes and depression. “There is just no substitute for getting a good night’s sleep,” says Hunt. “Sleep is as important as diet and exercise to our overall good health.”
A lack of sleep can also endanger others. Approximately 100,000 traffic accidents (1,500 of them fatal) a year are sleep related. The government estimates that sleep-related problems also add $16 billion to the nation’s health-care bill, including medications and health-care services. And U.S. consumers are spending an estimated $84 million or more per year on over-the-counter medication, according to an analysis published in the journal Sleep and Breathing in 2002.
Nor is it likely to get better as the population gets older and fatter—both risk factors for sleep apnea and other sleep disorders.
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