percent of American people sleep less than five hours per night, according to the documentary Sleepless in America, coproduced by the National Geographic Channel.
The most sleep-deprived group are adolescents. Long-term sleep deprivation can be life-threatening.
“Experts now believe that sleep deprivation may have played a role in the Exxon Valdez oil spill, the Staten Island ferry crash, and the Three-Mile Island nuclear meltdown,” states the film.
Sleeping less than 6 hours every night can damage your cognitive abilities. This can get you killed when driving too tired. Also, lack of sleep can lead to diabetes, obesity, Alzheimer’s, cardiovascular disease and even cancer.
Depression and anxiety can be seriously affected by sleep deprivation.
What Happens When You’re Sleep Deprived?
It is very important for you to know that sleep deprivation affects any aspect of your life, and it has negative effect on mental and physical health.
1. Reaction time slows: Lack of sleep significantly slows down your movements and reactions. This can be very dangerous when driving, using power tools and other activities which include certain danger.
2. Your cognition suffers-both short and long-term: Just one night of four to six hour sleep will negatively affect the ability to think clearly the following day, according to animal study conducted on mice. The study results showed that sleep deprived mice lost almost 25 percent of the neurons located in the locus coeruleus, a nucleus in the brainstem which is responsible for cognitive processes.
Furthermore, lack of sleep affects your ability to process information and make decisions. For instance, almost 400 percent of the mistakes committed by doctors were due to overtime work of consecutive 24 hours, as shown in the film.
Also, it has been reported an increase of 73 percent of self-injuries such as needle sticks and scalpel stabs among medical residents. Additionally, when they drove back home, they had a 170 percent increased risk of experiencing a serious car or other motor vehicle accident.
Moreover, the research has shown that people with chronic sleep deprivation are more likely to develop Alzheimer`s sooner than those who sleep normally. This is so because enough sleep is essential for brain detoxification, a process which involves elimination of harmful proteins which are associated with Alzheimer`s disease.
Memory and learning declines: Neuroplasticity is a process which involves brain growth and adaptation to new neurological changes. This process is essential for the capacity of your brain to control behavior, learning and memory. Sleep and lack of sleep alter the expression of certain genes and gene products that participate in synaptic plasticity.
Emotions are heightened: Slow reaction and cognitive ability is followed by intense emotions and lack of tolerance. You will be prone to overreacting even in normal arguments with our co-workers or your partner and family.
Immune function and health deteriorates: Lack of sleep has a similar negative impact on your immune system as those of physical stress and disease. This is why sleep deprivation is linked to an increased risk of many chronic illnesses.
For instance, sleeping less than six hours per night triples your risk of high blood pressure, and women who sleep less than four hours double their risk of sudden cardiac death.
You Need Around Eight Hours of Sleep Every Night
Usually, people neglect the experts` advice about sleeping at least 8 hours. You may think that going to bad at 10 pm and waking up at 6 am is enough, but the truth is quite different. Usually, you spend about 15-30 minutes on average in falling asleep and you may wake up during the night a few times.
The Glorification of Sleep Deprivation
Almost 25 percent of American people have to reduce their hours of sleep because of the long workdays, according to the 2013 International Bedroom Poll by the National Sleep Foundation. Generally, American people sleep 6.5 hours on average, while report needing 7.25 in order to function normally, according to the previous article in the Atlantic.
“For some, sleep loss is a badge of honor, a sign that they don’t require the eight-hour biological reset that the rest of us softies do. Others feel that keeping up with peers requires sacrifice at the personal level—and at least in the short-term, sleep is an invisible sacrifice.”
“Edison spent considerable amounts of his own and his staff’s energy on in publicizing the idea that success depended in no small part in staying awake to stay ahead of the technological and economic competition.” No one… did more to frame the issue as a simple choice between productive work and unproductive rest …
Over time, children’s books and magazines began to promote this type of Edisonian asceticism… Edison encouraged all Americans to follow his lead,