The Sleep Recession: Rising Sleep Debt and What We Can Do About It

By Admin

What is Sleep Debt?

Sleep debt is a sleep deficit that accumulates over a period of time, caused by insufficiencies either in the amount of sleep or the quality of sleep a person experiences from one day to the next. Over the past two decades there has been a rising trend in self-reported sleep debts, leading some researchers to call it an “epidemic” with great costs to our health, our economies, and our wellbeing as a nation.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), a third of U.S. adults now report less than the medically recommended seven to nine hours of sleep on average nights. In addition, an estimated 50 to 70 million Americans have chronic sleep disorders such as insomnia, daytime fatigue, and sleep apnea. For the most part, this problem remains unrecognized and unacknowledged as people tend to shrug off lost sleep hours and treat the issue as a modern inconvenience. But the effects are more serious than many people realize.

Just How Important is a Good Night’s Sleep?

The short answer: Your life depends on it. Drowsy driving alone causes an average of a million accidents, 500,000 injuries and 8,000 deaths annually in the U.S., according to research by Harvard Medical School. A single night of limited sleep, according to the study, can potentially impair one’s performance as much as a blood-alcohol level of .10 percent, an amount above the legal limit to drive in every state in the country. And accidents are only part of the story. Inadequate sleep affects brain and body physiology in ways that can inhibit a number of vital functions for physical and mental health.

What the Science Tells Us

The consensus among sleep researchers is that it doesn’t take long for the negative consequences of sleep debt to develop. In a landmark study by the University of Chicago Medical Center, analysts monitored a group of volunteers who slept fewer hours for just over two weeks, and by the 16th day the group consistently developed higher blood pressure, higher levels of the stress hormone cortisol, and even showed signs of insulin resistance — a precursor to type 2 diabetes. In addition, the changes they observed in glucose tolerance and endocrine function resembled, according to the study, the effects of advanced age, in some cases occurring within the first week of monitoring.

Even more surprising was the rate of reversal when the volunteers returned to normal sleep hours. During a recovery period when participants spent 12 hours in bed per day, the majority of the abnormalities quickly reduced and returned to baseline, suggesting that even more than the recommended eight hours of sleep per day is necessary when recovering from previous upsets.

Studies like this emphasize just how important sleep is to our health and lives, as even brief reductions in nightly sleep can lead very rapidly to conditions well beyond simply feeling tired. Higher stress levels, anxiety and irritability, daytime fatigue, distractibility, slowed reaction time, and even impaired memory can develop almost overnight. And if continued, these effects can lead to significant reductions in quality of life, job performance, and safety to yourself and others.

The Body’s Reboot System

Another study, published in the journal Nature in 2018, further elaborates on the science of sleep and how our brains need it to function. A number of special proteins called "sleep need index phosphoproteins" (SNIPPs) accumulate between brain cells during waking hours to facilitate our memory synapses. As we sleep at night these proteins are removed in a kind of rebooting process that clears our minds of excessive and unnecessary activity. A breakthrough discovery on its own, this study is also part of a new and comprehensive understanding of the functions of sleep.

In an age of superfluous information and increasingly stimulating environments, our sleep hours allow our bodily systems to reset, helping us cope and even thrive despite the challenges. On the other hand, we’re also learning more about the damage we’re doing when we prioritize a few extra waking hours over a full night’s sleep. By looking deeper at what sleep does for us, it is easy to see how inadequate sleep can affect our ability to perform the tasks of our everyday lives.

Recommendations

While the world population ages and the number of people affected by sleep disorders is expected to continue its upward trajectory in the coming years, many individuals simply want help with the basics. Changing habits is never easy, but when it comes to sleep, luckily for many, all it takes is a new routine and a little bit of discipline to get the rest you need. The following steps to healthy sleeping are an aggregate of recommendations from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM), the National Sleep Foundation (NSF) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Step One: Address Your Immediate Sleep Problems Immediately

For sleep, there is no better time or place than here and now. Whether you're behind the wheel of a car or walking across a street, exhaustion can sneak up when you’re not expecting it. So if you don’t find a time and place for needed rest, your body will find it for you. Therefore, your first concern should be your most basic needs of safety and survival, and this requires as much sleep as you can afford to give yourself right away. If a nap is in order, find a place to do it. If you need to wait for the evening, plan ahead and make sure to get in bed ASAP. The first step to a change in sleep habits is taking it seriously, and if it’s bad enough to be an immediate concern, it’s simply not being prioritized.

Step Two: Change Your Mind

The next step to getting better sleep is to consistently make it a priority. This means more than binge sleeping when the situation gets out of hand. While those with conditions such as sleep apnea or insomnia may have to take further steps to acquire healthy sleep, for most individuals a full night of quality sleep is well within the realm of possibility for any given night of the week. All you have to do is want it enough. Adopting good sleep habits means raising quality sleep standards to the highest priority and keeping it there, night after night.

Step Three: Make New Habits Work

The final step to any change of habits is discipline. But like the prioritization of sleep, discipline is a long step that will likely need some work along the way. This is especially true if you have a sleep disorder. Getting tested is an important step, but if you’re diagnosed, it is your responsibility to follow through with the treatment. This can include medications, therapies and in some cases even surgery, but if you have your first two steps in line, the third is much easier to maintain. Just keep in mind that change is rarely as simple as getting to bed on time. For many individuals with sleep problems, a change in the routine before bed, keeping strict schedules for things like medication or walking a pet, for example, and sometimes bedroom environments can play an important role in sleep debt recovery. Specialists recommend a steady routine with a dark and calming sleep environment to keep the focus on rest and only rest when the time comes.

Don’t Forget to Exercise

Another important change is exercise. It is not just what you do at night that affects sleep, but how you spend your waking hours. If you are not currently getting exercise; do something about it. Even a few minutes of sustained movement can make a big difference and leave you physically tired for the sleep hours later in the night. Also, avoiding stimulants, excesses of alcohol or recreational drugs or even meals at late hours can help get your melatonin going as the time for sleep draws near.

Sleep Tech

Sleep specialists do not recommend bright screens or noise at bedtime, but tracking your sleep experiences with smart technology is a great way to create a detailed log of your efforts. Smartphone apps and wearable items like smart-bracelets or smart-watches can collect and analyze sleep data with little effort on your part, keeping detailed records for easy transmission to a clinic or family physician. In order to pay off your sleep debt and embrace a healthier lifestyle, you may want to enlist a little tech help for your efforts.

Only by embracing sleep as a valuable part of our lives can we begin to turn the sleep recession around in the direction of a surplus. Most of us already value our sleep, but we value it more like a rare commodity than a daily necessity, causing us to pursue it tirelessly as we do with everything else. We know that proper, regular sleep promotes productivity, yet far too many of us continue to act as though our sleep must suffer for the good of our work. By balancing our work life with proper health routines, we can learn to maintain the same diligent pursuits but with our hearts and minds rested from full nights of pleasant sleep. And given the right mindset, it may even improve our dreams.