Behavorial
Even a few nights of bad sleep can be detrimental. One study found that people who were limited to three straight nights of sleeping five hours or less were more likely to have physical ailments such as headaches, stomach problems, and sore joints.
Other studies have shown that curtailing sleep to four hours a night for several nights results in changes in metabolism that are similar to those that occur in normal aging and that raise levels of hormones linked with overeating and weight gain.
Lack of sleep is directly linked to poor health, with new research suggesting it increases the risk of diabetes, heart disease, and obesity. A study found that women who averaged less than five hours of sleep per night had a significantly higher death rate than those who slept seven hours.
Sleep debt is cumulative. Studies have shown that performance on tests of alertness and thinking continues to get worse the longer sleep deprivation lasts. We do not adapt to sleep deprivation.
Sleep deprivation and driving can be deadly. Nearly one in five drivers admits to having fallen asleep at the wheel, and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration conservatively estimates that one hundred thousand police reported crashes are caused by drowsy drivers each year, causing 76 thousand injuries and 15 thousand deaths.
Sleep deprivation played a role in catastrophes such as the Exxon Valdez oil spill off the coast of Alaska, the space shuttle Challenger disaster, and the nuclear accident at Three
Mile Island.
Sleep deprivation and sleep disorders are estimated to cost Americans over $100 billion annually in lost productivity, medical expenses, sick leave, and property and environmental damage.
Even when sleep deprivation does not cause illness or accidents, it can affect your quality of life. Sleep problems affect virtually every aspect of day-to-day living, such as your mood, mental alertness, work performance, and energy level. According to the 2005 NSF survey, almost three in ten working adults say they have missed work or made errors at work because of sleep-related issues in the past three months.
And nearly one-fourth of partnered adults say they have sex less often or have lost interest in sex because they are too sleepy. Unfortunately, despite some recent progress, fewer than 3 per cent of Americans with sleep problems get treatment because both patients and their primary care doctors often do not consider sleep an important health issue. This is partly due to lack of training for physicians and partly because many people accept poor sleep as inevitable.
A survey of American medical schools in 1990 showed that 37 percent did not offer any training in sleep medicine. As recently as 1998, the average amount of sleep education averaged a little more than two hours during the four years of medical school. As a result, doctors frequently fail to ask patients about their sleep.
On the patient side, people with sleep problems often do not report them to their physicians. They believe poor sleep is not a medical problem and incorrectly assume it is normal to feel tired throughout the day or have difficulty getting to sleep at night.
The good news is that this situation is starting to change. Medical training institutions are adding sleep medicine training programs, sleep medicine is now recognized as an official medical subspecialty, and physicians can demonstrate their proficiency by taking board-certification examinations. Between 1993 and 2003, the number of physicians certified in sleep medicine increased more than six-fold to nearly two thousand.
Health and regulatory officials, as well as the general public, are also starting to wake up to the importance of sleep. For example, some school districts, urged on by frustrated parents, have changed starting times for classes to make them more amenable to adolescents’ natural sleep patterns. In New Jersey, drowsy driving is now treated as a criminal offense similar to driving while intoxicated; other states are considering following suit.
Behavorial Effects Of Sleep Deprivation
Sleep Disorders And Sleep Deprivation: An Unmet Public Health Problem
