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One in Ten Americans Are Chronically Sleep Deprived
Posted by
Zonk
on Mon Mar 03, 2008 06:20 AM
from the good-thing-no-one-reading-this-works-a-high-stress-job dept.
from the good-thing-no-one-reading-this-works-a-high-stress-job dept.
WirePosted writes "A CDC research study released this past week indicates that the physical and mental health of many Americans is being adversely affected by a lack of sleep. According to the study, a part of the organization's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, one in ten US citizens are consistently failing to get enough sleep every night. Almost 40% of the people surveyed didn't get enough sleep for more than a week every month. The article notes that this trend can have far-ranging implications for health beyond simple fatigue."
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Sleep Deprivation Increases Brain Activity 225 comments
SL33Z3 writes "Researchers at the University of California at San Diego have found increased brain activity in areas of the brain that otherwise stay inactive. The longer the students went without sleep, the more activity was found. Research found students to have better recollection after long periods of sleep deprivation. Check out the release here. " Heck, combine this with the news about caffeine and I'm all set!
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Drugs Eradicate the Need For Sleep 772 comments
MattSparkes writes "New Scientist is running an article on lifestyle drugs that claim to help you function on little or no sleep. I'm dubious, but the interviewee in the article claims they work well. 'Yves (not his real name), a 31-year-old software developer from Seattle, often doesn't have time for a full night's sleep. So he swallows something to make sure he doesn't need one.'" But, sleep is where I'm a Viking!
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IT: Half of IT Workers Sleep on the Job 431 comments
Stony Stevenson writes "According to a new online survey by Harris Interactive, more than half of IT workers say they've fallen asleep at work, while nearly half of techies also are apparently in the mood for love. Forty-seven percent of tech pros admit they've kissed a co-worker, according to the online survey of 5,700 U.S. workers, including 163 techies.
The survey didn't indicate if those work taboos were committed by the same respondents, but in both cases, men were more likely to admit doing both. Forty-nine percent of male techies say they've fallen asleep at work, while only 35 percent of women admitted doing so."
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Snortable Drug 'Replaces' Sleep For Monkeys In Trials 236 comments
sporkme writes "A DARPA-funded research project at UCLA has wrapped up a set of animal trials testing the effects of inhalation of the brain chemical orexin A, a deficiency of which is a characteristic of narcolepsy. Monkeys were deprived of sleep, and then given a shot of the compound. 'The study ... found orexin A not only restored monkeys' cognitive abilities but made their brains look "awake" in PET scans. Siegel said that orexin A is unique in that it only had an impact on sleepy monkeys, not alert ones, and that it is 'specific in reversing the effects of sleepiness' without other impacts on the brain.' Researchers seem cautious to bill the treatment as a replacement for sleep, as it is not clear that adjusting brain chemistry could have the same physical benefits of real sleep in the long run. The drug is aimed at replacing amphetamines used by drowsy long-haul military pilots, but there would no doubt be large demand for such a remedy thanks to its apparent lack of side-effects."
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Cue the 3AM jokes... (Score:5, Interesting)
In all seriousness, despite being a major geek (I'm posted to slashdot at 3am on a Sunday, that should be geek-cred enough!), I decided to get rid of my HDTV (and in fact, stop watching TV alltogether) as an experiment. Although I miss The Daily Show, Colbert, and a few others, I've found I actually prefer not having it.. and as a rather shocking side effect, I actually keep better hours now. Suddenly I realized that the insomnia I've had since I was 13 or so, is at least in large part, related to certain stimuli. TV being one of them. As you can probably tell by the fact that I'm awake at 3:30AM on a Sunday, the Internet is an even bigger culprit.. and I'm in the process of working out how I can dial back its hold on me.
Re:Cue the 3AM jokes... (Score:5, Funny)
I defenestrated the TV long ago. These days, it's my ongoing nasty divorce situation keeping me up at night, and there is nothing much I can do about that. Defenestrating the wife is a difficult thing to do. :-)
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Re:Cue the 3AM jokes... (Score:5, Funny)
And something that should be done before filing for divorce, in order to not rise suspicion.
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Re:Cue the 3AM jokes... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Cue the 3AM Defenestration jokes... (Score:3, Insightful)
I bought a DVR for my computer and recorded shows onto my computer and put them on my mp3 player to watch while commuting and at work when I was bored. Time shifting shows allows me to get the sleep I need.
Re:Cue the 3AM jokes... (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Cue the 3AM jokes... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
That's in addition to extreme irritability and just being a downright nasty person sometimes -- even to people I care about.
Re:More than 7 hours needed? Slashdot editors? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:More than 7 hours needed? Slashdot editors? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:More than 7 hours needed? Slashdot editors? (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, I think there's a pretty good case to be made that killing people does lead to mental damage.
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I think you are doing an honorable job making sure that nobody posts anything wrong on slashdot without being immediately corrected or 1up'd
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Re:Cue the 3AM jokes... (Score:4, Informative)
Dude, my experience is even more eerily on-topic. I just got back from a sleep lab where I had a CPAP [wikipedia.org] titration at a sleep lab to treat Sleep Apnea [wikipedia.org], pull up slashdot, and here this is.
If you feel chronically tired, are a little overweight and don't get a lot of exercise (queue predictable slashdot demographics joke) and you are told you snore by a significant other (queue another predictable slashdot demographics joke), you should look into it. All reports are that using the CPAP vastly improves quality of life. Plus, you can make believe you are a jet fighter pilot!
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Re:Cue the 3AM jokes... (Score:4, Informative)
I don't have anything to do with any on the companies. I'm just a patient. For the longest time, I had chronic fatigue, I just felt exhausted all the time. Unless something forced me awake, I would easily sleep 12-14 hours a day. My Doctor thought it was just symptoms of depression, but eventually he suggested having a sleep study done. It turns out I had undiagnosed , severe sleep apnea, that probably manifested in highschool (I had horrible problems getting up to go school, and was late all the time). This means that I stop breathing in my sleep, over 30 times an hour. I've been using a CPAP machine for the last few years since then, and it makes an enormous difference in quality of life.
This isn't the only disorder they can find, there are many others. They hook you up to an Electro-encephalogram and other stuff to monitor you, and the results can be extremely informative to your doctor for making recommendations.
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Re:Cue the 3AM jokes... (Score:4, Funny)
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teach yourself in 24 hours (Score:3, Funny)
News just in: (Score:5, Funny)
It's funny cuz it's truuue... (Score:5, Interesting)
Perhaps that is part of the reason why we americans do not rate very highly on the global happiness scale.
Think about it.
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Re: Alarm for 7:20 (Score:3, Funny)
Hehe, that would get me fired since I'm supposed to start at 7:00. But wait ! That would give me more time to sleep... but nothing to eat.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Then you should reappraise your lifestyle. Personally I spend about 7 in office and 0 hours commuting because I work
for myself and 7 hours of quality time is more productive than 12 hours from a sleep deprived zombie who would notice
how degraded his performance was if only he wasn't so chronically sleep deprived. Of course, there are people who function
well on very little sleep at certain tasks, but contemplative life changing ch
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I work the GRAVEYARD SHIFT... (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Then would you mind opening my coffin ? I can't rest forever, I have to go check my e-mail.
Great.... (Score:5, Funny)
Wow! (Score:5, Funny)
Stimuli (Score:4, Insightful)
Our sleep deprivation, I would hazard to guess, is mostly voluntary (or semi-voluntary.) And overall it's not such a bad thing -- our time is short, and who can blame us for resenting the hours lost to sleep?
(And it's 5:00 a.m. and I really wish I could sleep. Stupid new Wii and its evil bowling . . .
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, now with the amount of trash on TV (even with Sky) then there is nothing to watch from 7pm but the news, and even that repeats every half-hour!
On a more related note, who are most likely to be sleep deprived if it is only one in ten - the lowest earners, who need to work every hour they can to survive, or the highest earners, who feel they have to work more than their contract to keep their job?
Personally, I get about seve
What's enough? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
(Which is probably just as well.)
Re:What's enough? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:What's enough? (Score:4, Insightful)
Taking time out to do 'nothing' can enhance your productivity. If all you are doing is routine tasks - stamping papers or debugging program code - then perhaps you can go on for days on end, I know I have. But it kills your creativity - when I encounter a difficult problem, the best way to solve it, in my experience, is to stop thinking about it, do something else and let the task run in the background. Albert Einstein famously drove himself to desperation trying to find a way to integrate gravity in the relativity theory; when at last he gave up, he suddenly had the solution. IOW, stop trying too hard.
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Coincidentally.. (Score:4, Funny)
Recommended Reading (Score:5, Interesting)
- The Twenty-Four Hour Society: Understanding Human Limits in a World That Never Sleeps [amazon.com] by Martin Moore-Ede
He's also written several other books having to do with sleep and circadian rhythm.Among the anecdotes in the book are an account of a coast-to-coast airplane crew who put the plane on autopilot then all fell asleep. The plane, loaded with passengers, overshot the destination and was a hundred miles out to sea before air traffic control was able to wake them over the radio.
Also, the author was paid a visit by a Secret Service agent - the people who guard the life of the US President. It seems they were expected to stay on the same shift, in local time, no matter where in the world the President went. That is, if they work 9 to 5 Washington time, then fly to Iraq, say - where the president has visited a couple times - they are expected to then work 9 to 5 Iraqi time, without taking any time to get used to the time zone change. The agent who consulted the author felt that their constant exhaustion that resulted put the President's life at risk.
My own experience includes, at my very first salaried programming job, where I wasn't paid very much and didn't get overtime pay, I was regularly expected to work twenty-hour days and once worked a twenty-nine hour day.
When I was self-employed as a software consultant, quite often I'd work twenty hour days trying to make a milestone so I could get paid. Several times, when times were really hard, I worked forty-hour "days".
Employers of salaried employees seem to feel quite justified in requiring their employees to work without enough sleep. I'd like to see legislation passed that forbids this. Even if your paid work isn't safety-critical, going without sleep needlessly puts lives at risk when you drive your car home. People are killed all the time when drivers fall asleep at the wheel.
Not all managers are assholes (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree that there needs to be something done. I am loathe to have the Government get involved in our lives anymore than they already are, but you may be right that there needs to be some kind o
Thats because we don't get... (Score:5, Interesting)
And to think how the dollar is falling against the euro.... go figure...
Re:Thats because we don't get... (Score:4, Informative)
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Undoubtedly this affects the sex as well (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Undoubtedly this affects the sex as well (Score:5, Funny)
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Kids and trying to catch up, keep me awake (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course there are activities that I want to do that I can't when the kids are awake...so I end up staying awake longer just to do them....heck...last night I stayed up to watch the first volume of Death Note on DVD. I can't exactly let my 7 or 4 year olds see something that is rated for >=14yr olds.
Wash, rise, repeat....= lack of sleep.
Re:Kids and trying to catch up, keep me awake (Score:5, Insightful)
This gets exacerbated if one of your kids is a real early bird (would like to get up at 5:30 am), and the other one is a night owl (goes to sleep at 11 pm, but wakes up at 9 am).
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Here's my situation. I have a 4 year old and a 9 month old. The 4 year old is great about getting to bed on time (around 7pm) and pretty much stays asleep all night... until about 5:45 am when he wakes up. This is, of course, 15-30 minutes before my alarm goes off on weekdays. Not enough time to go back to sleep, but enough time to feel the lack of enough sleep.
My 9 month old, on the other hand, tends to be ready for some "daddy play time" around 7pm until aroun
It's even worse for some of us... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Huh? (Score:3, Funny)
Undersleep=overweight (Score:4, Insightful)
I think I read first about this sometime around the late 90's or early 2000's, and it seems logical: when you're overtired, your body reacts much as it does to starvation - increasing your appetite AND squirreling away calories (as fat) for the anticipated energy shortage.
Experimenting as much as my job & family will allow, I find that if I get sufficient sleep - go to sleep when I'm tired, get up when I wake up, always try to get at LEAST 8 hours (I typically get 5-6 hours)...I've found that I slowly start shedding pounds without significantly changing my eating habits. Not insignificantly, I seem to FEEL better generally (although that of course could be placebo).
But I can never manage that in "real" life for any extended time - hour commute, 9-10 hour work days - so, like most Americans I try to shoehorn in sleep 'when possible' and have to accept that I'll have this tiny 'lack of sleep' headache, and a bit of a gut, forever.
which type of american? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, I RTFA, so be kind and note the sarcasm.
Re:Oh dear, I'm deprived too! (Score:4, Insightful)
Very informative data! I live in Japan and know that people don't sleep much here, but still, less than five percent of the people sleep for eight hours or more!
In Japan, sleep deprivation is practically the national pastime -- may office workers, myself included for several years, can't sleep eight hours per day even if they climb into the futon the moment they get home from work. When you've got an hour-long commute and a 14-hour work day, this is what happens. Japanese husbands are often called inconsiderate pigs who only say three words to their wives when they get home: furo (bath), meshi (food), and neru (sleep). The problem is not that they're rude -- they're so exhausted that that's all they have the energy to say!
My co-workers think I'm hopelessly lazy for wanting to sleep eight hours or more every day to keep my brain sharp -- they suggested sleeping in the nine minutes between getting on the train and changing lines!
Yes, you're expected to be able to sleep in any position, in any environment. I supposed people with their level of chronic sleep deprivation can indeed fall asleep anywhere.
Fortunately in my own situation, I got placed on the overnight shift. Now I have to endure sleeping in daylight, but at least I get eight hours or more every day!
Sleep needs to be respected. You wouldn't try to live on 300 calories a day, would you? Even prisoners aren't treated that badly. So why are companies permitted to do comparable things to people's sleep?
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