One in Ten Americans Are Chronically Sleep Deprived 329
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."
I'm awake (Score:2, Insightful)
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: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:What's enough? (Score:0, Insightful)
There are couple of people who don't need much sleep at all (1-2 hours per day) and their only problem is to figure out something to do during the nights.
Then there are these normal people who will survive couple of sleepless nights every now and then but will require at least that 6 hours per night in the long run. Preferably even couple of hours more depending on the person.
So.. the answer is that it depends.. but for everyone the rule is that you shouldn't need to feel very tired after you have got your sleep. The time you spend sleeping should be long enough to reach the deepest levels to properly fulfill its purpose.
Re:More than 7 hours needed? Slashdot editors? (Score:5, Insightful)
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 of regulation as to how long you can work an employee, be they salaried or not.
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:Cue the 3AM jokes... (Score:2, Insightful)
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).
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?
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.
Re:News just in: (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Kids and trying to catch up, keep me awake (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 around 8pm. We get him into his crib and he's good until around 11pm. That's when my wife and I typically go to bed, but that's also when he tends to fuss. He'll spit out his pacifier, then whine about not having it. If we don't get in there quickly, find the pacifier (tough to do in the dark sometimes), and plop it back in his mouth soon enough, he'll go into full cry mode and wake up his big brother (they sleep in the same room). Once he has the pacifier in his mouth, he relaxes and goes back to sleep... until he relaxes so much that the pacifier pops out again. Repeat this until I take him out and rock him (which seems to put him in a deep enough sleep sometimes) or until we take him into our bed.
From 8pm until 11pm is when we get to do "adult" activities. No, not that!
The net effect is that we don't get to sleep until around midnight or later. Then we wake up at 5am. If you mix in a sick child (as our youngest one has been for the past few weeks), then you get even less sleep.
I won't even elaborate on the night (not many weeks ago) when our youngest had a febrile seizure, stopped breathing for awhile, and wound up in the hospital for a few days. We actually went about 36 hours without any sleep (for obvious reasons). (He's ok now... we think.)
The point is, kids are unpredictable, especially babies. Though you can try to impose a schedule and can be mostly successful, you can't expect them to fully adhere to your schedule. Things will happen that muck up those schedules. In addition, activities that *you* want to do (web development, coding, etc) are going to take a back seat to Candy Land and Blue's Clues until the kids are asleep. Then you either try to cram 5 hours of grown-up activities into 2 hours or you wind up giving up some of the things you like. Still, I wouldn't give up my kids for anything.
Re:Cue the 3AM jokes... (Score:1, Insightful)
I can personally attest to parent post.
I have recurring sciatica from a spinal fracture surgically mended 22 years ago. Sciatica being pain that is caused by nerve problems in the spinal cord but that I feel in my left leg or foot.
Any more, most days I'm good and I usually get 6+ hours of sleep at night and another hour or so in naps in the afternoon and early evening.
Maybe once a year I'll have a flare-up where the sciatica wakes me every 3 hours or more frequently, for several weeks at a time. After a couple of weeks of sleeping 5 hours or less a night, my ability to do creative work goes to hell. I become more irritable. I get paranoid. I know what is happening and can monitor my behavior and cope to some extent, but that level of self-control also has a price: the anxiety and repression of emotional displays causes bouts of chest pain and cardiac arrhythmias. There is of course also a depression component.
Before the accident where I broke my spine, I was making good money as a coronary care unit nurse. After the accident I transitioned to hospital administrative roles, associated with IT but in clinical departments. My career peaked at $90K/yr in today's dollars, but I couldn't maintain that level of stress. I am now in a job where my occasional bouts of paranoia and loss of creative thinking don't matter very much, earning $30K/yr. Moving up the career ladder from this spot would probably kill me.
I've also given up on any kind of meaningful long term relationship. These problems contributed to the end of a 27 year marriage. No relationships since that time have survived the near sleepless bouts.
Aside from the sciatica, and the sleep deprivation and cardiac problems that go with it, I'm a hale 59 year old who bicycled 2,500 miles last year and can do anything that doesn't require lifting more than 40 lbs at a time.
Posting anonymously for obvious reasons.
Re:More than 7 hours needed? Slashdot editors? (Score:1, Insightful)
which type of american? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, I RTFA, so be kind and note the sarcasm.
Re:which type of american? (Score:3, Insightful)
Thanks for pointing it out. I love pointing that fact out...that and I like pointing people to upside down world maps [google.com]
Since North and South are arbitrary, I always like seeing other countries on top...
humbling