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."
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. :-)
Re:Cue the 3AM jokes... (Score:5, Funny)
And something that should be done before filing for divorce, in order to not rise suspicion.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Getting OT, I know... (Score:3, Funny)
Defenestrate: to throw out of a window.
Therefore could Fenestrate be defined as putting it back in?
Could the same rule be applied to "Defecate"? Or is "fecation" simply the act of eating, in which case, I should invite my next date to "fecate" at a fancy restaurant?
Solomon
Re:Cue the 3AM jokes... (Score:5, Funny)
Not too soon enough. (Score:2)
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: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
1. Set the alarm for 3:30AM
2. Cook full English breakfast
3. Start drinking beer if Kimi is winning.
4. Go to sleep ready for normal life
With the 2008 season a week away from firing back into action I'm seriousl
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Cue the 3AM jokes... (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Cue the 3AM jokes... (Score:5, Interesting)
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: (Score:3, Interesting)
Part of me was aware that this really wasn't how I should be feeling and acting. My life wasn't a horrible mess like my anxiety kept telling me, if I could just dial down for a good night's sleep everything would be turned around the next day.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:More than 7 hours needed? Slashdot editors? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:More than 7 hours needed? Slashdot editors? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
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.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
-b
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
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
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!
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.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Cue the 3AM jokes... (Score:4, Funny)
teach yourself in 24 hours (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
And it's not the boredom that sends me off. I often fall asleep while watching late night football game repeats, only to wake up when the adverts comes on. This is real end to end football; soccer, as some of you would call it.
Without the TV on in bed, all I can hear is the PC fan downstairs, the pump on freezer, bubbles from the fish tank, train in the distance... It's to
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Help! (Score:2, Funny)
*slurp*
Mmmmmm....coffee!
*slurp*
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
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, 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)
Slashdot desperately needs... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I for one (Score:2, Funny)
I'm awake (Score:2, 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.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Subject: You should try this
All new V1A_gR-a from genuine Canadian p_harmacies. It even raises the dead!
And I work for Electronic Arts (Score:2)
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
Reading is BAD (Score:2)
Anything that stimulates you is bad, you want the brain to be inactive, doing ANYTHING before you go to sleep therefor is bad. If you really want to sleep well do so in a DARK, SILENT room with no stimuli, don't read in bed, don't talk in bed, don't watch tv etc etc. It also helps if the room is a bit colder then you would keep the living room.
I agree with the rest, with 10 or more hours spend on working, several more on chores, who indeed has time to sleep? It is one reason I really miss an old job where
What's enough? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
(Which is probably just as well.)
Re:What's enough? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Wasn't Thatcher against a welfare state and labor unions and for privatization ? I wonder if there's a connection between that and being chronically sleep-deprived ?
Re: (Score:2)
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.
I wouldn't advise it for everybody. (Score:3, Interesting)
Maggie Thatcher was notorious for existing on three to four hours a night and she wasn't exactly an underachiever. Much as I loath and detest her I'd be proud to have her level of achievement.
Some people, with very little physical activity, can eat 4000 calories a day and never gain a single pound. I wouldn't advise it for everybody.
Some people can eat nothing but cheese and meat and sugar and have low cholesterol and low triglycerides. I wouldn't advise it for everybody.
Some people can go for years without seeing a dentist and end up with no cavities when they do finally visit. I wouldn't advise it for everybody.
Some people smoke 3 packs a day and live to be 90 years old. I wouldn't advise
Coincidentally.. (Score:4, Funny)
I'm a law school student (Score:2)
Yup. I'd believe it...
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
Re: (Score:2)
Say an hour commuting, 3 hours for dinner etc, 1 hour breakfast etc. that means they're working 12+ hours a day. If the workload requires that, you need to hire more people.
(As an aside, the law in the UK is no more than 48 hours a week on average, with some exceptions. Seems to work pretty well)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
If the US Government did not want to pay for them
How? (Score:2)
Oh dear, I'm deprived too! (Score:2)
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?
i call fud (Score:2)
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)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Getting enough sleep is easy (Score:2)
Go to bed at 10PM, asleep almost immediately. Often wake up before the alarm goes off at 6AM. Alarm is set to a local PBS station (WETA), so I wake up to classical music rather than a loud screech.
Re: (Score:2)
-Cohen the Barbarian
Undoubtedly this affects the sex as well (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Undoubtedly this affects the sex as well (Score:5, Funny)
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).
Re: (Score:2)
a) get a good night's sleep so you feel healthy and refreshed in the morning
b) stay up late to watch the first volume of Death Note on DVD
Yeah, I guess on Slashdot (b) would be considered the only logical choice!
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
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Too bad your parents didn't figure that out in time.
Humm. Let's see having kids watching vs Death Note....
Well in your case you have probably made the right choice.
Drugs destroy your body balance (Score:2)
X.
It's even worse for some of us... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
I gave in and went to see the doc, he ran the standard test
Sleep deprivation affects our performance. (Score:2)
Huh? (Score:3, Funny)
Why is everyone in IT so horribly overworked? (Score:2)
Diabetes (Score:2)
I have diabetes. Despite my best efforts, my blood glucose control was poor until recently. I knew I needed to eat right; I was doing that pretty well. I knew I needed to exercise; I was doing poorly. I seemed to hit a brick wall every time I tried to fit regular exercise into my routine.
I sort-of knew that I needed to get a good night's sleep. I never did.
A while back, I was so exhausted I actually set asid
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: (Score:2)
My weight stayed stable, even though I eat WAY more and move WAY less now... Though in general (but not with my last job, thus why I can compare), I refuse to do 40+ hours week if I have more than 45 minutes each way t
which type of american? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, I RTFA, so be kind and note the sarcasm.
Re: (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
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)