Sleep Insights

The expectations of society today have placed unhealthy demands on our time, and more than ever people are making up for those demands by cutting back on sleep.  Scientific research is revealing how sleep loss, and even poor-quality sleep can lead to an increase in errors at the workplace, decreased productivity, and accidents that cost both lives and resources.  It is becoming clear that the cost of insufficient sleep is much higher than most people recognize.

Recent Harvard Medical School research shows that one-third of workers in the U.S. aren’t getting enough sleep to function at peak performance, which reduces their ability to do their jobs property.  According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, 40.6 million (30% of U.S. adult workers) don’t get enough sleep.  That translates to 8.4 minutes of wasted time on the job which costs a shocking $63.2 billion in lost productivity.

More than the cost of lost productivity, lack of sleep plays a role in a number of otherwise avoidable disasters:

·         Investigators ruled that sleep deprivation was a significant factor in the 1979 Three Mile Island accident as well as the 1986 nuclear meltdown at Chernobyl

·         Investigations of the grounding of the Exxon Valdez oil tanker, as well as the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger have concluded that sleep deprivation also played a critical role in the accidents

·         According to the Institutes of Medicine, over one million injuries and between 50,000 and 100,000 deaths each year result from preventable medical errors, and many of these may be the result of insufficient sleep.

So just how much sleep do you need? The National Sleep Foundation suggests that the average adult needs between seven and nine hours of sleep a night. That’s not seven to nine hours that you devote to “bedtime.” It is the amount of time your body needs to be asleep.

If you are an adult who works most alertly and productively at 7.5 hours of sleep a night, then you should probably devote eight hours a night to the activity of sleep. The last-minute teeth brushing ritual as well as simply getting comfortable and falling asleep needs to be budgeted in your sleep schedule.

More importantly, sleep quality is vitally important to the productivity equation. Lack of proper sleep is as hampering and dangerous as not enough time to sleep. How is your sleep quality?

It is a widely accepted fact that those who exercise will sleep better. But is it that simple? And what constitutes “enough” exercise that can ward off those sleepless nights.

First, we need to break a myth. Not all activity is considered exercise that will indeed promote better sleep. A study from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania has found that people who work in jobs that are more physically demanding tend to be either shorter sleepers (fewer than 6 hours a night) or longer sleepers (longer than 9 hours). These opposite scenarios are considered sleep extremes, and both can pose health risks. Penn researchers examined sleep patterns and job classifications of over 17,000 study participants. Job activity was classified as low (mostly sitting or standing), moderate (mostly walking), or high (mostly manual labor). Compared to those in low activity jobs, those working moderate activity jobs, such as postal service employees, were more likely to be short sleepers and long sleepers, and those working high-activity jobs, such as construction workers, were more likely to be short sleepers.

Between people who consider themselves regular exercisers and those who dub themselves couch potatoes, the regular exercisers report getting better quality shut-eye, according to the 2013 Sleep in America survey from the National Sleep Foundation, even when both groups got the same amount of sleep. The best news was for the non-exercisers, however, since adding even just 10 minutes of exercise may produce a noticeable improvement in sleep quality, poll task force chair Max Hirshkowitz, Ph.D. said in a statement.

Staying active is likely to reduce your risk of developing restless leg syndrome to begin with, according to the Restless Leg Syndrome Foundation, but if you are living with RLS, exercise may help keep symptoms at bay.

Getting a leg-up on the day’s exercise is best done early in the day.  That’s the take-away message from a small study that was conducted at Appalachian State University in North Carolina, in which 20 adults on separate days did a moderate, 30-minute workout at 7 a.m., 1 p.m., or 7 p.m. Researchers then monitored the participants’ sleep on each of the nights following those differently timed workouts. Compared to when they’d done afternoon or evening workouts, the participants woke significantly fewer times during the night when they’d exercised at 7 a.m.

Researchers at Brigham Young University in Utah monitored the sleep of 375 women for a week and tracked how the amount and quality of sleep, as well as when the women got out of bed, affected their activity level the following day. The researchers found “a significant drop in physical activity for every hour after 7:30 in the morning that the participants got out of bed.” The later the women slept in, the less active they were on that day.

In short, exercise helps sleep – even as little as 10 minutes a day of exercise. Early risers are more likely to have better activity levels during the day with more energy for exercise. And finally, while we may consider our job to be physically active, that’s not necessarily the kind of physical activity that will help you sleep.

Perform your own exercise sleep study – and then let us know your results.

Nearly 20% of Americans have seen some type of therapist at some point in their lives, searching for answers and support to understand and improve their patterns of behavior.

One area of behavior that is often overlooked involves our sleep habits, which can have a profound effect on our well-being.  Lack of quality sleep has a domino effect on overall health and can lead to weight gain, depression, and worsening of chronic diseases.

Did you know that there are therapists who specialize in sleep?

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia, or CBT-I, is a method for treating insomnia without the use of sleeping pills. CBT-I is aimed at changing habits, schedules, and expectations that affect sleep, as well as addressing misconceptions about sleep and insomnia that may contribute to sleep problems.

A CBT-I program may help some people with just a few visits, but for more difficult cases it may require regular visits to a clinician, who will give you a series of sleep assessments, ask you to maintain a sleep diary, and work with you to help you change the way you sleep.

Imagine – you could have better sleep, without the use of sleeping pills, simply by addressing how to change some of your sleep-related behaviors and habits.

Sleep deprivation has a similar impact on the body as the ageing process and may increase the severity of age-related chronic disorders such as heart disease and diabetes. That’s bad news for those who are challenged to get a good night’s sleep. But lack of sleep does even more.

The right quality and quantity of sleep trigger the production of human growth hormone, which builds muscle mass, thickens skin and strengthens bones. In addition, constant fatigue causes stress and irritability, both of which can contribute to accelerated aging.

Because lack of sleep prevents the body from properly restoring itself, those who are consistently sleep deprived also tend to look and feel older than others in their age group. A clinical trial commissioned by Estée Lauder and conducted by physician-scientists at University Hospitals (UH) Case Medical Center found that poor sleepers demonstrated increased signs of skin aging. So those fine lines and bags under your eyes could quite possibly be delayed with the right amount of sleep.

Cutting back on sleep is an extremely common response to the time pressures of modern industrial societies. The average night’s sleep decreased from about nine hours in 1910 to about seven hours and 30 minutes in 1975, a trend that continues.

In order to push back on that aging process, not only to combat the onset of chronic disorders but also to fight the appearance of aging – it is vital to get regular, and enough sleep.

It’s not uncommon to find yourself becoming tired when you drive. The long, monotonous road ahead can lull your senses into be relaxed and less attentive. We all have our methods of fighting the urge to close our eyes for just a second and take our attention off of the road. But what about when it’s more than an urge? What about when the hum of the engine becomes too much to maintain attentive driving? What about when a driver is actually experiencing the effect of sleep apnea?

Because sleep apnea affects your sleep, it also affects how you function during the day. Untreated sleep apnea can make it difficult for you to stay awake, to focus your eyes, to remain alert and to react quickly to driving situations. While many sleep apnea patients say they never fall asleep while driving, it is important to remember that you don’t have to fall asleep to have a crash. You simply have to be inattentive or not sharp – and with untreated sleep apnea, you are not as sharp as you should be.

Sleep apnea is a condition in which breathing is interrupted during sleep. This results in a decrease in the oxygen level in your blood. Your body reacts by partially or completely awakening each time you stop breathing. This may occur many times over the course of the night. As a result, you do not get the necessary deep sleep you need. People with untreated sleep apnea often wake up feeling sleepy and remain sleepy throughout the day.

Treatment offers the best hope of being able to continue your independent driving. It is rare that an effective treatment cannot be found for sleep apnea.

Here are some suggestions you can implement while waiting to see a sleep specialist to have your apnea treated:

• Use a support when driving. This means:
  • When driving, you should ensure that you are fully alert. If not, switch drivers, nap and also drink a caffeinated beverage.
  • Have someone with you in the car to make sure that you are not falling asleep; do this until you are sure that your sleep apnea treatment is successful.
• Once sleep apnea treatment begins, you should be assessed for daytime sleepiness.

Treating sleep apnea does not limit your independence, it helps assure you can maintain your independence through driving.