Insomnia Sleep Apnea And Sleep Deprivation On The Rise
Insomnia, Sleep Apnea, And Sleep Deprivation On The Rise
— Receive access to exclusive information, benefits and discounts Experts have identified several reasons why, including rising obesity and the unprecedented number of adults taking medications such as antidepressants. But for many, sleeping less is a choice: We're watching TV, fiddling on Facebook or otherwise occupied in front of electronic screens deep into the wee hours. This consumes more than 11 hours per day for an average adult, according to Nielsen estimates. All those tablets and smartphones and TVs collectively conspire to steal our sleep by emitting a high-intensity light that scrambles our circadian rhythms, which evolved to follow the cycles of natural daylight. We're also subject to the workplace phenomenon of "sleep shaming" — when alpha-achiever types humblebrag about how late they work and how early they rise. This is hardly new: Thomas Edison, a champion sleep shamer, claimed to need no more than four hours of rack time and demanded the same of his employees. He's a formative figure in what Penn State labor history professor Alan Derickson, in his book Dangerously Sleepy, dubbed "the cult of manly wakefulness." (A period exemplar: Charles Lindbergh, who claimed to stay up for 63 hours during his transatlantic flight.) "We are always hearing people talk about 'loss of sleep' as a calamity. They better call it loss of time," Edison once proclaimed. "There is really no reason why men should go to bed at all." On the other side of this late-night culture war stand pro-sleep evangelists such as Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington, whose book The Sleep Revolution joins several new self-help tomes promising to restore sanity to the night. "We're a society that's on the clock," says Matt Berical, senior editor of Van Winkle's, an online publication devoted to sleep. "The next great struggle for us is, how are we going to get rest? Sleep inequality will be a big issue in the future. There are services that will be available only to people who can afford it." The sleep gap is just one of many stubborn disparities that haunt the night. The wealthy sleep better than the less affluent, and whites sleep better than African Americans. Women sleep more than men, although men are more satisfied with their sleep. And age itself is a factor, says University of Chicago epidemiologist Diane Lauderdale, who studies the sleep patterns of various populations. "Young adults sleep better and sleep more. If you expect to be able to sleep like you did when you were 26, you're going to be disappointed." Lauderdale goes on to caution that, when it comes to how well we're sleeping, we're not the best judges. Since population-based studies tend to rely on self-reported surveys, the current epidemic of sleep woes could in part be in our (aging) heads. "Everyone personally used to sleep better, so it sounds reasonable to think it's something the whole population is going through," she says. "The fact that we are being bombarded with people telling us we're not sleeping enough can influence our perceptions." What isn't in dispute is how absolutely . In animal studies, sleep deprivation has a horrific impact — rats kept awake died in agony within weeks. But it wasn't until UCLA biomathematician Van Savage published a 2007 paper comparing sleep duration and metabolic rates that scientists were able to mount "a compelling argument for the core function of sleep," says Charles Czeisler, chief of the Division of Sleep and Circadian Disorders at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. According to the theory, sleep is the brain's overnight rinse cycle, a time for flushing cellular debris generated by metabolic activity. "The brain has to go offline during that process," Czeisler says. "That's what we call sleep." There's no getting around the damage done by failing to run your neurochemical dishwasher: One bad night translates into a day of diminished executive function, foggy memory and sludgy mental acuity. In older adults, bad sleep can speed the development of cognitive impairments. Unfortunately, understanding why it's important to go to sleep doesn't make it any easier to get there. Courtesy John Hubbard Sleep devices such as this padded-foam eye mask represented a $41 billion market in 2015; by 2020, Americans will be spending $52 billion, consumer analysts say.
Quest for a Good Night' s Sleep
Experts say Americans get an hour or two less shut-eye every night than we once did What' s keeping us up and is there a way to make a restless nation go to bed
Getty Images Being occupied in front of electronic screens deep into the wee hours robs us of sleep. I'm never going to . My face is all but obscured by sticky white adhesive patches, each bristling with multicolored wires. Several more sensors are buried in my hair and glued to my skull; there's a nasal tube with some weird dangly thing attached to it hanging under my nose. More of these wired-up patches are glued to various places on my chest, and a pair of them snake beneath my clothing and run down each leg. When I walk around, I trail a tangle of cables. A very patient staffer at a suburban Baltimore sleep clinic has rigged me into this gear, a process that has taken a good 30 minutes. It reminds me a bit of what it might be like to be an astronaut getting strapped into a space suit. After I'm fully enmeshed in this web of wiring, I'm instructed to get into bed, where even more sensors are attached, including a pulse oximeter stuck on my finger. Then all the wires are plugged into a series of jacks in the wall. Should I want to get up during the night, I'll have to summon assistance and have an attendant unplug me first. Once installed in bed, I'll have to remain that way for the next seven hours, while a night vision camera, a microphone and all these wires record every twitch and snort. Known as polysomnography tests, these are designed to track a whole suite of physical processes, from brain waves and eye and limb movements to heart activity and blood oxygenation levels. Collectively, all these sensors can draw an exquisitely detailed portrait of a surprisingly mysterious — and increasingly elusive — state of being: the sleeping self. But for all of that to happen, first I'm going to have to fall asleep.Awake in America
For millions of us, the has become a kind of dark obsession. We're getting an hour less sleep per night, on average, than our forebears did a few generations ago. In 1942, only 11 percent of Americans slept six hours or less a night. By 2013, 40 percent did. Older adults are more vulnerable to sleep disorders, particularly obstructive sleep apnea, an intermittent breathing problem that causes serious health issues. So many seem to be getting so little shut-eye that in 2011, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention declared the sorry state of the nation's slumber a public health problem: Some 80 million adult Americans aren't getting enough sleep, the latest CDC study says. The National Institutes of Health states that 70 million adults suffer from sleep difficulties. In a 2015 survey of the top health complaints, sleep issues have climbed to No. 2. "It didn't use to be in the top five," says Mayo Clinic pulmonologist Timothy Morgenthaler, former president of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. "Is there a sleep crisis? Well, define 'crisis.' These problems have definitely increased radically in the past few years."Sleep Better
— Receive access to exclusive information, benefits and discounts Experts have identified several reasons why, including rising obesity and the unprecedented number of adults taking medications such as antidepressants. But for many, sleeping less is a choice: We're watching TV, fiddling on Facebook or otherwise occupied in front of electronic screens deep into the wee hours. This consumes more than 11 hours per day for an average adult, according to Nielsen estimates. All those tablets and smartphones and TVs collectively conspire to steal our sleep by emitting a high-intensity light that scrambles our circadian rhythms, which evolved to follow the cycles of natural daylight. We're also subject to the workplace phenomenon of "sleep shaming" — when alpha-achiever types humblebrag about how late they work and how early they rise. This is hardly new: Thomas Edison, a champion sleep shamer, claimed to need no more than four hours of rack time and demanded the same of his employees. He's a formative figure in what Penn State labor history professor Alan Derickson, in his book Dangerously Sleepy, dubbed "the cult of manly wakefulness." (A period exemplar: Charles Lindbergh, who claimed to stay up for 63 hours during his transatlantic flight.) "We are always hearing people talk about 'loss of sleep' as a calamity. They better call it loss of time," Edison once proclaimed. "There is really no reason why men should go to bed at all." On the other side of this late-night culture war stand pro-sleep evangelists such as Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington, whose book The Sleep Revolution joins several new self-help tomes promising to restore sanity to the night. "We're a society that's on the clock," says Matt Berical, senior editor of Van Winkle's, an online publication devoted to sleep. "The next great struggle for us is, how are we going to get rest? Sleep inequality will be a big issue in the future. There are services that will be available only to people who can afford it." The sleep gap is just one of many stubborn disparities that haunt the night. The wealthy sleep better than the less affluent, and whites sleep better than African Americans. Women sleep more than men, although men are more satisfied with their sleep. And age itself is a factor, says University of Chicago epidemiologist Diane Lauderdale, who studies the sleep patterns of various populations. "Young adults sleep better and sleep more. If you expect to be able to sleep like you did when you were 26, you're going to be disappointed." Lauderdale goes on to caution that, when it comes to how well we're sleeping, we're not the best judges. Since population-based studies tend to rely on self-reported surveys, the current epidemic of sleep woes could in part be in our (aging) heads. "Everyone personally used to sleep better, so it sounds reasonable to think it's something the whole population is going through," she says. "The fact that we are being bombarded with people telling us we're not sleeping enough can influence our perceptions." What isn't in dispute is how absolutely . In animal studies, sleep deprivation has a horrific impact — rats kept awake died in agony within weeks. But it wasn't until UCLA biomathematician Van Savage published a 2007 paper comparing sleep duration and metabolic rates that scientists were able to mount "a compelling argument for the core function of sleep," says Charles Czeisler, chief of the Division of Sleep and Circadian Disorders at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. According to the theory, sleep is the brain's overnight rinse cycle, a time for flushing cellular debris generated by metabolic activity. "The brain has to go offline during that process," Czeisler says. "That's what we call sleep." There's no getting around the damage done by failing to run your neurochemical dishwasher: One bad night translates into a day of diminished executive function, foggy memory and sludgy mental acuity. In older adults, bad sleep can speed the development of cognitive impairments. Unfortunately, understanding why it's important to go to sleep doesn't make it any easier to get there. Courtesy John Hubbard Sleep devices such as this padded-foam eye mask represented a $41 billion market in 2015; by 2020, Americans will be spending $52 billion, consumer analysts say.