SLEEP – HOW MUCH WE NEED FOR BETTER HEALTH?

ARE YOU SLEEP DEPRIVED?

Most people would agree that there's nothing better than a good night's sleep. Stressful day at the office? Long hours doing outdoor-work and housework? All this can be repaired with a nice, long sleep. You awake the next day feeling calm, refreshed and ready for anything -- the stresses, aches and pains of the previous day are long gone.

There have been thousands of sleep studies performed over the years, but we still aren't exactly sure why we sleep. The old joke is that the function of sleep is to cure sleepiness. Prior to 1951, scientists thought bedtime was merely shutdown mode for both the body and mind. One sleep theory is that ou­r brain goes over the information it received that day and decides what should stick around and where it should go. Think of your brain as a computer desktop. During the night, anything we learned that day is filed away in the proper folders, or moved to the recycle bin. Behavioural research supports this notion, but sleep is so mysterious and different for each person that it's tough to get conclusive results.

Even though we aren't exactly sure why we sleep, we know that we have to -- all mammals sleep. In fact, a lab rat that would normally live for three years will die in about three weeks without sleep. We know that when we get too little sleep we feel lethargic, sluggish and fuzzy-headed. Long-term sleep deprivation has such an impact on the human psyche that it's been used as a form of torture by virtually every military in existence. There are studies that indicate that going without sleep is similar to being intoxicated.

How much sleep do we need?

Everyone needs different amounts of sleep, but the general consensus is that adults require between six and eight hours of sleep per night. The amount of sleep you need also changes as you age. Newborn babies -- they sleep 16 to 18 hours every day. At the three-month mark, babies start to recognize day as day and night as night. This is called the circadian rhythm. By the time they hit one year, most of which is spent sleeping, babies slumber for 10 to 12 hours each night and nap another three to five hours. Pretty nice lifestyle. By preschool, those long naps aren't happening.

Once kids hit puberty, they'll need more sleep than in their prepubescent period. Their body clocks shift, making it tougher to fall asleep and harder to wake up in the morning. In fact, teenagers don't start producing their sleep hormones until 12 TO 1 a.m., compared to 10 p.m. in adults. So lay off, Mom and Dad -- the teenager who won't go to sleep and can't wake up is really pretty normal. Researchers performed tests on teenagers and found that taking away just one hour of sleep led to poorer test scores, reaction time, recall and responsiveness.

College is when things get really messy. Out from under the thumb of their parents, college students typically don't police the amount of sleep they need. One study reveals that one quarter of all college students are chronically sleep deprived. Of course, they can always catch some Z's during that boring lectures. But this sleepy state leads to more than bad grades and dozing in class -- 55 percent of all drowsy-driving fatalities occur under the age of 35.

There's also such a thing as too much sleep, so the key is to get the right amount. A six-year study of one million adults showed that the highest mortality rates occurred in those who either slept less than four hours per night or more than eight hours. More than eight hours on a regular basis can also lead to depression, high blood pressure and heart disease are twice as likely to develop Parkinson's disease. 

Too Much or Too Little Sleep

Studies show that 60 percent of adults claim to have problems sleeping a few nights a week or more. The sales figures for sleeping pills support this claim. Studies also show that 40 percent of adults experience daytime sleepiness that interferes with their productivity at least a few days each month. Some of the less dangerous effects of going without sleep include irritability, moodiness, a lack of inhibition and difficulty with focus and concentration. This is if you only miss out on a couple of hours of sleep. If you miss more than that, your friends are going to start to wonder what's going on -- you may experience slowed speech, apathy, impaired memory, deflated emotional response and an inability to multitask. If you stay awake past this point, you'll get extremely drowsy and actually fall into microsleeps -- nodding off for five to 10 seconds at a time. Not a big deal in a movie theater, but potentially fatal if you're driving or operating machine. In fact, there are 100,000 car crashes every year due to falling asleep while driving. If you push it further without sleep, you'll begin to hallucinate.

you may experience slowed speech, apathy, impaired memory, deflated emotional response and an inability to multitask Aside from these bothersome side effects chronic sleep deprivation has been linked to high blood pressure, cancer, heart disease, obesity and diabetes. The impact on high blood pressure, heart disease and diabetes stems from the theory that our bodies may get stuck in a state of alertness without enough sleep. This leads to an increase in the production of stress hormones, which increases blood pressure. Sleep deprivation also affects the functioning of the lining inside the blood vessels and can cause some low-grade inflammation that could lead to heart disease. The diabetes risk comes from the lack of insulin produced in sleep-deprived adults.

POWER NAPS!

The term power nap has become part of our software industry. Research shows that a midday nap that lasts 30 minutes to one hour can reverse information overload and improve the ability to learn a motor skill. Thirty-minute naps appear to prevent on-the-job burnout, while the hour-long snooze actually boosts performance back to early morning levels. The theory is that during sleep, the brain is able to store the information it's holding onto as memory. A midday nap allows us to file everything away that we've learned to that point, and we awaken with an empty storage space.

Dr Swapnil Deshmukh

MD (Psychiatrist)

Sleep disorder specialist, Deccan, Pune.

+91-9923291312.