The Press and Journal (Inverness, Highlands, and Islands)
It is time for us to heed alarm bells and wake up to scourge of sleep deprivation
Insomnia can have a devastating effect on domestic harmony and work performance
We now know that on the roads, falling asleep at the wheel causes as many deaths as drinkdriving.
It’s worth reading that stark sentence again. Over-tiredness while on the move is one of the scourges of our time. We’ll come back to this in a minute.
First, some facts. We live in a society that is increasingly sleep-deprived. Regularly sleeping fewer than six or seven hours a night messes with your immune system.
It more than doubles the risk of cancer. Insufficient sleep is a key lifestyle factor determining whether or not you will develop Alzheimer’s disease.
Lack of good sleep increases the likelihood of your coronary arteries becoming blocked, setting you on a path towards cardiovascular disease, stroke, and congestive heart failure.
What’s more, sleep disruption also contributes to all major psychiatric conditions, including depression and anxiety.
Now, I don’t carry all this information around in my head – it is based on the work of acknowledged sleep expert Matthew Walker, professor of neuroscience and psychology at the University of California.
I am currently reading his best-selling new book Why We Sleep: The New Science of Sleep And Dreams. It is absolutely fascinating.
As a result of his research, Professor Walker is on a crusade to change society’s attitude to sleep.
In other words, he wants to wake us up – before we sleep walk into disaster.
Will he be successful? The main difficulty the good professor faces is that our present culture promotes bustling busyness as a great virtue. It ain’t necessarily so.
Continually busy people are often tired people – and a tired workforce isn’t always very productive.
Why are we so tired? Many people, juggling long working hours, child care arrangements and the perpetual ferrying of children are simply knackered.
Historically, small technological advances have created revolutions. The advent of the electric lightbulb was one such event.
What it did was to enable human beings to turn night into day, and to allow us to live in what has been described as “an electric cave”.
“Humans are not sleeping the way nature intended,” says Professor Walker. “The number of sleep bouts, the duration of sleep, and when sleep occurs have all been comprehensively distorted by modernity.”
The cumulative effect of all of this is that many of us carry around a huge “sleep debt”.
It is often masked by caffeine and alcohol, but at some stage the inexorable demands of the deficit become overwhelming.
Talking about the “insidious impact” of sleep loss on health Professor Walker says this: “Every major system, tissue and organ of your body suffers when sleep becomes short.
“No aspect of your health can retreat at the sign of sleep loss and escape unharmed. Like water from a burst pipe in your home, the effects of sleep deprivation will seep into every nook and cranny of biology, down into yourselves, even altering your most fundamental self – your DNA.”
A musician acquaintance of mine, the mother of four children, was driving home from a midday music performance when a lorry coming in the other direction suddenly swerved over to her side of the road.
She was killed instantly. The lorry driver had fallen asleep.
Tiredness can be devastating in some jobs. The image of exhausted junior doctors is one we have grown used to.
In addition to causing fatal accidents and serious injuries, tiredness destroys health and accelerates the ageing process.
It brings in its wake mood change, lethargy and depression, putting a strain on relationships. Yet, despite its pervasiveness, this quiet but deadly background music of our time plays on without public comment.
The workplace pressure is driven by the need for ever higher productivity, but there must come a point at which manic demand actually becomes counterproductive.
A few American firms have caught on to this and are providing a sleeping room where staff can have a snooze break.
The managers recognise that tired people are neither productive nor creative. They may make decisions that cost money.
It’s interesting that in all the talk about health service targets, the effect of lack of sleep on our society fails to feature.
People with insomnia can be helped, but doctors get very little training in these matters. Yet insomnia can have a devastating effect on domestic harmony and work performance.
Let me tell you about another friend of mine. He works in the voluntary sector. He thought that his continual tiredness was down to hard work, but when he was eventually persuaded to go to the doctor, sleep apnoea, which causes the sufferer to wake up – without being aware of it – many times a night, was diagnosed.
He now wears a breathing device at night and can’t believe how much energy he has.
As you read this, lots of people with undiagnosed sleep problems are dozing at the wheel of a killing machine. Referrals to sleep clinics are increasing, but the work they are doing is seriously underfunded.
Isn’t it time we all woke up?