What is sleep deprivation and how pervasive is it?
Sleep deprivation is waging all sorts of war inside your body and its more prevalent among the current population that you know! US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found in their study, a quarter of US adult population spends half of an entire year with insufficient sleep. With this, comes the systemic abuse of pushing your mind and body past your ability. No car can ride for 1000 miles nonstop, the engine will over heat, or a car can ride for months without the routine maintenance check and the downtime. Your sleep essentially is your daily maintenance, your deep daily downtime, to get you ready for tomorrow. Failing to give yourself the required sleep triggers all sorts of buttons internally, high pressure, migraine, poor attention, lethargy, drowsiness, you name it!
Now what exactly is sleep deprivation? Well, it essentially carries the meaning in its name, you are deprived of the sufficient sleep your body requires. The symptoms are often environmental others are chronic in nature. Most people tend to suffer from the former! Before we delve into what sleep deprivation is we need to understand the hours our body demands in different stages of our lifecycle. In a research conducted by the National Sleep Foundation found, our body requires slightly less sleep as we age. A sleep table have been provided below showing the sleep required in different stages of our lives.
Age Group
| Newborns (also includes naps) | 14 – 17 hours |
| Infants (also includes naps) | 12 – 15 hours |
| Toddlers (also includes naps) | 11 – 14 hours |
| Preschoolers (also includes naps) | 10 – 13 hours |
| School-aged Children | 9 – 11 hours |
| Teenagers | 8 – 10 hours |
| Adults | 7 – 9 hours |
| Older Adults | 7 – 8 hours |
Here’s what causes 3 types of sleep deprivation
Now that we know the sleep tables, we can get to better understand what causes sleep deprivation. And how to get out of the trap of its side effects. The most common causes of sleep deprivation are often daily obligations or lifestyle choices, which are often treatable with better time management and prioritizing tasks properly. We often treat sleep as secondary, like something which is dispensable with 3 cups of ultra-strong coffee and get on with our day.
Acute sleep deprivation is those sudden surges of shifts for a waitress due to peak demands during holiday period or those university assignment or exam period that puts a foot on the accelerator on those sudden stressors, but they usually dial down back to normal after the busy activity buzzes off.
Chronic sleep deprivation is also known as “insufficient sleep syndrome”, a condition where shrunken sleep continues to last well into the months. American Academy of Sleep Medicine defines this condition if it goes on to last three months or longer. But like the previous condition, this too stems from the choices that people make about their everyday activity and there is no underlying medical condition which is causing it. It’s basically working yourself to death, or playing games for hours without end with those eyes locked into the bright lit screen, completely disrupting body’s circadian cycle and the behavior continues for months! It’s basically when we become so busy that we care too little to take sufficient rest.
Chronic sleep deficiency occurs when you’re periodically or frequently keeps getting disrupted from your sleep, this is specially the case for a new mother. Or if you live next to a very noisy neighbor who keeps putting you up from your sleep. So, you never really get that complete uninterrupted sleep. It has something to do with stages of sleep cycle, but that’s for another day. But the most difficult and daunting prospect of chronic sleep deficiency comes, when an underlying medical condition causes it, for example insomnia, or some prescription drugs which you must take to treat existing ailment but in the process its altering body’s chemistry and you failing to fall asleep!
The symptoms of different types of sleep deprivation
The symptoms appear differently in different people but generally it is the extent of sleep deprivation that causes more serious problems. The signature symptom of sleep deprivation is daytime drowsiness and ability to focus into a task. Failing to receive the required sleep every night causes symptoms such as:
- Feeling drowsy or sleepy during the day
- Feeling low or depressed
- Poor attention or inability to focus
- Poor memory function or forgetfulness
- Lack of energy
What are the long-term consequences of sleep deprivation?
Sleep plays a profound effect on our overall mindfulness. We often borrow hours from our sleep to invest into our daytime activity which is completely counterproductive. This debt eventually has to be paid. People who work in high stress jobs like stock trading or consultancy position often lacks the much-needed sleep during the work days, because stress can disrupt our sleep which comes from all sorts of chemical imbalance created in the body by the stressors. So, some resorts to a combination of medication to reduce anxiety, stress, to help them relax and sleep, and before they realize, they get sucked into this vortex, the vicious cycle! The lucky ones, pay their debt with a “sleep recovery” over a weekend with a marathon 20-hour sleep, sparing the clasp of medications. Don’t deny the deep rest your body and mind demand at the end of day, because you deserve waking up to a mindful morning every day.
Reducing your sleep by even an hour can slow down your reaction time the next day. Lack of sleep causes chronic fatigue, it reduces our alertness, and together they affect work performance. It is even known to cause erratic mood swings in some and can cause mental disorders with prolong sleep deprivation. On the physiological side, it causes obesity, poor immune function and cardiovascular conditions. On the other hand, you can take medications and caffeine boosters to enhance your work performance, but this forced method comes at a dear cost. You will be making your piggy bank bigger! But, your quality of life is reduced to pennies on the dollar.
Build a better bedtime ritual for a fuller sleep
Everybody is different, some people sleep for 5 hours and they feel right as wind in their day. We all wish we had that lucky gene! But you are you, and you need 9, and that’s completely okay! Some people sleep on command it appears, as soon as their head hits the pillow, its lights out! But you spend a good hour calming your mind down and getting into the nightly ritual before you fall asleep. Just follow these tips for a better, fuller sleep every night.
- No phones while on bed
- No racing mind with thoughts running from one to the next. Your mind should feel airy, free of thoughts, as soon as you feel you’re minds running, snap out of it. And immediately take three very slow deep breaths, practice this defensive technique to stop intruding thoughts.
- Two hours before bed time, practice low key activity like reading a book or listening to soft music or light yoga.
- If you have to surf your mobile, do so only in ‘read mode’ an hour before bed.
- Excessive electronics just before bed time gives our mind many stimulants, sleep ritual is all about slowing down, so stay away from laptops, tablet or mobiles or TV, lights from these devices tends to disrupt body’s natural circadian rhythm, the body’s internal sleep clock.
- Try not to think about work or perform any actual work two hours before bed. With better time management, those works would be left where it belonged, with the sun!
Resources
https://headachejournal.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1526-4610.1995.hed3510590.x
https://www.sleepfoundation.org/sleep-deprivation
https://www.atsjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1164/rccm.1996P11
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.3109/07420528.2012.675258
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