good sleep essay

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Good Sleep for Good Health

Get the Rest You Need

Illustration of man shutting off light and getting in bed

Sometimes, the pace of modern life barely gives you time to stop and rest. It can make getting a good night’s sleep on a regular basis seem like a dream.

But sleep is as important for good health as diet and exercise. Good sleep improves your brain performance, mood, and health.

Not getting enough quality sleep regularly raises the risk of many diseases and disorders. These range from heart disease and stroke to obesity and dementia.

There’s more to good sleep than just the hours spent in bed, says Dr. Marishka Brown, a sleep expert at NIH. “Healthy sleep encompasses three major things,” she explains. “One is how much sleep you get. Another is sleep quality—that you get uninterrupted and refreshing sleep. The last is a consistent sleep schedule.”

People who work the night shift or irregular schedules may find getting quality sleep extra challenging. And times of great stress—like the current pandemic—can disrupt our normal sleep routines. But there are many things you can do to improve your sleep.

Sleep for Repair

Why do we need to sleep? People often think that sleep is just “down time,” when a tired brain gets to rest, says Dr. Maiken Nedergaard, who studies sleep at the University of Rochester.

“But that’s wrong,” she says. While you sleep, your brain is working. For example, sleep helps prepare your brain to learn, remember, and create.

Nedergaard and her colleagues discovered that the brain has a drainage system that removes toxins during sleep.

“When we sleep, the brain totally changes function,” she explains. “It becomes almost like a kidney, removing waste from the system.”

Her team found in mice that the drainage system removes some of the proteins linked with Alzheimer’s disease. These toxins were removed twice as fast from the brain during sleep.

Everything from blood vessels to the immune system The system that protects your body from invading viruses, bacteria, and other microscopic threats. uses sleep as a time for repair, says Dr. Kenneth Wright, Jr., a sleep researcher at the University of Colorado.

“There are certain repair processes that occur in the body mostly, or most effectively, during sleep,” he explains. “If you don’t get enough sleep, those processes are going to be disturbed.”

Sleep Myths and Truths

How much sleep you need changes with age. Experts recommend school-age children get at least nine hours a night and teens get between eight and 10. Most adults need at least seven hours or more of sleep each night.

There are many misunderstandings about sleep. One is that adults need less sleep as they get older. This isn’t true. Older adults still need the same amount. But sleep quality can get worse as you age. Older adults are also more likely to take medications that interfere with sleep.

Another sleep myth is that you can “catch up” on your days off. Researchers are finding that this largely isn’t the case.

“If you have one bad night’s sleep and take a nap, or sleep longer the next night, that can benefit you,” says Wright. “But if you have a week’s worth of getting too little sleep, the weekend isn’t sufficient for you to catch up. That’s not a healthy behavior.”

In a recent study, Wright and his team looked at people with consistently deficient sleep. They compared them to sleep-deprived people who got to sleep in on the weekend.

Both groups of people gained weight with lack of sleep. Their bodies’ ability to control blood sugar levels also got worse. The weekend catch-up sleep didn’t help.

On the flip side, more sleep isn’t always better, says Brown. For adults, “if you’re sleeping more than nine hours a night and you still don’t feel refreshed, there may be some underlying medical issue,” she explains.

Sleep Disorders

Some people have conditions that prevent them from getting enough quality sleep, no matter how hard they try. These problems are called sleep disorders.

The most common sleep disorder is insomnia. “Insomnia is when you have repeated difficulty getting to sleep and/or staying asleep,” says Brown. This happens despite having the time to sleep and a proper sleep environment. It can make you feel tired or unrested during the day.

Insomnia can be short-term, where people struggle to sleep for a few weeks or months. “Quite a few more people have been experiencing this during the pandemic,” Brown says. Long-term insomnia lasts for three months or longer.

Sleep apnea is another common sleep disorder. In sleep apnea, the upper airway becomes blocked during sleep. This reduces or stops airflow, which wakes people up during the night. The condition can be dangerous. If untreated, it may lead to other health problems.

If you regularly have problems sleeping, talk with your health care provider. They may have you keep a sleep diary to track your sleep for several weeks. They can also run tests, including sleep studies. These look for sleep disorders.

Getting Better Sleep

If you’re having trouble sleeping, hearing how important it is may be frustrating. But simple things can improve your odds of a good night’s sleep. See the Wise Choices box for tips to sleep better every day.

Treatments are available for many common sleep disorders. Cognitive behavioral therapy can help many people with insomnia get better sleep. Medications can also help some people.

Many people with sleep apnea benefit from using a device called a CPAP machine. These machines keep the airway open so that you can breathe. Other treatments can include special mouthguards and lifestyle changes.

For everyone, “as best you can, try to make sleep a priority,” Brown says. “Sleep is not a throwaway thing—it’s a biological necessity.”

The Extraordinary Importance of Sleep

New sleep deprivation studies confirm the relationship between inadequate sleep and a wide range of disorders, such as hypertension, obesity and type-2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, impaired immune functioning, and more.

In the inaugural issue of the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine (2005), a feature article 1 traced early milestones in the developing field of sleep medicine, which slowly emerged from the older field of sleep research during the 1970s and 1980s. Sleep medicine, the article noted, was closely linked with and made possible by the discovery of electrical activity in the brain. The examination of electroencephalogram (EEG) patterns that occur during sleep led to the classification of stages of sleep, which in turn created an important foundation for probing human sleep, discerning abnormalities, and discovering significant relationships between sleep and health. By 2005, scientists and clinicians had not only identified and clearly defined a large number of sleep disorders but had discovered that many of them were highly prevalent.

The pace of research and discovery has only accelerated since 2005, and the number of peer-reviewed sleep journals has more than tripled. Today, researchers are more deeply probing the cellular and subcellular effects of disrupted sleep, as well as the effects of sleep deprivation on metabolism, hormone regulation, and gene expression. Newer studies are strengthening known and suspected relationships between inadequate sleep and a wide range of disorders, including hypertension, 2 obesity and type-2 diabetes, 3 impaired immune functioning, 4 cardiovascular disease and arrhythmias, 5 , 6 mood disorders, 7 neurodegeneration and dementia, 8 , 9 and even loneliness. 10

Research findings continue to underscore early concerns about public safety that were first raised when major industrial disasters such as the Exxon Valdez oil spill were linked to inadequate sleep. 11 Related research sponsored by major organizations, including the U.S. Department of Transportation, the U.S. Department of Defense, the National Institutes of Health, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), has helped to inspire national initiatives aimed at improving public safety and health. However, despite the astounding acceleration in research during the past few decades, inadequate sleep due to sleep disorders, work schedules, and chaotic lifestyles continues to threaten both health and safety.

“Pushing against the wave of accelerated growth in the field has been a shoreline of indifference,” says David F. Dinges, PhD, Professor and Chief of the Division of Sleep and Chronobiology in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. “Modern industrial pressures to use time 24 hours a day have led to shiftwork and a world in which virtually everything—law Susan L. Worley is a freelance medical writer who resides in Pennsylvania. enforcement, airports and all kinds of transportation, industrial operations, and hospitals—operates 24/7. People have come to value time so much that sleep is often regarded as an annoying interference, a wasteful state that you enter into when you do not have enough willpower to work harder and longer.”

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David F. Dinges, PhD

It has become increasingly clear, however, that no matter how hectic our lives may be, we can no longer afford to ignore what research is telling us about the importance of sleep for our safety and mental and physical well-being.

Impact on Attention, Cognition, and Mood

While scientists are still working to identify and clarify all of the functions of sleep, 12 decades of studies—many of which have used the method of disrupting sleep and examining the consequences—have confirmed that sleep is necessary for our healthy functioning and even survival.

“We know for sure that sleep serves multiple functions,” says Dr. Dinges. “Nature tends to be very parsimonious in that it often uses a single system or biology in multiple ways to optimize the functioning of an organism. We know, for example, that sleep is critical for waking cognition—that is, for the ability to think clearly, to be vigilant and alert, and sustain attention. We also know that memories are consolidated during sleep, and that sleep serves a key role in emotional regulation.”

Studies conducted by Dr. Dinges and other scientists have shown that cognitive performance and vigilant attention begin to decline fairly quickly after more than 16 hours of continuous wakefulness, and that sleep deficits from partial sleep deprivation can accumulate over time, resulting in a steady deterioration in alertness. The widely used psychomotor vigilance test (PVT), a simple neurocognitive test developed by Dr. Dinges and colleagues that assesses an individual’s ability to sustain attention and respond to signals in a timely manner, has proven to be an exceptionally sensitive tool for capturing dose–response effects of sleep loss on neurobehavioral functioning. 13 The PVT also reliably detects sleep deficits caused by disrupted or fragmented sleep, and/or poorly timed sleep, which is important because a growing body of evidence suggests that the continuity and timing (or circadian alignment) of sleep may be as important as the total amount of time spent sleeping.

“We know that sleep is much more restorative of waking functions and health when it is consolidated and not fragmented,” explains Dr. Dinges. “That is, when sleep goes through the appropriate physiological sequences of non-REM (rapid eye movement) and REM states at night, and occurs when human sleep is temporally programmed by our circadian clock to occur. Such consolidated sleep is typically of a longer duration and better sleep quality than sleep taken at other times of the day, such as that which occurs with nightshift work, jet lag, and other conditions of circadian misalignment.”

Dr. Dinges and his colleagues have found that people whose daily sleep duration is inadequate, or repeatedly disrupted (e.g., by obstructive sleep apnea, restless legs syndrome, pain or stress, or shiftwork or jet lag), often are not aware of their accumulating sleep deficits or the toll that these deficits can take on their waking cognitive functions, including their performance, working memory, cognitive speed, and accuracy. Inadequate sleep also can take a toll on psychological well-being, significantly affecting our emotional and psychosocial interpretation of events and exacerbating our stress levels. Studies have indicated that changes in mood may be due in part to the effects of sleep deprivation on the processing of emotional memory—in other words, our tendency to select and remember negative memories after inadequate sleep. 14

In one study conducted by Dr. Dinges and colleagues, participants’ mood was observed after they were confronted with “high” and “low” performance demands, following varying degrees of sleep deprivation. 15

“To our surprise, those who were sleep-deprived responded to low stressors in much the same way that people without any sleep deprivation tended to respond to high stressors,” said Dr. Dinges. “In other words, we tend to become much more sensitive emotionally and socially when we are sleep-deprived. That is what I like to call the ‘who was at my desk or who touched my coffee cup?’ phenomenon. I think we all have experienced having an extreme reaction or a very negative emotional response to a mild stressor when we have not had enough sleep.”

Aiming for the Sweet Spot

How much sleep is enough? After decades of investigation, it appears that scientists have gathered enough evidence to begin to answer that question. 16

“When duration of sleep drops below seven hours, and especially when it starts to move toward six and half hours or less, a number of different disorders begin to increase in prevalence,” says Dr. Dinges. “Most experts would agree that there is a kind of sweet spot that most people should aim for, and for the average healthy adult that zone is ideally somewhere between 7 and 7 and a half hours. That is what the consensus evaluations of more than a thousand scientific articles have yielded—the consensus of evaluations conducted by the AASM (American Academy of Sleep Medicine) and Sleep Research Society jointly.”

Numerous large U.S. surveys—beginning with a 1982 survey by the American Cancer Society—have been used to estimate the number of hours that most people spend sleeping. Many surveys have identified a worrisome prevalence of “short” sleepers (people who sleep 6 hours or less) among respondents, and a general trend toward decreasing sleep duration between 1975 and 2006. More recently, however, an analysis of the American Time Use Survey (ATUS), spearheaded by Mathias Basner, MD, PhD, at the University of Pennsylvania 17 , has suggested that there may be cause for optimism.

“The analysis shows that there is a slight but steady increase in sleep time that stretches back to about 2003 or 2004,” says Dr. Dinges. “We think this increase, which is modest—at most a minute or two more per year—is due in part to the development of the field of sleep medicine, and public and scientific reports in the media about sleep loss contributing to accidents and catastrophes, and so forth. Ever so slowly, the message that it is important not to get sleep deprived, and to get help if you have a sleep disorder, has begun to penetrate to the public.”

The analysis notes that one sign of greater interest in sleep on the part of the public has been a significant increase in Google searches containing the word “sleep” since 2004. Data from the ATUS also suggest that over time, people have been willing to trade some of their daily activities in exchange for more sleep. It is important to note, says Dr. Dinges, that self-reports of time spent sleeping are not always accurate—they can be off by a half an hour or more, usually with people tending to estimate that they slept more than they did. He also notes that there is still a fairly large population sleeping 6 hours or less.

“Although there are signs that sleep time is increasing, it is not happening at nearly the dramatic rate that most experts would like to see,” says Dr. Dinges. “This is especially true for vulnerable populations. There is concern about school start times and bus times affecting the sleep of children and adolescents, and about extracurricular activities at the end of the school day sometimes leading to a delay in bed times for teenagers. All of this is an ongoing, evolving picture, with more research results coming out all the time, and with consequent changes in recommendations, to make sure that at least our most vulnerable populations are getting adequate sleep.”

Interindividual Differences in Vulnerability to Sleep Loss

While it is well established that the effects of sleep loss accumulate over time, with repeated exposure to inadequate, fragmented, or disrupted sleep, the degree to which individuals demonstrate adverse effects of inadequate sleep can vary considerably. 18

“We have learned that there are astonishingly mysterious phenotypes, or trait-like differences, in how vulnerable people are to sleep loss,” says Dr. Dinges. “This is still a relatively new area of research, and it has only been in the past few years that scientists have begun to replicate early findings regarding these phenotypic differences in vulnerability to the negative neurobehavioral effects of sleep loss. The interindividual differences that have been observed so far raise some extremely provocative scientific questions. We may find that there is something in waking biology that can substitute for, or somehow reduce, the impact of sleep loss on waking functioning, but thus far there is no evidence as to what that might be.”

Differences among individuals exist with regard to both the effects of sleep loss and the ability to recover from the effects of sleep loss. Differences in performance also have been shown to be task-dependent, suggesting that people who are vulnerable to the effects of sleep loss in one or more cognitive or neurobehavioral domains may be resistant to the effects of sleep loss in others. To better understand interindividual variability, scientists are investigating possible genetic mechanisms that may underlie complex interactions between circadian and sleep homeostatic systems—the systems that affect our drive for sleep as well as our alertness and performance during waking hours. A current goal is to discover biomarkers that may help predict individual performance after varying degrees of sleep loss. 19 And one hope is that biomarkers—ideally in the form of a simple “roadside” test such as a breathalyzer—may eventually be used to detect sleep loss-related impairment in drivers or in individuals responsible for operating sophisticated equipment or machinery. To date, no viable candidates have been found.

Investigators also are shedding light on the role that age may play in resilience to sleep loss. The results of one recent study indicate that younger adults are more vulnerable to the adverse effects of chronic sleep loss and recurring circadian disruption than older adults. 20 Although the neurobiological basis for these age-related differences is not yet understood, such findings may help to inform new approaches to the prevention of drowsy driving and related motor-vehicle accidents among young drivers.

Dr. Dinges emphasizes that findings regarding interindividual differences in response to sleep loss and in recovery from sleep loss should not diminish the message that adequate sleep is critical for everyone.

“Research has shown us that sleep is not an optional activity,” says Dr. Dinges. “There is no question that sleep is fundamentally conserved across species and across lifespans, and that any effort to eliminate it has been unsuccessful. We must plan our lives in the time domain with a serious consideration for sleep—planning when to sleep, ensuring that we get adequate sleep, and making sure that our sleep is not disturbed by disorders or diseases, whether or not they are sleep-related.”

Addressing Sleep Disorders

As connections between sleep disruption and both disease and mortality have become more firmly established, accurate and efficient diagnosis and management of sleep disorders (see Table 1 ) have become increasingly critical. Recent directions in the field of sleep medicine include a move toward patient-centered care, greater collaboration between specialists and primary care physicians, and the incorporation of new tools—including home-based diagnostic tests and novel electronic questionnaires—in the effort to create a comprehensive yet more personalized approach to assessment and treatment.

ICSD-3 Major Diagnostic Sections *

A chief goal is to improve the diagnosis of sleep disorders. Although approximately 70 million people in the U.S. have at least one sleep disorder, experts estimate that up to 80% of sleep disorders may go undetected or undiagnosed. One major challenge that clinicians face during the initial assessment of people with sleep disorders is the process of identifying and sorting out comorbidities. Untangling the causes and effects in bidirectional comorbidities can be particularly difficult. For example, insomnia—by far the most common sleep disorder—often is complicated by the presence of another sleep disorder, such as sleep apnea or restless legs syndrome.

“Some experts have even suggested that all cases of insomnia coexist with, or are caused by, another sleep disorder, most commonly sleep apnea,” says Clete A. Kushida, MD, PhD, Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, and Division Chief and Medical Director of Stanford Sleep Medicine. “I’m not sure I would go quite that far, but certainly bidirectional comorbidities among individuals who experience sleep disorders are common. For example, pain syndromes—including back pain and limb pain, especially among older patients—are common comorbidities in patients with insomnia. Mood disorders also frequently occur in patients who experience insomnia.”

Comorbidities can complicate treatment and often require sleep specialists to collaborate with not only primary care physicians but also specialists in other therapeutic areas.

“If, for example, a person with insomnia also has been diagnosed with depression by a psychiatrist,” says Dr. Kushida, “our goal is to work hand in hand with the psychiatrist to find the right medication. There are both sedating and alerting antidepressants, and a patient may need to try one medication for a couple of weeks to months, slowly increasing the dose to a therapeutic level, until the effect on both the depression and the patient’s sleep can be determined. For some individuals, an alerting antidepressant can cause poor sleep, which in turn can exacerbate the depression. The process of achieving the right dose of the right medication can be complex, and benefits from a collaboration between specialists.”

Undetected obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) in patients with chronic pain, or other serious illnesses, can result in potentially dangerous comorbidities. Opioids, for example, are known to have adverse effects on respiration, and can lead to central sleep apnea (CSA)—shallow and irregular or interrupted breathing and sustained hypoventilation—a potentially lethal condition that can intensify the consequences of OSA. These risks underscore the need to improve methods for identifying and properly diagnosing the estimated 23.5 million U.S. adults with OSA. Public education and advocacy efforts are already helping to improve detection—in part by helping to address misconceptions about OSA.

“One of the biggest misconceptions is that only people who are significantly overweight experience sleep apnea,” says Dr. Kushida. “In fact, only up to 67% of people who have OSA are overweight, the rest are of normal weight. OSA also can be caused by craniofacial dysmorphism, or a defect of the airway that occurs during development. A narrow airway caused by deficient growth of the craniofacial skeleton, particularly the jaws, can become narrower and more prone to collapse with age, leading to sleep apnea.”

Treating Insomnia: The Value of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

Insomnia, the most prevalent sleep disorder, affects approximately one third of all adults and is the most common condition that family and primary-care physicians encounter. According to the International Classification of Sleep Disorders (ICSD-3), chronic insomnia is the inability to attain sufficient sleep (despite adequate opportunity) for at least three nights per week for three months or longer, with negative daytime consequences. For most people, the disorder is transient, but for approximately 10% to 15% of those who experience insomnia (around 30 million people) it becomes chronic. Although pharmacologic treatments for insomnia ( Table 2 ) can be effective, most experts now recommend against the long-term use of pharmacotherapy.

Selected Pharmaceutical Treatments for Insomnia 21 , 27

“If a person has been diagnosed with chronic insomnia, the only treatment that has been shown to have long-term benefit is cognitive behavioral therapy, “says Dr. Kushida. “Medications really should be considered short-term treatments, because patients tend to develop dependence on, or tolerance to, hypnotic drugs. In our clinic, we commonly see that, over time, medications stop having an effect, and that means that patients may try higher doses of a medication, or keep switching to different medications. So, medications are a temporary solution—they just put a Band-Aid on the problem of insomnia, whereas cognitive behavioral therapy targets one of the pathways toward success.”

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), which involves techniques that work in part by reducing cognitive and somatic arousal, is estimated to be effective in approximately 70% to 80% of people who experience chronic insomnia. Dr. Kushida notes that while drugs can sometimes be useful in the treatment of acute insomnia, they become problematic after acute insomnia transitions to chronic insomnia.

“A person might be an OK sleeper for several years, and then suddenly experience a traumatic event, such as the loss of a job, a divorce, or the death of a loved one, resulting in very poor sleep,” says Dr. Kushida. “Down the road, that person might obtain a better job, overcome grief, or find a new relationship, but continue to experience insomnia. We think in some cases the transition from acute insomnia to chronic insomnia occurs because the behavioral event triggers something in the person’s physiology that may lead to long-term changes. Once they are in a chronic insomnia phase, we tell patients that CBT is the only truly effective intervention.”

If a patient is already taking hypnotics, Dr. Kushida says that he will gradually wean the patient off medications while introducing CBT. He notes that often it is necessary for sleep specialists to manage the expectations of chronic sufferers.

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Clete A. Kushida, MD, PhD

“We sometimes have to let patients with chronic insomnia know that we may never get them back to where they were when they had optimal sleep,” Dr. Kushida explains. “The behavioral methods we use work well, and usually we can get patients to the point where the insomnia is having less of an impact on their quality of life. Our inability to completely restore the patient’s ability to sleep well may partly be explained by as yet unidentified changes in his or her neurophysiology or neurochemistry. Some patients with chronic insomnia can begin to sleep normally again, but for the vast majority, we aim to make insomnia less of a burden on a patient’s daily life.”

Improving Clinical Research

In the field of sleep medicine, as in many other therapeutic areas, future directions in clinical trial research will place an emphasis on patient engagement and patient-centered outcomes.

“Perhaps the most important aim these days when developing and implementing any type of large-scale clinical research study is to incorporate the patient’s perspective,” says Dr. Kushida, who is currently analyzing the results of a comparative effectiveness sleep study sponsored by the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI). 22 The study, designed and conducted by a team at Stanford, introduced a new model of patient-centered, coordinated care and tested it against conventional outpatient treatment for sleep disorders.

“The patient’s perspective is so invaluable in guiding the success of a study that ideally it should be incorporated right at the inception of a research question or idea,” says Dr. Kushida. “When you are designing an especially complicated trial, for example, it is easy to incorporate a lot of tests and measures without being aware of the burden these can place on the participants. It’s critical to learn from patients whether they are overwhelmed by the number of tests, or whether travel time or the amount of time they need to take off from work may be impractical.”

Other efforts to improve clinical research include those focused on correcting for and/or eliminating several confounding variables that tend to plague sleep research. The surprising power of the placebo effect, 23 the related disconnect between objective and subjective evaluations of sleep loss and recovery from sleep loss, variable adherence to treatments, and, more recently, deceptive practices among clinical trial participants, are a few examples.

The placebo effect, which refers to any outcome that may be attributable to the expectations of clinical trial participants rather than to the drug or device being tested, can be especially problematic in experimental protocols that involve self-reports of sleep quality.

“Clinical trials involving patients with disorders such as insomnia or RLS that rely solely on subjective measures, or ratings of severity based on patient report, are particularly vulnerable to the placebo effect,” says Dr. Kushida. “It has been demonstrated that when these patients believe that they are receiving the study drug or device the likelihood of their experiencing a positive effect can increase significantly. There have been efforts to develop or introduce new objective endpoints in these studies, which may help with this problem.”

Achieving the right balance of subjective and objective measures of sleep is an important goal in both research and clinical practice. The current gold standard for objective assessment of sleep is polysomnography (PSG), which includes electrophysiological recordings of brain activity (EEG), muscle activity (EMG), and eye movements (EOG). A valuable, non-invasive method for determining sleep continuity and sleep architecture, PSG has been an indispensable objective endpoint in clinical trials, but it is expensive and not always practical. Novel approaches to objective measurement, including actigraphy, which may be used to help minimize recall bias and complement subjective measures of sleep (e.g., sleep logs or diaries), still have drawbacks. 24

“The problem with wearable devices right now,” says Dr. Kushida, “is that they tend to overestimate sleep, sometimes by as much as an hour. They also are not yet capable of accurately detecting different stages of sleep, such as non-REM and REM sleep. Because of our proximity to Silicon Valley, our laboratory tests a lot of these new devices, and often by the time we have finished testing one prototype, new ones have emerged. The product cycles are rapid, and the companies keep incorporating newer and newer technology. So, down the road, within about five to ten years, I think these devices will likely estimate sleep and detect sleep stages with precision.”

Also, objective tools are needed for addressing problems with adherence to treatment. One important current aim is to detect and correct for non-obvious factors that result in failure to adhere to treatment, whether unintended or deliberate, to ensure that trial outcomes accurately reflect the efficacy of a drug, medical device, or behavioral intervention. 25 A related problem is deliberate deception by trial participants. As part of a National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI)-supported study focused on detecting and correcting for adherence problems, Dr. Kushida and colleagues began to explore the prevalence of deceptive practices among clinical trial participants. 26

“We found that deception among clinical trial participants is pretty common and that there is quite a range of deceptive practices, “says Dr. Kushida. “They include underreported drug holidays, fabrication or withholding of medical histories, pill dumping, exaggerated symptoms, and falsification of current health status. It’s important that we find a way to address these deceptive practices because both the integrity of research data and the safety of participants are at risk.”

Dr. Kushida adds that newer tools, such as electronic monitoring of pill dispensing and statistical predictive adherence models, may uncover and remedy pressing problems related to adherence and deceptive practices. “It already takes about 12 years for a new drug to be approved, and about three to five years for a new device to be approved. When deceptive practices are discovered too late, it can lead to the invalidation of research findings and further delays in approving much-needed treatments.”

Enhancing clinical research in the field will require a cooperative, international effort focused on advancing knowledge about sleep, circadian rhythms, and sleep disorders worldwide. During Dr. Kushida’s tenure as inaugural president of the World Sleep Society (WSS), he led an initiative to create international sleep fellowships to prepare physicians and scientists from various countries for future leadership roles in basic and/or clinical sleep research. He also oversaw the development of an International Sleep Research Network, designed to help sleep scientists and clinicians find collaborators with similar clinical/research interests. As the WSS continues to offer new services and expand its programs, it will be with an awareness of the needs of disadvantaged populations and the importance of access to appropriate treatment.

“One initiative of the WSS involves reviewing current published guidelines in various countries, to determine whether they meet international standards,” says Dr. Kushida. “Many guidelines are region-specific and list only medications approved in specific countries or regions. As we review the guidelines, we endorse them with caveats; we may note that particular treatments for insomnia are recommended, and when these are not available we recommend acceptable substitutes. The goal is to ensure that specialists can use practice guidelines in whichever country they practice sleep medicine, and that patients are receiving the best possible treatment available.”

How Much Sleep Do You Really Need?

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Originally published on Nov. 11, 2016

How to Get a Better Night’s Sleep

By Tara Parker-Pope

Illustrations by Sam Kalda

Most people know they need to eat right and exercise to be healthy. But what about sleep? We spend about one-third of our lives asleep, and sleep is essential to better health. But many of us are struggling with sleep. Four out of five people say that they suffer from sleep problems at least once a week and wake up feeling exhausted. So how do you become a more successful sleeper? Grab a pillow, curl up and keep reading to find out.

If you wake up tired, chances are you’re not getting enough sleep. These strategies may help you determine your sleep needs.

The Magic Number

The best person to determine how much sleep you need is you. If you feel tired, you probably need more sleep. But science does offer some more specific guidance. People who sleep seven hours a night are healthier and live longer. Sleeping less than seven hours is associated with a range of health problems including obesity, heart disease, depression and impaired immune function. But sleep needs vary greatly by individual. Age, genetics, lifestyle and environment all play a role. The National Sleep Foundation recently updated its sleep recommendations based on age.

While these numbers are useful guidelines, they really don’t tell you anything about your individual sleep needs, which are largely determined by genetics — and strongly influenced by your habits.

Ask Yourself: ‘Are You Sleepy?’

This simple question is the best way to determine if you’re getting adequate sleep. If you often feel tired at work, long for a nap or fall asleep on your morning or evening commute, your body is telling you that it’s not getting enough sleep. If you’re getting seven or eight hours of sleep a night but still feeling tired and sleep-deprived, you may be suffering from interrupted sleep or a sleep disorder and may need to talk to a doctor and undergo a sleep study.

Keep a Sleep Diary

Even if you think you’re getting enough sleep, you may be surprised once you see your sleep patterns in black and white. Some of the new activity trackers will monitor your sleep patterns for you, but you can also do it easily yourself. For the next week, keep a sleep diary:

1. Write down the time you go to bed and the hour you wake up.

2. Determine the total number of hours you sleep. Note whether you took naps or woke up in the middle of the night.

3. Note how you felt in the morning. Refreshed and ready to conquer the world? Or groggy and fatigued?

Try it yourself: Download and print our sleep diary worksheet.

Not only will a sleep diary will give you important insights into your sleep habits, but it will be useful to your doctor if you think you are suffering from a sleep disorder.

Take a Vacation From Your Alarm Clock

Want to really identify your individual sleep needs? Try this “sleep vacation” experiment. To do this, you will need two weeks when you don’t have somewhere to be at a specific time in the morning. If you have a flexible job, you can do this any time, or you may have to wait until a vacation.

The experiment requires a little discipline:

1. Pick the same bedtime every night.

2. Turn off your alarm.

3. Record the time you wake up.

Chances are, you will sleep longer during the first few days, because you are catching up on lost sleep, so the first few days of data won’t be useful. But over the course of a few weeks, if you stick to the scheduled bedtime and allow yourself to wake up naturally, you’ll begin to see a pattern emerge of how many hours of sleep your body needs each night.

Once you determine your natural sleep needs, think about the time you need to wake up to get to work or school on time and pick a bedtime that allows you enough sleep to wake up naturally.

Do you pop out of bed bright and early, ready to take on the world? Or do you find yourself making friends with the snooze button after staying up all night?

Take the Quiz

Do you wake up hungry? What’s your best time of day? Those and other questions are part of a test commonly used by sleep experts to determine whether you are a lark, a night owl or somewhere in between.

You can take this quiz to find out what type of person you are.

How to Become a Morning Person

Like most creatures on Earth, humans come equipped with a circadian clock, a roughly 24-hour internal timer that keeps our sleep patterns in sync with our planet — at least until genetics, age and our personal habits get in the way. Even though the average adult needs eight hours of sleep per night, there are so-called “shortsleepers,” who need far less, and morning people, who, research shows, often come from families of other morning people. Then there’s the rest of us, who rely on alarm clocks.

For those who fantasize about greeting the dawn with a smile, there is hope. With a little focus, discipline and patience, you have the ability to reset your own internal clock. But be warned, it’s not easy. Changing your sleep pattern requires commitment, and it means changing old habits. No more TV-watching marathons late into the night.

Changing your internal sleep clock requires inducing a sort of jet lag without leaving your time zone, and sticking it out until your body clock resets itself. And, most importantly, not resetting it again. Here’s how to become more of a morning person.

Step 1: Set a goal for your wake-up time.

Step 2: Move your current wake-up time by 20 minutes each day. For example, if you regularly rise at 8 a.m., but really want to get moving at 6 a.m., set the alarm for 7:40 a.m. on Monday. On Tuesday, set it for 7:20 a.m. and so on until you are setting your alarm for 6 a.m.

Step 3: Go to bed when you are tired. Avoid extra light exposure from computers or televisions as you near bedtime.

Step 4: When your alarm goes off in the morning, don’t linger in bed. Hit yourself with light — open your shades, turn on the lamp.

Step 5: Go to bed a little earlier the next night. In theory, you should get sleepy about 20 minutes earlier each night.

A word of warning: While this method works for many, it doesn’t work for everyone. Very early risers and longtime night owls have a hard time ever changing.

How to Wake Up

If you are struggling to wake up in the morning, sleep experts suggest a few simple ways to train your body.

Buy a Louder Alarm: It may sound silly, but if you regularly sleep through your alarm, you may need a different alarm. If you use your phone alarm, change up the ring tone and set the volume on high.

Sunlight: One of the most powerful cues to wake up the brain is sunlight. Leaving your blinds open so the sun shines in will help you wake up sooner if you regularly sleep late into the day.

Eat Breakfast: Eating breakfast every day will train your body to expect it and help get you in sync with the morning. If you’ve ever flown across time zones, you’ll notice that airlines often serve scrambled eggs and other breakfast foods to help passengers adjust to the new time zone.

Don’t Blow It on the Weekend: Besides computer screens, the biggest saboteur for an aspiring morning person is the weekend. Staying up later on Friday or sleeping in on Saturday sends the brain an entirely new set of scheduling priorities, so by Monday, a 6 a.m. alarm may feel like 4 a.m. It’s tough, but stick to your good sleep habits, even on the weekends.

Tired people are not happy, healthy or safe. Here are some of the things that go wrong when you don’t get enough sleep.

Sleep and Illness

People who get less than seven hours of sleep a night are more likely to have chronic health problems like obesity, heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, stroke, depression and premature death.

While the long-term health risks of bad sleep are enough to keep you awake at night, there’s more bad news. You’re also more likely to catch a cold. In one surprising study, researchers found 164 men and women who were willing to take nose drops that exposed them to the cold virus. (And that’s not the most surprising part of the story.) You might think that everyone who willingly puts a cold virus in their nose would get sick, but they don’t. A healthy immune system can fight off a cold. But not a sleep-deprived immune system. The people most likely to get sick from the cold-infused nose drops? Those who got six or fewer hours of sleep.

The Tired Brain

A tired brain is not a wise brain, and people who are sleep deprived make more mistakes. The American Insomnia Survey, published in 2012, estimated that 274,000 workplace accidents were directly related to sleep problems. The bill for these sleep-deprived mistakes? $31 billion annually.

Why does this happen? While the body goes into rest mode during sleep, the brain becomes highly active. Think of your brain like a computer or a smartphone that uses the nighttime to back up all your data. One of its big jobs is to consolidate memories, link with old memories and create paths for you to retrieve memories. It also forms connections between disparate thoughts and ideas. That’s why sometimes, when you wake up, a big idea suddenly pops into your head. And it’s why, when you don’t sleep, your thinking and memory are fuzzy. Some research suggests that when you don’t sleep (like when students pull an all-nighter), your ability to learn new information drops by almost half.

Toxins in the Attic

Another important function of sleep is that it allows the brain to do some mental housekeeping. Yes, sleep helps you clean up the cerebellum, polish the parietal and flush the frontal lobe. Sleep cleans out the toxic junk in your brain. In mouse studies, researchers found that during sleep, the space between brain cells gets bigger, allowing the brain to flush out toxins. While more study is needed, the research suggests that not sleeping can allow toxins to accumulate and may be linked with brain diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.

Driving While Tired

Drowsy driving is as much of a safety risk as drunk driving or texting and driving. Studies show that going without sleep for 20 to 21 hours and then getting behind the wheel is comparable to having a blood alcohol level of about .08 percent, the legal limit in most states. If you’re awake for 24 hours and then try to drive, you’re at a blood alcohol equivalent of 0.1 percent, which is higher than the legal limit in all states.

You are at risk for drowsy driving if you get less than six hours of sleep at night. Another risk factor is snoring. Snorers also are at risk for drowsy driving because snoring is a sign of sleep apnea and interrupted sleep. (See our section below, “Call a Doctor,” for more on sleep apnea.)

In 2009, an estimated 730 deadly motor vehicle accidents involved a driver who was either sleepy or dozing off, and an additional 30,000 crashes that were nonfatal involved a drowsy driver. Accidents involving sleepy drivers are more likely to be deadly or cause injuries, in part because people who fall asleep at the wheel either fail to hit their brakes or veer off the road before crashing.

Groggy drivers often blast the radio or roll down the window to stay awake, but those measures don’t really work, say experts. Coffee or a caffeinated drink may help, but some individuals don’t get much of an effect. The best advice if you find yourself sleepy at the wheel: Pull over for a quick cat nap.

Sleep and Weight Gain

For years researchers have known that adults who sleep less than five or six hours a night are at higher risk of being overweight . Among children, sleeping less than 10 hours a night is associated with weight gain . Some research even shows that losing just a few hours of sleep a few nights in a row can lead to almost immediate weight gain.

Part of the reason may be that sleep-deprived people eat more. Staying up late and skimping on sleep leads to more eating in general, and a hankering for carbohydrates. In one study, sleep-deprived eaters ended up eating more calories during after-dinner snacking than in any other meal during the day. By the end of the first week the sleep-deprived subjects had gained an average of about two pounds. Over all, people consumed 6 percent more calories when they got too little sleep. Once they started sleeping more, they began eating more healthfully, consuming fewer carbohydrates and fats.

The first step toward better sleep is better “sleep hygiene” — daily habits that train your body for sleep.

Manage Your Clock

Like most creatures on earth, humans come equipped with a circadian clock, a roughly 24-hour internal timer that keeps our sleep patterns in sync with our planet. At least until our personal habits get in the way. Here are the key factors that matter for your “sleep hygiene”:

Bedtime: Go to bed at about the same time every night, including weekends.

Don’t Sleep In: Keep your wake-up time consistent. Don’t sleep in on the weekends.

Naps: Avoid naps. If you must take a nap, set the alarm so you don’t sleep for more than an hour. Don’t take a nap after 3 p.m.

Keep to a Schedule: Schedules aren’t just about bedtime and wake-up time. It also means eating your meals, taking medications, exercise and even watching television should occur about the same time every day to keep your body clock in sync.

Avoid Screens: Turn off the tablet, the television and the phone. The blue light in your screen has the same effect on your brain as sunlight, which means it wakes you up just when you want to be drifting off.

Think Spa Bedroom: Make your bedroom a pleasant, peaceful and relaxing getaway. Get rid of exercise equipment, televisions, small children, etc.

Beds Are for Sleep and Romance: Don’t use the bed for watching television, talking on the phone, doing homework or eating and drinking.

Work Out Early: Strenuous exercise is not a good idea right before bedtime. Try yoga.

No Night Eating: Don’t eat meals close to bedtime and avoid evening and late night snacking. If your body is churning through a big meal, it’s certainly not going to get the rest it needs. And if you’re overweight or prone to digestion problems, you’re likely to experience painful heartburn and reflux if you binge too close to bedtime.

Catch Some Morning Rays: Sunlight keeps your internal clock ticking. Go outside as soon as you wake up and spend at least 15 minutes in the morning sun. (And if it’s a hot sun, use sunscreen.)

Keep It Cool: Cool bodies sleep better, but most people keep their bedrooms too warm at night, which can interfere with sleep. Taking a hot bath before bedtime is a good idea, because once you get out of the bath, your body cools down more quickly, which will help you drift off to sleep.

If you have adopted better sleeping habits and you are still suffering from chronic sleepiness, you may need to see a doctor.

More than 40 million Americans suffer from chronic, long-term sleep disorders, and an additional 20 million report sleeping problems occasionally, according to the National Institutes of Health. Here are some of the medical reasons people are losing sleep at night.

Insomnia: If you regularly have trouble with falling asleep, staying asleep or waking too early, you suffer from insomnia. Treatment includes behavioral therapy, strict sleep hygiene and medication.

Sleep Apnea: If you suffer from excessive daytime sleepiness, the cause may be sleep apnea. A person typically doesn’t know he or she has sleep apnea, and is usually alerted to the problem by a bed partner who must cope with the loud snoring, snorts and gasps that are often associated with the disorder. A person with sleep apnea experiences pauses in breathing while sleeping. These pauses can last for seconds to minutes and occur dozens of times in an hour. Breathing restarts with a gasp, a choking sound or a snort. When this occurs, a person may not wake up, but he or she moves from deep sleep to light sleep, and wakes feeling tired and fatigued. Sleep apnea is unpleasant for a bed partner, and it’s risky to your health. If you think you have it, see a doctor.

Restless Legs Syndrome: An estimated 8 percent of the population has restless legs syndrome, a neurological condition. There are four basic symptoms that occur with R.L.S.:

1. A strong urge to move your legs, sometimes accompanied by a burning sensation.

2. Your symptoms are worse when you body is at rest.

3. Symptoms improve when you move.

4. Symptoms are worse at night.

Anxiety: Anxiety can interfere with sleep. And feeling sleep-deprived can cause anxiety. Most psychiatric disorders are linked with some type of sleep problem. And people with chronic insomnia are at risk for anxiety disorders.

Hot Flashes: Hot flashes aren’t limited to the daytime, and at night they can disrupt sleep and leave a menopausal woman soaked in her own sweat, causing her discomfort or waking her up enough to prompt her to change clothes and try to go back to bed. Hormone treatments and antidepressants may help, or a woman can just gut it out and hope she is not a superflasher.

Get Studied

If you suffer from a chronic sleep problem or suspect you have sleep apnea, your doctor may order a sleep study. There are three types of sleep studies.

Polysomnogram: This study, called a PSG, is requires an overnight stay at the sleep lab. Patients are fitted with sensors and then allowed to sleep. During the night the study will record brain activity, heart rate, blood pressure, oxygen levels, body movements and more.

Multiple Sleep Latency Test: An M.S.L.T. sleep study is performed during the day and measures daytime sleepiness. Patients are given opportunities to nap for 20 minutes every few hours while your brain and eye movements are monitored.

Maintenance of Wakefulness Test: The M.W.T. is a daytime sleep study that measures alertness and your ability to stay awake. It’s used to assess sleep issues in a person where sleepiness is a safety issue, like a bus driver or train operator.

What Happens During a Sleep Study

Sleep studies are a strange experience. Wires and electrodes are placed on your scalp and face, near the eyes and chin to detect eye movements and chin movements caused by teeth grinding. Elastic belts may be placed around your chest and stomach to measure breathing. A tube may be placed in the nose to measure breathing, and electrodes placed on the legs to measure leg movement. EKG monitors are used to measure heart rate and a small microphone is placed on the throat to detect snoring. While it sounds impossible to sleep under these conditions, most of the people who need a sleep study eventually fall asleep — at least long enough for the technicians to gather the data they need.

In addition to adopting healthy sleep habits, a number of other strategies are available to improve your sleep.

The relationship between exercise and better sleep is a bit complicated. Vigorous exercise before bedtime can wake up the body, not put it to sleep. But research shows that regular exercise may lead to better sleep. The key here is regular. One or two workouts may make you physically tired, but that’s unlikely to lead to better sleep. But regular exercise appears to create a gradual improvement in sleep. In one study it took four months for exercisers to see an improvement in sleep, but the change was remarkable. Exercisers eventually gained at least 45 minutes of extra sleep a night — a much better result than many people get with drug treatments. The lesson: If you have insomnia and don’t exercise, start.

Some sleep problems are due to anxiety and stress, so calming the mind leads to better sleep. If you’re having trouble sleeping, try meditation, either on your own or by downloading an app.

Melatonin, a hormone, is sold as a dietary supplement and is a popular alternative remedy for sleep problems. In general, melatonin works to relieve jet lag, but offers only modest benefits for insomnia. A 2013 analysis that looked at 19 randomized controlled trials involving 1,683 subjects determined that on average, melatonin reduced the amount of time it took to fall asleep by seven minutes when compared with placebos and increased total sleep time by eight minutes.

Medications

Sleeping pills can be a useful tool for helping people get better sleep during a difficult time, such as the death of a loved one or a stressful job change. But in general, doctors don’t view sleep medication as a long-term solution. Regular use can result in dependency and weird side effects. In addition to sleepwalking, there have been reports of sleep-driving, sleep-eating and sleep-shopping. While the pills can be an essential treatment for people with head injuries and serious sleep issues, most people are better off trying non-drug treatments like relaxation techniques, cognitive behavioral therapy or exercise.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

Several medical organizations have endorsed a treatment known as cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia or C.B.T.-I. In May, the American College of Physicians advised its members that C.B.T.-I. was the first treatment they should offer patients with insomnia. The key element of cognitive behavioral therapy is cognitive restructuring, which challenges you to reframe negative ways of thinking that can become their own self-fulfilling prophecies. So if you’re lying awake thinking about what a basket case you’ll be tomorrow because you’re not asleep, well, that thought alone will keep you awake.

C.B.T. asks you to look at the situation differently, and replace the negative thought with a positive one. “I’ll fall asleep eventually.” or “I can handle this if it only happens a few nights a week.” You can try an online program or schedule an appointment with a trained C.B.T.-I. therapist.

Tara Parker-Pope is a columnist covering health, behavior and relationships. She is the founding editor of Well, The Times's award-winning consumer health site. More about Tara Parker-Pope

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How Sleep Works Why Is Sleep Important?

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Sleep plays a vital role in good health and well-being throughout your life. The way you feel while you are awake depends in part on what happens while you are sleeping. During sleep, your body is working to support healthy brain function and maintain your physical health.

In children and teens, sleep also helps support growth and development. Getting inadequate sleep over time can raise your risk for chronic (long-term) health problems. It can also affect how well you think, react, work, learn, and get along with others. Learn how sleep affects your heart and circulatory system, metabolism , respiratory system, and immune system and how much sleep is enough.

This brochure describes the differences between the types of sleep needed to feel awake and to be healthy and offers tips for getting a good night’s sleep.

Heart and circulatory system

When you fall asleep and enter non-REM sleep , your blood pressure and heart rate fall. During sleep, your parasympathetic system controls your body, and your heart does not work as hard as it does when you are awake. During REM sleep and when waking, your sympathetic system is activated, increasing your heart rate and blood pressure to the usual levels when you are awake and relaxed. A sharp increase in blood pressure and heart rate upon waking has been linked to angina, or chest pain, and heart attacks .

People who do not sleep enough or wake up often during the night may have a higher risk of:

Coronary heart disease
High blood pressure

Hormones and sleep

Your body makes different hormone at different times of day. This may be related to your sleep pattern or your circadian clocks. In the morning, your body releases hormones that promote alertness, such as cortisol, which helps you wake up. Other hormones have 24-hour patterns that vary throughout your life; for example, in children, the hormones that tell the glands to release testosterone, estrogen, and progesterone are made in pulses at night, and the pulses get bigger as puberty approaches.

Metabolism and sleep

The way your body handles fat varies according to various circadian clocks, including those in the liver, fat, and muscle. For example, the circadian clocks make sure that your liver is prepared to help digest fats at appropriate times. Your body may handle fat differently if you eat at unusual times.

Studies have shown that not getting enough quality sleep can lead to:

Higher levels of the hormones that control hunger, including leptin and ghrelin, inside your body
Decreased ability to respond to insulin
Increased consumption of food, especially fatty, sweet, and salty foods
Decreased physical activity
Metabolic syndrome

All of these contribute to overweight and obesity .

Respiratory and immune systems

During sleep, you breathe less often and less deeply and take in less oxygen. These changes can cause problems in people who have health problems such as asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) . Asthma symptoms are usually worse during early morning sleep. Likewise, breathing problems in people who have lung diseases such as COPD can become worse during sleep.

Sleep also affects different parts of your immune system, which become more active at different times of day. For example, when you sleep, a particular type of immune cell works harder. That is why people who do not sleep enough may be more likely to get colds and other infections.

Lung Health Basics: Sleep

People with lung disease often have trouble sleeping. Sleep is critical to overall health, so take the first step to sleeping better: learn these sleep terms, and find out about treatments that can help with sleep apnea.

Problems with thinking and memory

Sleep helps with learning and the formation of long-term memories. Not getting enough sleep or enough high-quality sleep can lead to problems focusing on tasks and thinking clearly. Read our Sleep Deprivation and Deficiency page for more information on how lack of sleep affects performance of daily activities, including driving and schoolwork.

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Why You Should Make a Good Night’s Sleep a Priority

Poor sleep habits and sleep deprivation are serious problems for most high school and college students. This guide offers important tips on how—and why—to improve your sleep hygiene.

The time you spend in high school and college can be both fun and rewarding. At the same time, these can be some of the busiest years of your life.

Balancing all the demands on your time—a full course load, extracurricular activities, and socializing with friends—can be challenging. And if you also work or have family commitments, it can feel like there just aren’t enough hours in the day.

With so many competing priorities, sacrificing sleep may feel like the only way to get everything done.

Despite the sleepiness you might feel the next day, one late night probably won’t have a major impact on your well-being. But regularly short-changing yourself on quality sleep can have serious implications for school, work, and your physical and mental health.

Alternatively, prioritizing a regular sleep schedule can make these years healthier, less stressful, and more successful long-term.

The sleep you need versus the sleep you get

According to the National Sleep Foundation , high school students (ages 14-17) need about eight to 10 hours of sleep each night. For young adults (ages 18 to 25), the range is need between seven and nine hours.

How do you know how much sleep you need within this range?

According to Dr. Edward Pace-Schott, Harvard Summer School and Harvard Medical School faculty member and sleep expert, you can answer that question simply by observing how much you sleep when you don’t need to get up.

“When you’ve been on vacation for two weeks, how are you sleeping during that second week? How long are you sleeping? If you’re sleeping eight or nine hours when you don’t have any reason to get up, then chances are you need that amount or close to that amount of sleep,” says Pace-Schott.

Most students, however, get far less sleep than the recommended amount.

Seventy to 96 percent of college students get less than eight hours of sleep each week night. And over half of college students sleep less than seven hours per night. The numbers are similar for high school students; 73 percent of high school students get between seven and seven and a half hours of sleep .

Of course, many students attempt to catch up on lost sleep by sleeping late on the weekends. Unfortunately, this pattern is neither healthy nor a true long-term solution to sleep deprivation.

And what about those students who say that they function perfectly well on just a couple hours of sleep?

“There are very few individuals who are so-called short sleepers, people who really don’t need more than six hours of sleep. But, there are a lot more people who claim to be short sleepers than there are real short sleepers,” says Pace-Schott.

Consequences of sleep deprivation

The consequences of sleep deprivation are fairly well established but may still be surprising.

For example, did you know that sleep deprivation can create the same level of cognitive impairment as drinking alcohol?

According to the CDC , staying awake for 18 hours can have the same effect as a blood alcohol content (BAC) of 0.05 percent. Staying awake for 24 hours can equate to a BAC of 0.10 percent (higher than the legal limit of 0.08 percent).

And according to research by AAA , drowsy driving causes an average of 328,000 motor vehicle accidents each year in the US. Drivers who sleep less than five hours per night are more than five times as likely to have a crash as drivers who sleep for seven hours or more.

Other signs of chronic sleep deprivation include:

Daytime sleepiness and fatigue
Irritability and short temper
Mood changes
Trouble coping with stress
Difficulty focusing, concentrating, and remembering

Over the long term, chronic sleep deprivation can have a serious impact on your physical and mental health. Insufficient sleep has been linked, for example, to weight gain and obesity, cardiovascular disease, and type 2 diabetes.

The impact on your mental health can be just as serious. Harvard Medical School has conducted numerous studies, including research by Pace-Schott, demonstrating a link between sleep deprivation and mental health disorders such as anxiety and depression.

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Importance of sleep for high school and college students

As difficult as it is to prioritize sleep, the advantages of going to bed early and getting quality sleep every night are very real.

College students who prioritize sleep are likely to see an improvement in their academic performance.

If you are well rested, you will experience less daytime sleepiness and fatigue. You may need less caffeine to stay awake during those long lectures. And you will also find you are more productive, more attentive to detail, and able to concentrate better while studying.

But the connection between sleep and academic performance goes well beyond concentration and attentiveness.

“Sleep is very important for consolidating memories. In any sort of experimental setting, study results show better performance if you learn material and then sleep on it, instead of remaining awake. So there’s lots and lots of evidence now indicating that sleep promotes memory strengthening and memory consolidation,” says Pace-Schott.

There is also a strong connection between sleep quality and stress.

Students who prioritize sleep are better able to cope with the stress that comes with being an active student.

“It’s a vicious circle where the more stressed you get, the less you sleep, and the less you sleep, the more stressed you get. And in the long term, that can lead to serious psychiatric problems,” says Pace-Schott.

In the worst case scenario, the combination of lack of sleep and stress can lead to mental health disorders such as depression, general anxiety disorder, and potentially even post-traumatic stress disorder.

But prioritizing sleep can create a positive feedback loop as well.

Establishing a sleep schedule and adequate sleep duration can improve your ability to cope with stress. Being active and productive will help you get more done throughout the day, which also reduces feelings of stress.

And the less stressed you feel during the day, the better you will sleep at night.

Tips for getting more sleep as a student

The key to getting a good night’s sleep is establishing healthy sleep habits, also known as sleep hygiene.

The first step is deciding to make sleep a priority.

Staying ahead of coursework and avoiding distractions and procrastination while you study is key to avoiding the need for late night study sessions. And prioritizing sleep may mean leaving a party early or choosing your social engagements carefully.

Yet the reward—feeling awake and alert the next morning—will reinforce that positive choice.

The next step is establishing healthy bedtime and daytime patterns to promote good quality sleep.

Pace-Schott offers the following tips on steps you can take to create healthy sleep hygiene:

Limit caffeine in close proximity to bed time. College students should also avoid alcohol intake, which disrupts quality sleep.
Avoid electronic screens (phone, laptop, tablet, desktop) within an hour of bedtime.
Engage in daily physical exercise, but avoid intense exercise within two hours of bedtime.
Establish a sleep schedule. Be as consistent as possible in your bedtime and rise time, and get exposure to morning sunlight.
Establish a “wind-down” routine prior to bedtime.
Limit use of bed for daily activities other than sleep (e.g., TV, work, eating)

Of course, college students living in dorms or other communal settings may find their sleep disturbed by circumstances beyond their control: a poor-quality mattress, inability to control the temperature of your bedroom, or noisy roommates, for example.

But taking these active steps to promote healthy sleep will, barring these other uncontrollable circumstances, help you fall asleep faster, stay asleep, and get a more restorative sleep.

And for students who are still not convinced of the importance of sleep, Pace-Schott says that personal observation is the best way to see the impact of healthy sleep habits.

“Keep a sleep diary for a week. Pay attention to your sleep in a structured way. And be sure to record how you felt during the day. This can really help you make the link between how you slept the night before and how you feel during the day. It’s amazing how much you will learn about your sleep and its impact on your life.”

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10 Benefits of Sleep

The benefits of sleep are many. Sleep plays a crucial role in tissue repair, hormone regulation, and overall health.

Getting enough sleep boosts brain power, improves weight management, and reduces stress and inflammation.

Most adults need between seven and nine hours of sleep per day. Getting less than six or seven hours of sleep can affect you the next day. Chronically missing out on sleep increases your risk of disease.

This article discusses 10 benefits of sleep. It explains how sleep is important for good health.

Strengthens Your Heart

John Fedele / Getty Images

During sleep, your body releases hormones. Some of them keep your heart and blood vessels healthy.

Lack of sleep deprives you of these hormones. That's associated with the following:

High blood pressure
Worse heart function
Over time, heart disease

This is an even bigger problem if you already have a heart condition.

Regulates Your Blood Sugar

Sleep helps regulate your metabolism. That's the way your body converts food to energy.

Sleep deprivation can cause many problems with metabolism, including fluctuating blood sugar levels .

This can be a problem if you have diabetes . It also raises your risk of developing type 2 diabetes .

Blood sugar extremes also affect your:

Energy levels
Mental function

Reduces Your Stress Levels

Sleep helps your mind and body relax and recover from your day. When you're sleep deprived, your body releases stress hormones.

Stress can make you react in ways that aren't productive. You may act out of fear or make rash decisions. Or you may be irritable.

A poor night's sleep can make you feel anxious. This may last until you finally get some much-needed rest.

Improving Sleep

Practicing relaxation techniques can help you fall asleep faster.

Decreases Inflammation

Sleep regulates your immune system. When you don't get enough, irregular immune system activity can cause inflammation.

You may not notice excess inflammation. But it can have an effect on your body.

Chronic inflammation damages structures and increases your risk of many health conditions. A few examples include:

Heart disease

Helps You Maintain a Healthy Weight

Research suggests that people who sleep less are more likely to be overweight or obese .

Poor sleep appears to disrupt the balance of ghrelin and leptin . Those are hormones that control appetite.

If you want to lose or maintain weight, don't forget that good sleep is part of the equation.

Improves Your Balance

Sleep helps you maintain your physical abilities. Studies show sleep deprivation leads to short-term balance problems.

That's called postural instability. It can lead to injuries and falls. Even mild instability can cause problems during sports or exercise.

Increases Your Energy and Alertness

A good night's sleep makes you feel energized and alert. This helps you focus and get things done.

It's easier to exercise when you're energetic and alert. So that's an indirect benefit of getting enough sleep.

Being engaged and active throughout your day feels good. And being more active all day makes another good night's sleep more likely.

Improves Your Memory

Sleep appears to play a big role in what's called memory consolidation.

During sleep, your brain makes connections. It links events, feelings, and sensory input to form memories.

Deep sleep is important for this. So more quality sleep can improve your memory.

Boosts Your Executive Functioning

Executive function involves complex thinking. That includes things like problem-solving, planning, and making decisions. It can also affect your alertness and memory.

Executive function helps you with work, school, social interactions, and more. One night of sleep deprivation can impair executive function the next day.

Repairs Your Tissues

While you sleep, your body works hard to repair damage. The damage can be from stress, ultraviolet rays, and other harmful things you're exposed to.

Your cells produce certain proteins while you sleep. They form the building blocks of cells. That lets cells repair the day's damage and keep you healthy.

While you sleep, your body is hard at work. It restores hormonal balance, repairs itself, and keeps the circulatory and immune systems functioning properly. Your brain forms and stores memories.

Getting adequate sleep—seven to nine hours a night—keeps your heart healthy, reduces stress, and helps keep blood sugar consistent. It also reduces stress, prevents inflammation, helps control weight, and is important for memory formation and clear thinking.

Quality sleep allows you to be energetic and alert. It allows you to exercise, work, learn, socialize, and do all the things you enjoy.

Bourdillon N, Jeanneret F, Nilchian M, Albertoni P, Ha P, Millet GP. Sleep deprivation deteriorates heart rate variability and photoplethysmography . Front Neurosci. 2021 Apr 8;15:642548. doi:10.3389/fnins.2021.642548

Tiwari R, Tam DNH, Shah J, Moriyama M, Varney J, Huy NT. Effects of sleep intervention on glucose control: A narrative review of clinical evidence . Prim Care Diabetes. 2021 Aug;15(4):635-641. doi:10.1016/j.pcd.2021.04.003

Johns Hopkins Medicine. Get off the blood glucose roller coaster .

Bishir M, Bhat A, Essa MM, et al. Sleep deprivation and neurological disorders . Biomed Res Int . 2020;2020:5764017. Published 2020 Nov 23. doi:10.1155/2020/5764017

Dashti HS, Scheer FA, Jacques PF, Lamon-Fava S, Ordovás JM. Short sleep duration and dietary intake: epidemiologic evidence, mechanisms, and health implications . Adv Nutr . 2015;6(6):648-659. Published 2015 Nov 13. doi:10.3945/an.115.008623

Ołpińska-Lischka M, Kujawa K, Maciaszek J. Differences in the effect of sleep deprivation on the postural stability among men and women . Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2021 Apr 5;18(7):3796. doi:10.3390/ijerph18073796

Liu XL, Ranganath C. Resurrected memories: Sleep-dependent memory consolidation saves memories from competition induced by retrieval practice. Psychon Bull Rev. 2021 Jun 25. doi:10.3758/s13423-021-01953-6

Pesoli M, Rucco R, Liparoti M, et al. A night of sleep deprivation alters brain connectivity and affects specific executive functions [published online ahead of print, 2021 Jul 10]. Neurol Sci . 2021;10.1007/s10072-021-05437-2. doi:10.1007/s10072-021-05437-2

By Mark Stibich, PhD Mark Stibich, PhD, FIDSA, is a behavior change expert with experience helping individuals make lasting lifestyle improvements.

Problem of Sleep Deprivation Cause and Effect Essay

Introduction.

What is Sleep Deprivation?

Causes of Sleep Deprivation

Effects of Sleep Deprivation

Managing Sleep Deprivation

Works cited.

The functioning of the human body is influenced by a number of factors, which are mainly determined by the health status of an individual. Oftentimes, people seek medication when the body deviates from its normal and usual functioning mechanisms. Through different activities and processes, the body is able to use energy and replenish itself. Sleeping is one of the activities that has a direct effect on the functioning of the body.

This sleep deprivation essay explores how the functioning of the human body is influenced by various factors, primarily determined by an individual’s health status. While most people do not understand the implications of sleep, human effectiveness solely depends on the amount of time dedicated to sleeping. However, for various reasons, people fail to get enough sleep daily, weekly, or on a regular basis.

What Is Sleep Deprivation?

This cause and effect of sleep deprivation essay defines sleep deprivation as a condition occurring among human beings when they fail to get enough sleep. Sleep deprivation is defined as a condition that occurs when human beings fail to get enough sleep. Many experts argue that sleep deficiency is widespread even though most people do not consider it to be a serious issue, which affects their (Gaine et al.). Sleep deprivation has become a major problem in the United States, with almost 47 million suffering from the condition (Wang and Xiaomin). This lack of sleep can lead to a variety of physical and mental health issues, impacting daily functioning and quality of life.

The present essay about sleep deprivation defines sleep deprivation as a condition that occurs among human beings when they fail to get enough sleep. Many experts argue that sleep deficiency is widespread even though most people do not consider it to be a serious issue that affects their lives. Sleep deprivation has become a major problem in the United States, with almost forty-seven million suffering from the condition (Wang and Xiaomin). Among other reasons, one may get insufficient sleep in a day as a result of various factors. Some people sleep at the wrong time due to busy daily schedules, while others have sleep disorders, which affect their sleeping patterns. The following segment of the paper discusses the causes of deprivation.

Sleep deprivation may occur as a result of factors that are not known to the patients. This is based on the fact that sleep deprivation may go beyond the number of hours one spends in bed. In some cases, the quality of sleep matters in determining the level of deprivation.

In this context, it is possible for one to be in bed for more than eight hours but suffer from the negative effects of sleep deprivation. Whilst this is the case, there are people who wake every morning feeling tired despite having spent a recommended number of hours in bed (Griggs et al.14367).

Sleep deprivation can be caused by medical conditions, which may include but are not limited to asthma, arthritis, muscle cramps, allergies, and muscular pain. These conditions have been classified by researchers as common medical conditions that largely contribute to most of the cases of sleep deprivation being witnessed in the United States.

Similarly, these medical conditions have a direct impact on not only the quality but also the time one takes in bed sleeping. It is worth noting that sometimes people are usually unconscious to realize that their sleep is not deep enough (Wang and Xiaomin). This also explains the reason why it is not easy for a person to recall any moment in life when he or she moved closer to waking up.

Treatment of cases like sleep apnea is important because it affects the quality of sleep without necessarily awakening the victim. This is because medical surveys have revealed fatal effects of sleep apnea, especially on the cardiovascular system. Besides these, one is likely to experience breathing difficulties caused by insufficient oxygen.

Even though the treatment of sleep deprivation is important, it has been found that some drugs used to treat patients may worsen the case or lead to poor quality of sleep. It is, therefore, necessary for the doctor to determine the best drugs to use. Discussions between doctors and victims are imperative in order to understand patients’ responses (Conroy et al. 185).

Sleep deprivation is also caused by sleep cycle disruptions, which interfere with the fourth stage of sleep. Oftentimes, these disruptions are described as night terrors, sleepwalking, and nightmares.

Though these disorders are known not to awaken a person completely, it is vital to note that they may disrupt the order of sleep cycles, forcing a person to move from the fourth stage to the first one. Victims of these disruptions require attention in order to take corrective measures.

In addition, there are known environmental factors which contribute to several cases of sleep deprivation. However, doctors argue that the impact on the environment is sometimes too minimal to be recognized by people who are affected by sleep deficiency (Gaine et al.). In other words, these factors affect the quality of sleep without necessarily arousing a person from sleep.

Common examples include extreme weather conditions, like high temperatures, noise, and poor quality of the mattress. As a result, they may contribute to a person’s awakening, depending on the intensity when one is sleeping.

Moreover, the impact of these factors may develop with time, thus affecting one’s quality of sleep. In addition, most of the environmental factors that contribute to sleep deprivation can be fixed easily without medical or professional skills. Nevertheless, the challenge is usually how to become aware of their existence.

Lastly, sleep deprivation is caused by stress and depression, which have been linked to other health disorders and complications. Together with some lifestyles in America, these factors are heavily contributing to sleep deficiency in most parts of the world. Even though they might not be acute enough to awaken an individual, their cumulative effects usually become significant.

There are countless stressors in the world that affect youths and adults. While young people could be concerned with passing exams, adults are normally preoccupied with pressure to attain certain goals in life. These conditions create a disturbed mind, which may affect a person’s ability to enjoy quality sleep.

Sleep deprivation has a host of negative effects which affect people of all ages. The commonest effect is stress. Most people who suffer from sleep deficiency are likely to experience depression frequently as compared to their counterparts who enjoy quality sleep (Conroy et al. 188). As a result, stress may lead to poor performance among students at school.

Research has revealed that students who spend very few hours in bed or experience disruptions during sleep are likely to register poor performance in their class assignments and final exams. Additionally, sleep deprivation causes inefficiency among employees.

For instance, drivers who experience this disorder are more likely to cause accidents as compared to those who are free from it (Griggs et al.14367). This is based on the fact that un-refreshed people have poor concentration and low mastery of their skills.

Besides stress and anxiety, sleep deprivation has a wide-range of health-related effects. For instance, medical experts argue that people who spend less than six hours in bed are likely to suffer from high blood pressure. Quality sleep gives the body an opportunity to rest by slowing down the rate at which it pumps blood to the rest of the body (Wang and Xiaomin).

Inadequate sleep implies that the heart has to work without its normal and recommended rest. Additionally, sleep deprivation is known to affect the immune system. People who experience this disorder end up with a weakened immune system, leaving the body prone to most illnesses. This reduced immune response accumulates and may become fatal with time.

Sleep paralysis is also a common effect of inadequate sleep. This is due to disruption of the sleep cycle. It primarily occurs when the body is aroused during the fourth stage of the sleep cycle. In this case, the body is left immobile as the mind regains consciousness. Due to this conflict, one may experience pain and hallucinations.

Based on the negative effects of sleep deprivation, there is a need to manage this disorder among Americans. Firstly, it is necessary for people to seek medical advice concerning certain factors which could be contributing to this condition, like stress and infections (Wang and Xiaomin).

Proper counseling is also vital in stabilizing a person’s mental capacity. Physical exercises are also known to relieve a person from stressful conditions, contributing to sleep deficiency. Lastly, it is essential to ensure that the environment is free from noise and has regulated weather conditions.

Sleep deprivation remains a major problem in America, affecting millions of people. As discussed above, sleep deprivation is caused by a host of factors, ranging from environmental to health-related issues. Moreover, sleep deficiency has countless effects, most of which may become fatal in cases where the disorder is chronic.

Conroy, Deirdre A., et al. “ The Effects of COVID-19 Stay-at-home Order on Sleep, Health, and Working Patterns: A Survey Study of US Health Care Workers. ” Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine , vol. 17, no. 2, Feb. 2021, pp. 185–91.

Gaine, Marie E., et al. “ Altered Hippocampal Transcriptome Dynamics Following Sleep Deprivation. ” Molecular Brain, vol. 14, no. 1, Aug. 2021.

Griggs, Stephanie, et al. “ Socioeconomic Deprivation, Sleep Duration, and Mental Health During the First Year of the COVID-19 Pandemic. ” International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, vol. 19, no. 21, Nov. 2022, p. 14367.

Wang, Jun, and Xiaomin Ren. “ Association Between Sleep Duration and Sleep Disorder Data From the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey and Stroke Among Adults in the United States .” Medical Science Monitor , vol. 28, June 2022.

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IvyPanda. (2024, February 3). Problem of Sleep Deprivation. https://ivypanda.com/essays/sleep-deprivation/

"Problem of Sleep Deprivation." IvyPanda , 3 Feb. 2024, ivypanda.com/essays/sleep-deprivation/.

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1. IvyPanda . "Problem of Sleep Deprivation." February 3, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/sleep-deprivation/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Problem of Sleep Deprivation." February 3, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/sleep-deprivation/.

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Get better sleep with these 5 tips from experts

FILE - This Nov. 11, 2013 file photo shows a bedroom built by Mike Spangler using some reclaimed materials, in Belle, W.Va. Nearly one-third of American adults don’t get the recommended seven to nine hours of sleep per night. Some of the major causes: Stress, anxiety and a culture that experts say is about productivity, not rest. (Craig Cunningham/Charleston Daily Mail via AP, file)

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Spending too many nights trying to fall asleep — or worrying there aren’t enough ZZZs in your day ? You’re not alone.

Nearly one-third of American adults say they don’t get the recommended seven to nine hours a night. Some of the major causes: Stress, anxiety and a culture that experts say is about productivity, not rest.

“You need to understand what your body needs and try your hardest to prioritize that and not just see sleep as kind of what’s left over of the day,” said Molly Atwood, an assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

Don’t fall for online fads or unproven methods to fall asleep and stay asleep. Instead, try these simple tricks recommended by sleep experts.

CREATE A BUFFER ZONE

Work-related stress is inevitable, and it can be hard to disconnect. Try creating a “buffer zone” between the end of your work day and your bedtime.

Experts suggest leaving career work and daily responsibilities alone about an hour before bed. Don’t check email, pay bills, do chores or scroll endlessly through social media. Instead, create a routine where you relax with a book, indulge in a hobby or spend time with loved ones.

“It goes back to the core value of mindfulness,” said Dr. Annise Wilson, an assistant professor of neurology and medicine at Baylor University. “Anything that helps to center you and just helps you focus and release a lot of that tension from the day will then help promote sleep.”

WATCH WHAT YOU EAT

Eating a large meal right before bedtime can disrupt your sleep, so try to grub in the early evening hours.

“I would say that eating a large meal is impactful simply because it’s like giving your body a really large job to do right before sleep at a time when things are supposed to be shutting down,” Atwood said.

But don’t go to bed super-hungry, either. Try snacks with protein or healthy fats, like cheese, almonds or peanut butter on whole grain bread.

AVOID CAFFEINE AND ALCOHOL

Having a nightcap or post-dinner espresso might feel relaxing, but it could lead to a long night.

While alcohol can help you fall asleep initially, it can disrupt your sleep cycle, reducing the quality of sleep and increasing the chances you’ll wake up more often in the middle of the night.

Caffeine is a stimulant that blocks adenosine , a chemical that contributes to the feeling of sleepiness — and it can take your body up to 10 hours to clear caffeine.

For these reasons, experts suggest finishing up your caffeinated or boozy beverages several hours before bed.

LIMIT TECHNOLOGY

Light from phones and computer screens can disrupt the circadian rhythm – or the internal clock that naturally wakes us up – by suppressing melatonin, which assists with sleep.

But you’ll need self-discipline to stop streaming or scrolling, said Dr. Dianne Augelli, an assistant professor of clinical medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine.

“TikTok doesn’t want you to stop,” Augelli said. “Only you can stop you, so you have to learn to put that stuff away.”

TALK TO YOUR DOCTOR

If nothing’s working and you’ve struggled to get a good night’s sleep for more than a month, experts say it’s time to go to a doctor. This is especially true if your sleepless nights are interfering with your work performance or your mood.

“It doesn’t matter how much relaxation you do. At a certain point, it’s not going to be effective if there’s a significant amount of stress,” Atwood said. “... It might involve some problem-solving to figure that out.”

In a story published April 23, 2024, about sleep tips, The Associated Press erroneously reported the name of an academic medical institution. It is Weill Cornell Medicine, not Weill Cornell Medical College.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

1 in 5 Americans are getting 5 hours or less of sleep per night, new Gallup poll says—a category that was ‘not really heard of in 1942’

A woman and her dog nap between rain showers at Schenley Park, Tuesday, May 4, 2021 in Pittsburgh.

If you’re feeling—YAWN—sleepy or tired while you read this and wish you could get some more shut-eye, you’re not alone. A majority of Americans say they would feel better if they could have more sleep , according to a new poll.

But in the U.S., the ethos of grinding and pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps is ubiquitous, both in the country’s beginnings and our current environment of always-on technology and work hours. And getting enough sleep can seem like a dream.

The Gallup poll , released Monday, found 57% of Americans say they would feel better if they could get more sleep, while only 42% say they are getting as much sleep as they need . That’s a first in Gallup polling since 2001; in 2013, when Americans were last asked, it was just about the reverse—56% saying they got the needed sleep and 43% saying they didn’t.

Younger women , under the age of 50, were especially likely to report they aren’t getting enough rest.

The poll also asked respondents to report how many hours of sleep they usually get per night: Only 26% said they got eight or more hours, which is around the amount that sleep experts say is recommended for health and mental well-being. Just over half, 53%, reported getting six to seven hours. And 20% said they got five hours or less, a jump from the 14% who reported getting the least amount of sleep in 2013.

(And just to make you feel even more tired, in 1942, the vast majority of Americans were sleeping more. Some 59% said they slept eight or more hours, while 33% said they slept six to seven hours. What even IS that?)

The reasons aren’t exactly clear

The poll doesn’t get into reasons WHY Americans aren’t getting the sleep they need, and since Gallup last asked the question in 2013, there’s no data breaking down the particular impact of the last four years and the pandemic era.

But what’s notable, says Sarah Fioroni, senior researcher at Gallup, is the shift in the last decade toward more Americans thinking they would benefit from more sleep and particularly the jump in the number of those saying they get five or less hours.

“That five hours or less category…was almost not really heard of in 1942,” Fioroni said. “There’s almost nobody that said they slept five hours or less.”

In modern American life, there also has been “this pervasive belief about how sleep was unnecessary—that it was this period of inactivity where little to nothing was actually happening and that took up time that could have been better used,” said Joseph Dzierzewski, vice president for research and scientific affairs at the National Sleep Foundation.

It’s only relatively recently that the importance of sleep to physical, mental and emotional health has started to percolate more in the general population, he said.

And there’s still a long way to go. For some Americans, like Justine Broughal, 31, a self-employed event planner with two small children, there simply aren’t enough hours in the day. So even though she recognizes the importance of sleep, it often comes in below other priorities like her 4-month-old son, who still wakes up throughout the night, or her 3-year-old daughter.

“I really treasure being able to spend time with (my children),” Broughal says. “Part of the benefit of being self-employed is that I get a more flexible schedule, but it’s definitely often at the expense of my own care.”

There’s a cultural backdrop to all this, too

So why are we awake all the time? One likely reason for Americans’ sleeplessness is cultural—a longstanding emphasis on industriousness and productivity.

Some of the context is much older than the shift documented in the poll. It includes the Protestants from European countries who colonized the country, said Claude Fischer, a professor of sociology at the graduate school of the University of California Berkeley. Their belief system included the idea that working hard and being rewarded with success was evidence of divine favor.

“It has been a core part of American culture for centuries,” he said. “You could make the argument that it…in the secularized form over the centuries becomes just a general principle that the morally correct person is somebody who doesn’t waste their time.”

Jennifer Sherman has seen that in action. In her research in rural American communities over the years, the sociology professor at Washington State University says a common theme among people she interviewed was the importance of having a solid work ethic. That applied not only to paid labor but unpaid labor as well, like making sure the house was clean.

A through line of American cultural mythology is the idea of being “individually responsible for creating our own destinies,” she said. “And that does suggest that if you’re wasting too much of your time…that you are responsible for your own failure.”

“The other side of the coin is a massive amount of disdain for people considered lazy,” she added.

Broughal says she thinks that as parents, her generation is able to let go of some of those expectations. “I prioritize…spending time with my kids, over keeping my house pristine,” she said.

But with two little ones to care for, she said, making peace with a messier house doesn’t mean more time to rest: “We’re spending family time until, you know, (my 3-year-old) goes to bed at eight and then we’re resetting the house, right?”

The tradeoffs of more sleep

While the poll only shows a broad shift over the past decade, living through the COVID-19 pandemic may have affected people’s sleep patterns. Also discussed in post-COVID life is “revenge bedtime procrastination,” in which people put off sleeping and instead scroll on social media or binge a show as a way of trying to handle stress.

Liz Meshel is familiar with that. The 30-year-old American is temporarily living in Bulgaria on a research grant, but also works a part-time job on U.S. hours to make ends meet.

On the nights when her work schedule stretches to 10 p.m., Meshel finds herself in a “revenge procrastination” cycle. She wants some time to herself to decompress before going to sleep and ends up sacrificing sleeping hours to make it happen.

“That applies to bedtime as well, where I’m like, well, I didn’t have any me time during the day, and it is now 10 p.m., so I am going to feel totally fine and justified watching X number of episodes of TV, spending this much time on Instagram, as my way to decompress,” she said. “Which obviously will always make the problem worse.”

For more on building healthy sleep habits:

Your boss is probably getting more sleep than you are, survey says. Here’s who catches more z’s than even CEOs, managers, and business owners
1 in 3 workers admit to regularly napping on the clock, survey says. Here’s why Gen Z and millennial men are the worst culprits
Your ultimate guide to getting a good night’s sleep
Going to bed at 9 p.m. every night could improve your health. Here’s how to see the benefits

Subscribe to Well Adjusted, our newsletter full of simple strategies to work smarter and live better, from the Fortune Well team. Sign up for free today.

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Is it possible to fall asleep in 10 seconds? Experts say yes — but there's a catch

Can you learn how to fall asleep in 10 seconds and should you even try? Three experts respond

Each week there seems to be a new sleep hack promising to show you how to fall asleep in 10 seconds flat. These methods always gain attention because so many of us are often searching for a quick sleep fix, but is it even possible to fall asleep that fast at night? And what does it mean if you can fall asleep in 10 seconds?

While you can boost your chances of falling asleep fast by creating an optimal bedroom environment, including keeping it cool, quiet and dark, and investing in the best mattress for your body, this doesn't guarantee you'll fall asleep fast. However, sleep techniques such as the Military Sleep Method can help you fall asleep faster at night if you practise them regularly.

But even so, 10 seconds seems like a stretch. We asked three sleep experts — Dr Nicola Cann of The Family Sleep Consultant , Dr Theresa Schnorbach for Emma Sleep , and Dr Neil Stanley of The Sleep Consultancy — to find out whether you can learn how to fall asleep in 10 seconds or whether it's a sign of something else.

How long does it normally take to fall asleep?

If you don't fall asleep within the first few minutes of your head hitting the pillow, the good news is that this is normal. "Anything under five minutes would ring alarm bells for me," says Dr Cann. "The transition between being awake and being asleep is a gradual process. It's not like switching off a light, even though it can feel that way."

The image shows a woman sleeping in bed with her window open in Lüften’, a German sleep hack

So how long should it take you to fall asleep? Dr Neil Stanley says a healthy adult will fall asleep within seven to 12 minutes, while Dr Schnorbach says it's normal for sleep latency (the time it takes to fall asleep) to take even longer: "Sleep latency can vary from person to person, but generally speaking a sleep onset latency of 15 to 30 minutes indicates good sleep quality."

Can you really learn how to fall asleep in 10 seconds?

Falling asleep in 10 seconds is likely a sign of sleep deprivation, which can have serious health consequences Dr Theresa Schnorbach

"There is no method, short of drinking till you pass out, that will put you to sleep in 10 seconds," says Dr Stanley. "It is neither necessary or desirable to need to fall asleep faster than that as to do so goes against the natural processes required by the brain and body."

While Dr Cann says that it is possible to fall asleep within 10 seconds, she says it usually has nothing to do with a carefully followed sleep technique. "It is possible to fall asleep within 10 seconds but it's certainly not something to aim for," says the sleep psychologist. "In fact, if you're falling asleep within 10 seconds then you're probably significantly sleep deprived."

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Dr Schnorbach agrees: "Falling asleep in 10 seconds is likely a sign of sleep deprivation, which can have very serious health consequences in the long run, so if you're concerned by chronic sleep issues, you should always consult a medical professional."

Does the Military Sleep Method help you fall asleep in 10 seconds?

The Military Sleep Method was originally created to help US soldiers fall asleep quickly in combat conditions. Many people use it to fall asleep fast, but usually within two or a few minutes.

Here's how The Military Sleep Method works:

1. Relax your face muscles, drop your shoulders, and keep your arms loose by your sides, with relaxed fingers and hands. 2. Exhale to relax your chest 3. Relax muscles in legs and feet 4. Imagine a relaxing, warm sensation washing over your body 5. Inhale and exhale while clearing your mind of all thoughts 6. Imagine one of the following scenarios: You’re lying on your back in a canoe of a tranquil lake below a clear blue sky OR you're lying in a black velvet hammock in a pitch black room 7. Repeat the words “don’t think” in your head over and over for 10 seconds if you feel other thoughts creeping back into your mind.

A woman relaxeson a boat on a calm lake under clear blue sky

"Many 'sleep hacks' are really just a repackaging of things we already know to work," says Dr Cann. "The Military Method, for example, is basically progressive relaxation and mindfulness (body scanning), which are both evidence-based approaches that have been around for ages."

Falling asleep is a complex process involving numerous physical and mental actions, all of which need time to occur Dr Neil Stanley

Dr Schnorbach compares the method to meditation because it involves deep breathing and consciously relaxing your body, which in turn enables you to relax to fall asleep faster. "Melatonin (a sleep-inducing hormone) also increases while chemicals associated with stress such as adrenaline, norepinephrine and cortisol are reduced," she explains.

The psychologist also explains how the method incorporates the sleep visualization method , which includes picturing relaxing images to take your mind off sleep-inhibiting thoughts. "This can be seen as a kind of imaginative distraction technique whereby the aim is to distract as much cognitive capacity as possible so that it is not being used worrying about going to bed," she tells us. "Studies have shown this can both increase sleep quality and help you fall asleep faster."

Can any methods help you fall asleep in 10 seconds?

Some sources (such as Healthline ) claim that the Military Sleep Method can teach you how to fall asleep in 10 seconds with enough practice. However, Dr Stanley isn't convinced and believes more research is needed.

"The Military Sleep Method refers to something that was used in a very small group of people for a short period in 1943," he explains. "Falling asleep is a complex process involving numerous physical and mental actions, all of which need time to occur."

Frances Daniels is a Sleep Staff Writer at Tom's Guide and her role includes covering all mattress and sleep news, in addition to mattress reviews and buyer's guides, plus sleep accessories such as pillows and mattress toppers. Frances is a PPA-accredited journalist and is hugely interested in the relationship between good sleep and overall health. When not writing about mattresses and sleep for Tom's Guide, Frances enjoys writing about women's issues, health and wellbeing, the environment, and her native Wales.

Sleep for longer — the 3 best tips I've learned for getting more sleep at night

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Importance of Sleep Essay
Importance of Sleep Essay: ... Benefits of Good Sleep. It is a lesser-known fact that sleeping well and sleeping a fair amount of hours when we are supposed to supplements the maintenance of our weight - this means that if you sleep better, you're less likely to put on more weight! This is corroborated because those who sleep more need ...
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Sleep is essential for a person's health and wellbeing, according to the National Sleep Foundation (NSF). Yet millions of people do not get enough sleep and many suffer from lack of sleep. For example, surveys conducted by the NSF (1999-2004) reveal that at least 40 million Americans suffer from over 70 different sleep disorders and 60 percent of adults report having sleep problems a few ...
Good Sleep for Good Health
There's more to good sleep than just the hours spent in bed, says Dr. Marishka Brown, a sleep expert at NIH. "Healthy sleep encompasses three major things," she explains. "One is how much sleep you get. Another is sleep quality—that you get uninterrupted and refreshing sleep. The last is a consistent sleep schedule.".
Why Do We Need Sleep?
Why Getting Enough Sleep Is Important. Sleep is an essential function that allows your body and mind to recharge, leaving you refreshed and alert when you wake up. Healthy sleep also helps the body remain healthy and stave off diseases. Without enough sleep, the brain cannot function properly, impairing your abilities to concentrate, think ...
Sleep is essential to health: an American Academy of Sleep Medicine
INTRODUCTION. Sleep is vital for health and well-being in children, adolescents, and adults. 1-3 Healthy sleep is important for cognitive functioning, mood, mental health, and cardiovascular, cerebrovascular, and metabolic health. 4 Adequate quantity and quality of sleep also play a role in reducing the risk of accidents and injuries caused by sleepiness and fatigue, including workplace ...
What Is Healthy Sleep?
Updated February 2, 2024. Lucy Bryan Contributing Writer. Dr. Dustin Cotliar Sleep Medicine Physician. Fact-Checked. Up-to-Date. Healthy sleep involves getting enough uninterrupted sleep on a regular basis. When you're getting good sleep, it's easy to take this vital body function for granted.
The Extraordinary Importance of Sleep
Impact on Attention, Cognition, and Mood. While scientists are still working to identify and clarify all of the functions of sleep, 12 decades of studies—many of which have used the method of disrupting sleep and examining the consequences—have confirmed that sleep is necessary for our healthy functioning and even survival. "We know for sure that sleep serves multiple functions," says ...
How to Get a Better Night's Sleep
Step 1: Set a goal for your wake-up time. Step 2: Move your current wake-up time by 20 minutes each day. For example, if you regularly rise at 8 a.m., but really want to get moving at 6 a.m., set ...
Why Sleep Matters: Benefits of Sleep
As with eating well, good sleep is a staple of optimal health. While we may not often think about why we sleep, most of us acknowledge at some level that sleep makes us feel better. We feel more alert, more energetic, happier, and better able to function following a good night of sleep. ... This essay outlines several current theories of why we ...
PDF Pathways to Sleep I: An Introduction
us) about sleep and provide guidance toward getting a good night of sleep. The first of these essays introduces the topic of sleep and provides important general information about the nature of sleep. The next four essays provide information about the pathways associated with the four components of high-quality sleep.
Why a Good Night's Sleep Is Important for Your Health
Sleep Reduces Stress. Sleep is a powerful stress reliever. It improves concentration, regulates mood, and sharpens judgment and decision-making. A lack of sleep not only reduces mental clarity but the ability to cope with stressful situations. This is due, in part, to changes in cortisol levels.
Why is sleep important? 9 reasons for getting a good night's rest
4. Greater athletic performance. Adults need between 7 and 9 hours of sleep a night, but recent studies have suggested that athletes may need more. Sleep is important for athletes and people ...
How Sleep Works
Sleep plays a vital role in good health and well-being throughout your life. The way you feel while you are awake depends in part on what happens while you are sleeping. During sleep, your body is working to support healthy brain function and maintain your physical health. In children and teens, sleep also helps support growth and development.
Why You Should Make a Good Night's Sleep a Priority
The key to getting a good night's sleep is establishing healthy sleep habits, also known as sleep hygiene. The first step is deciding to make sleep a priority. Staying ahead of coursework and avoiding distractions and procrastination while you study is key to avoiding the need for late night study sessions. And prioritizing sleep may mean ...
A Good Night's Sleep: How to Sleep Through the Night
A good night's sleep should leave you feeling refreshed, alert, and ready to begin the day. If you happen to wake from a deep sleep, you may need a few minutes to wake up properly. But overall, people with healthy sleep patterns find it easy to fall asleep and experience minimal nighttime awakenings. Quality sleep is not just about the hours ...
Sleep Matters
According to Dr. Prichard, there are three foundations of good sleep. First, sleep should be sufficient and needs vary by age. As a college student that means 7-9 hours of sleep a night and ideally you do not need an alarm clock to wake up. Second, sleep should be consistent, so the time you wake up and the time you go to bed should not vary by ...
10 Health Benefits of Sleep
Print. The benefits of sleep are many. Sleep plays a crucial role in tissue repair, hormone regulation, and overall health. Getting enough sleep boosts brain power, improves weight management, and reduces stress and inflammation. Most adults need between seven and nine hours of sleep per day. Getting less than six or seven hours of sleep can ...
Essay On Good Night Sleep
Essay On Good Night Sleep. 1378 Words6 Pages. Adults between the age of 18 and 64 should sleep from 7 to 9 hours per night. Sleep helps your brain to work properly and prepare for the next day as well as making it easier for you to learn and remember new information. Whether you are learning new information in class or driving a car or how to ...
What Happens When You Don't Get Enough Sleep?
Lack of alertness. Even missing as little as 1.5 hours can have an impact on how you feel. Excessive daytime sleepiness. It can make you very sleepy and tired during the day. Impaired memory. Lack ...
127 Sleep Topics for Research Papers and Essays
Sleep Habits and Its Impact on Human Mind Activity. The researchers paid attention to the quality of sleep and mentioned such characteristics as the time of going to bed and waking up, the duration, and quality of sleep. We will write. a custom essay specifically for you by our professional experts.
The Art of Sleep: Cultivating Healthy Sleeping Habits
Sleep, an integral part of the human experience, is an essential aspect of our physical and mental well-being. Each individual's need for sleep varies, but it is commonly acknowledged that around 8 hours of sleep per night is optimal for most. This essay explores the significance of sleep, addressing common sleep issues, and providing practical ...
Problem of Sleep Deprivation
Effects of Sleep Deprivation. Sleep deprivation has a host of negative effects which affect people of all ages. The commonest effect is stress. Most people who suffer from sleep deficiency are likely to experience depression frequently as compared to their counterparts who enjoy quality sleep (Conroy et al. 188).
Do you sleep well? Are you insomniac? Do you take naps? The benefits of
The benefits of 'good' sleep, and how to get it. If you're not a good sleeper, you must be an insomniac, a napper, or a weekend catch-up sleeper. That's according to a new study;
Get better sleep with these 5 tips from experts
Try creating a "buffer zone" between the end of your work day and your bedtime. Experts suggest leaving career work and daily responsibilities alone about an hour before bed. Don't check email, pay bills, do chores or scroll endlessly through social media. Instead, create a routine where you relax with a book, indulge in a hobby or spend ...
Can School Performance Be Improved With Good Sleep?
Sleep needs vary by age. For school-age children ages 6-12 years, 9-11 total hours of sleep per day is recommended. For teens, the recommended amount of sleep is 8-10 hours per day. Unfortunately, researchers have found that many children in the United States are failing to get the sleep they need.
1 in 5 Americans are getting 5 hours or less of sleep per ...
1 in 5 Americans are getting 5 hours or less of sleep per night, new Gallup poll says—a category that was 'not really heard of in 1942'. A woman and her dog nap between rain showers at ...
Is it possible to fall asleep in 10 seconds? Experts say yes
Falling asleep in 10 seconds is likely a sign of sleep deprivation, which can have serious health consequences. Dr Theresa Schnorbach. "There is no method, short of drinking till you pass out ...

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Good Sleep for Good Health

Sleep for Repair

Sleep Myths and Truths

Sleep Disorders

Getting Better Sleep

Related Stories

The Extraordinary Importance of Sleep

Impact on Attention, Cognition, and Mood

Aiming for the Sweet Spot

Interindividual Differences in Vulnerability to Sleep Loss

Addressing Sleep Disorders

Treating Insomnia: The Value of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

Improving Clinical Research

How Much Sleep Do You Really Need?

How to Get a Better Night’s Sleep

The Magic Number

Ask Yourself: ‘Are You Sleepy?’

Keep a Sleep Diary

Take a Vacation From Your Alarm Clock

Take the Quiz

How to Become a Morning Person

How to Wake Up

Sleep and Illness

The Tired Brain

Toxins in the Attic

Driving While Tired

Sleep and Weight Gain

Manage Your Clock

Get Studied

What Happens During a Sleep Study

Medications

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

How Sleep Works Why Is Sleep Important?

Heart and circulatory system

Hormones and sleep

Metabolism and sleep

Respiratory and immune systems

Lung Health Basics: Sleep

Problems with thinking and memory

Why You Should Make a Good Night’s Sleep a Priority

The sleep you need versus the sleep you get

Consequences of sleep deprivation

Importance of sleep for high school and college students

Tips for getting more sleep as a student

What You Need to Know About Pre-College Program Activities

Harvard Division of Continuing Education

10 Benefits of Sleep

Strengthens Your Heart

Regulates Your Blood Sugar

Reduces Your Stress Levels

Improving Sleep

Decreases Inflammation

Helps You Maintain a Healthy Weight

Improves Your Balance

Increases Your Energy and Alertness

Improves Your Memory

Boosts Your Executive Functioning

Repairs Your Tissues

Problem of Sleep Deprivation Cause and Effect Essay

Causes of Sleep Deprivation

Managing Sleep Deprivation

What Is Sleep Deprivation?

Get better sleep with these 5 tips from experts

CREATE A BUFFER ZONE

WATCH WHAT YOU EAT

AVOID CAFFEINE AND ALCOHOL

LIMIT TECHNOLOGY

TALK TO YOUR DOCTOR

1 in 5 Americans are getting 5 hours or less of sleep per night, new Gallup poll says—a category that was ‘not really heard of in 1942’

The reasons aren’t exactly clear

There’s a cultural backdrop to all this, too

The tradeoffs of more sleep

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Is it possible to fall asleep in 10 seconds? Experts say yes — but there's a catch

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