You may have heard the expression ‘sleep deprivation is the new smoking’ and if you haven’t then you’re welcome, because it’s real and it increasingly seems to be getting serious.
In fact, the last few months have seen the conversation around sleep deprivation ramp up as research and experts have revealed that we’re suffering a ‘sleep loss epidemic’ that is having lasting and damaging repercussions on our health.
Matthew Walker, a leading neuroscientist, (an actual) sleep scientist, and the author of Why We Sleep is one of the key figures behind the campaign to change the culture around sleep and create a greater awareness of the serious implications it has to be so chronically underslept.
And some of the research published in his book is enough to have you go straight to bed now.
Two-thirds of adults in developed countries fail to get the World Health Organisation’s recommended 8 hours sleep and an adult sleeping 6.75 hours a night is predicted to only live into their 60s without the aid of medication. Adults aged 45 years or over who sleep around 6 hours a night are 200% more likely to have a stroke or heart attack. And sleep deprivation was also shown to lower sperm count by 29% among men.
If the statistics are shocking then what’s still more shocking is the reason why this isn’t more widely known or felt. It comes down to the way we’ve turned sleep deprivation into something that has cultural cachet, as Walker theorises in his book. We live in an age where being exhausted and hyper productive is the mark of a good worker and where sleep is almost associated with laziness Walker suggests.
So what to do? In Why We Sleep Walker suggests we begin to deal with sleep much the same way we talk about going to the gym or eating vegetables – something that is commonsense good for you. But he doesn’t leave it all at the door of individuals and actually argues that schools should start later and work places should begin to have a policy of rewarding workers who sleep.
Treating sleep as a preventative medicine is the end goal and one can see why.
