You Are Getting Very Sleepy

Does it annoy you to hear about people who claim to need only five hours of sleep a night? It does me. Margot Adler's story on sleep deprivation (NPR's Morning Edition today, January 17) put those claims in a new perspective.

Americans' number of sleep hours per night has decreased significantly in the last 50 years, from an average of over 8 hours to somewhere between 6 and 7. As the story pointed out, this was before the advent of post-midnight television, let alone distractions like the Interweb. So it doesn't seem too likely that we've physically changed to need less sleep during that time, but rather that external factors make us feel like we need to be awake more hours of the day.

What are the long-term health impacts of that decrease? One of the experts quoted in the story drew a parallel with the change in our thinking about smoking as a public health issue -- she foresees a total shift in public awareness, maybe even law suits against sleep-deprived drivers who cause accidents. And if it's proven that sleep deprivation causes health problems, such as heart disease, we may all end up with warning labels on our beds.

The story pointed out how it's become a badge of honor in our productivity-crazed society to go with less sleep, to lord it over others about how little sleep one needs. And of course the caffeine industry loves all of this.

I'm not sure how much sleep I need exactly, but it's somewhere around 7.5 or 8 hours. According to sleep experts, if you lie down in mid to late morning or around 5:00 p.m. and you fall asleep within minutes, you're sleep deprived. Our bodies are not made to sleep at those times -- they should be at peak awakeness.

Can't help yawning as I write this. Guess it's time to go to bed.