Are You Cutting Back On Sleep Too Much?

Do you get enough sleep? Chances are you don’t Many people
living in modern industrial societies suffer from a chronic, and
worsening sleep deficit
Until a few decades ago, most people lived lives so very
different from ours that we would scarcely recognize them Until
fairly recently in human history the majority of people lived in
small villages or on farms, not in big cities There were no
electric lights
There weren’t any faxes or e-mails There was no Internet, and
no television Once the sun went down, most of the day’s
activities came to an end
People worked very hard physically, and only a very small
minority had what we would call “white collar” jobs And most
people, on average, slept nine to nine and a half hours each
night
For most of us today, an average of nine hours sleep each night
is an impossible dream In our very busy schedules, something
has to give, and quite often the choice many of us are making is
to cut back on our hours of sleep
If you listen to, or read some of the popular current guides to
success, you will usually be instructed to work hard, play hard,
study hard, be more outgoing, and gain every advantage you can
The struggle to the top can be ruthless Why, even the struggle
to stay where you are and not to lose your place can be ruthless
Where do many of these success guides and gurus tell you to cut
back? Why, on your hours of sleep They’ll tell you that
sleeping more than five or six hours a night is a waste of time
They’ll tell you that the world is moving ahead while you are
dozing, and that you’ll never catch up if you indulge your
desire to sleep If you snooze, you lose!
They’ll tell you that you don’t really need those extra two or
three hours of sleep each night That it’s just a bad habit
you’ve developed That it’s self-indulgent That a full night’s
sleep is the booby prize for losers in the game of life
Unfortunately, this advice goes against thousand of years of
human biology
It’s true that some of us really do need only five or six hours
of sleep each night, but those people are in a minority Most of
us require seven, eight, or even more hours of good quality
sleep every night in order to function at our best
intellectually, physically and emotionally
In sleep deprivation experiments conducted on volunteers, it has
been found that even a few days of sleep loss produce a marked
negative effect on a person’s mental abilities It becomes much
harder to focus mentally and to process information
Decisions take longer to make, and are of poorer quality
Learning and remembering new information becomes more difficult,
and it becomes harder to recall information that was previously
learned Creativity declines, while mistakes increase
A person who hasn’t had enough restorative sleep will have
difficulty handling technical machinery In addition, lack of
sleep causes emotional impairment and difficulty with mental
processing As people become more sleep deprived, they may
experience more depression and mood swings Tempers flare more
often, and sleep deprived people become less cooperative with
others
Lack of sufficient sleep is believed to have contributed to many
well-known accidents, such as the explosion of the Challenger
space shuttle, the near meltdown at Three Mile Island, and the
nuclear disaster at Chernobyl It is believed that lack of sleep
contributed to poor decision making in each of these incidents,
with disastrous results
If you add to these examples the many hundreds of thousands of
other accidents every year caused by sleep deprivation, it
becomes clear that cutting back on our sleep may not really be
the solution for greater productivity we are looking for
If you are studying for important exams, you will be better off
getting sufficient sleep the night before, rather than spending
the whole night desperately trying to cram more information into
your head
Your brain uses its sleeping hours to process the information of
the day and to consolidate new memories Cutting back on sleep
in order to study instead will interfere with this process
How can you tell if you are getting enough sleep? The ideal
amount varies from person to person, and it is not always the
same
Ask yourself: When you wake up, do you feel refreshed, or is
your body longing for more sleep? Do you rely on a lot of coffee
to get you through the day?
If you are tired a lot of the time, try going to bed earlier,
and sleeping longer
You may find that getting more sleep actually boosts your
productivity and you will feel a lot better!

Tags | biology, collar, desire, faxes, guides, habit, history, human, impossible, industrial, losers, minority, result, sleep, societies