Sleep: Do you really need eight hours of shuteye?
Every so often we hear of high-ranking politicians or CEOs claiming to get by on very little sleep — some as little as three hours
Every so often we hear of high-ranking politicians or CEOs claiming to get by on very little sleep — some as little as three hours a night. If they're not natural short sleepers, chances are they're heading for trouble. I've been having trouble sleeping — for as long as forever. Sometimes it's just a feeling. Other times, it's a fact (I know because my watch tells me). But then my watch may be part of the problem. It's constantly reminding me to get to bed on time and accosting me with poor sleep scores. It drives my anxiety through the roof, my heart races and I feel like I can't sleep. But then I still feel fine the next day. Weird. "When you're sleep deprived, you have poor judgment," said Catia Reis, a sleep researcher at the University of Lisbon, when we spoke. That might explain my predicament. Because even when I feel fine during the week, I oversleep at the weekend, which is a sure sign of sleep debt, she said. Reis has studied a variety of sleep-related conditions, including the effects of jet lag and sleep deprivation among athletes. One investigation compared levels of sleepiness among patients with sleep apnea — a condition where you stop breathing intermittently through the night — and shift workers, who work against their natural, circadian rhythm. That's our inner clock that tells us when we're wakeful or sleepy. She compared the results from both subjective assessments made by participants and objective, clinical tests, and found a "mismatch" in people's ability to assess their own levels of sleepiness the more they were exposed to that very thing: sleepiness. Basically, the brain stops working. And that should be concerning, given that the brain plays a central role in sleep.
Sleep or die When we sleep, the body performs several restorative functions: It removes toxins we have ingested through food or the atmosphere, generates new energy, and is essential for our learning and memory. "Sleep involves many parts of the brain," said Ying-Hui Fu, a sleep researcher at the University of California San Franscisco. "Almost every disease of the brain, including neurological and psychiatric, [can be linked to] sleep problems." On average, people need about 7.5-8.5 hours' sleep per night. But every so often we hear about people in demanding jobs, usually politicians, boasting — or claiming credibility — by saying they rarely sleep more than a few hours; like they're ALWAYS WORKING FOR THE PEOPLE. Most recently, it was Japan's Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi who reminded us she's slept between zero and three hours per night while in office. As a former heavy metal drummer, you might expect a certain level of stamina from the Japanese PM. But while voluntary, habitual (or trained) sleep deprivation — if that's what it is in Takaichi's case — may be an impressive sleep-work-no-life-balance ethic, it's not a good, long-term strategy. In the best-case scenario, a long-term "sleep debt" can cause your body to accumulate toxins, risking heart or brain disease. In the worst-case scenario, it can be fatal. Why sleep is so important for your immune system To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video "There are only two things more important than sleep for our total health," Fu told DW. "One is air. If we don't have air, we die in a few minutes. The other is water. If we don't have water, we die in a few days.
The BriefWire