A healthy lifestyle includes adequate daily sleep. Reduce your health risk by getting the recommended amount of sleep. Here’s information to get you started.

Loss of sleep affects virtually all physiological functions. Sleep loss causes problems with:

• memory and attention,
• complex thought,
• motor responses to stimuli,
• performance in school or on the job, and
• controlling emotions,
• thermoregulation
• increasing the risk for various physical and mental disorders,
• personal safety on the road.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has estimated that approximately 100,000 motor vehicle crashes each year result from a driver’s drowsiness or fatigue while at the wheel. Driving at night or in the early to mid afternoon increases the risk of a crash because those are times that our biological clocks make us sleepy. Drowsy driving impairs a driver’s reaction time, vigilance, and ability to make sound judgments. Many adolescents are chronically sleep-deprived and hence at high risk of drowsy-driving crashes. In one large study of fall-asleep crashes, over 50 percent occurred with a driver 25 years old or younger.

Sleepless in America?

• About 30 to 40 percent of adults indicate some degree of sleep loss within any given year, about 10 to 15 percent indicate that their sleep loss is chronic or severe.
• About 25% of American children aged 1 – 5 have a sleep disturbance
• Adolescents and shift workers are at very high risk of problem sleepiness due to sleep deprivation and the desynchronized timing of sleep and wakefulness
• More than half of Americans aged 65 and older have a sleep problem
• Disturbed sleep is among the reasons most frequently cited by caretakers for placing their care recipient in an institution.
• An estimated 250,000 Americans suffer from narcolepsy
• In addition, millions of Americans experience problems sleeping because of undiagnosed sleep disorders or sleep deprivation.
• It’s estimated that nearly 80 million Americans will have a sleep problem by the year 2010 and 100 million will have one by the year 2050.

Did you know? Studies show that adolescents experience a delay in the circadian timing system that results in a tendency for them to stay up later and sleep in later.

What are some of the causes of sleeplessness?

Problems with sleep can be due to lifestyle choices and can result in problem sleepiness—that is, feeling sleepy at inappropriate times. Environmental noise, temperature changes, changes in sleeping surroundings, and other factors may affect our ability to get sufficient restful sleep. Short-term problem sleepiness may be corrected by getting additional sleep to overcome the sleep deficit. In other cases, problem sleepiness may indicate a sleep disorder requiring medical intervention. Alcohol abuse can cause or exacerbate sleep disorders by disrupting the sequence and duration of sleep states. Alcohol does not promote good sleep, and consuming alcohol in the evening can also exacerbate sleep apnea problems.

More than 70 sleep disorders have been described.

Take our quiz: What Do You Know About Sleep?

Resources:

Sleep Diary for primary grade use.
http://www.sleepfoundation.org/children/children_sleep_diary.pdf

Star Sleeper educational materials, (Grade 3)
http://starsleep.nhlbi.nih.gov.

Teacher’s Guide: Information about Sleep. NIH.
http://osedev.od.nih.gov/supplements/nih3/sleep/guide/info-sleep.htm

NIH Curriculum Supplement Series, Grades 9-12.
http://osedev.od.nih.gov/supplements/nih3/sleep/default.htm

NIH Sleep Research.
www.nhlbi.nih.gov/sleep

Sleep Apnea video.
http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/about/ncsdr/patpub/psas/video/apnea.mov