Editors' Note: This is a repeat of a series published in December and January.
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UPI surveyed 71 specialists for a 7-part series of articles examining the consequences and costs of the industrialized world's nightmarish sleep debt and ways to turn around the troublesome trend. Part 3 describes what causes, who risks and how to pay off the sleep debt.
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If you're one of the 56 million sleep-deprived Americans, you can blame Thomas Edison and, perhaps, your parents.
With artificial lighting, spawned of the American inventor's incandescent bulb, and industrialization, agrarian societies rising and setting with the sun gave way to cities that never sleep -- and individuals that rarely rest.
The slumber debt continues to accrue, a United Press International survey of specialists has found.
Some experts think the repayment plan must begin at birth. Babies taught healthy sleep habits will be less likely as adults to face slumber deficits that can impair alertness, performance, memory and health, they reason.
"It appears that we have a feedback cycle for poor lifestyle," said Dr. Susanna McColley, division head of pulmonary medicine at Children's Memorial Medical Center in Chicago.
As industrialization took the strain out of procuring food, doing laundry and washing dishes, it also removed opportunities for burning calories and stimulating slumber.
"Physical activity promotes sound sleep, and poor or inadequate sleep appears to be associated with obesity," explained McColley.
The digital revolution further subdued the call to slumber by promoting an extended and sedentary workday.
"(Sleep deprivation) has increased due to lifestyle choices, the fast pace of the electronic/information age and the need to soak in all the information," noted Phyllis Zee, professor of neurology at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. "Although companies are downsizing, overall productivity has increased -- people who have jobs are working harder and longer hours."
To fight off sleepiness, the night owls are following marketers' advice to wake up and smell the coffee.
"The use of caffeine (is) a symptom of our sleep-deprived society," Zee observed. "We are self-medicating!"
Trouble is, excessive caffeine intake, along with alcohol consumption and inadequate physical exercise -- two other signs of the times -- incite sleeplessness, scientists pointed out.
Modern-day forces work equally hard against youngsters getting the zzzs they need. Studies of children and adolescents have documented how academic demands, social pressures and after-school jobs have squeezed slumber off the top-priority schedule.
"In addition, television and Internet appear to play a major role in limiting our leisure and sleep time," said psychologist Avi Sadeh of Tel Aviv University in Israel. "It has been shown that children who have a TV set in their room sleep less than those who don't."
A litany of factors contributes to the Western world's sleepless state: stress; disrupted schedules; medications; drugs; obesity; even poor-sleeping bed partners, noted Matthew Walker, instructor of psychiatry at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School in Boston.
The National Sleep Foundation reports adults now average fewer than 7 hours of sleep during the workweek, with 33 percent of them getting less than 6.5 hours.
Adolescents, with their shifting biological rhythms that push up their natural sleep schedule, are particularly prone to give short shrift to shut-eye. Just as they are settling into their deep morning sleep, it is time to wake up.
"There is much evidence suggesting, with puberty, children tend to shift their sleep phase to later hours, and, if required to wake up for school, they accumulate a sleep deficit, and many of them are chronically sleep-deprived," Sadeh told UPI.
The discrepancy has prompted officials in several educational systems to consider later start times for the high-school day.
Shift workers experience a similar disruption of circadian rhythms, with similar consequences.
Other sleep-troubled groups include: post-menopausal women; the overweight and obese; individuals with such chronic diseases as asthma or pain; parents with small children, and animal owners who let their pets spend the night, said Dr. Anne McTiernan, author of "Breast Fitness: An Optimal Exercise and Health Plan for Reducing Your Risk of Breast Cancer" (2000, St. Martin's Press) and member of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle.
In a study of 300 patients, Dr. John Shepard, medical director of the Mayo Clinic Sleep Disorders Center in Rochester, Minn., found 22 percent shared their bed with their cat or dog. Of these, 53 percent admitted to nightly sleep disruptions, perhaps due to snoring, reported in 21 percent of the canines and 7 percent of the felines. The quality of slumber depends on the light, temperature, humidity, movement and sound in the room, Shepard noted.
Seniors -- prone to illness, pestered by disorders such as apnea and restless legs syndrome and paced by a degenerating biological clock -- have sleep troubles all their own.
"When people grow old, their sleep needs decrease, their sleep is more fragmented, and they tend to sleep more during daytime in addition to their nocturnal sleep," Sadeh remarked. "However, many elderly people, particularly in special homes, are expected to sleep 'like babies,' and the result is that they get excessive sleep medication to make them sleep, sometimes much more then they need."
For most groups, psychological stress is the primary cause of short-term sleep problems, said Shelley Tworoger of the Fred Hutchinson center.
"However, certain medications (such as decongestants or steroids), shift work, jet lag, and working long hours or multiple jobs are also important contributors to poor sleep habits," McTiernan added.
Some 88 sleep disorders, such as insomnia, leave millions of would-be-sleepers tossing and turning.
A portion of these disturbances begin in infancy, said Dr. Marc Weissbluth, professor of clinical pediatrics at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern and author of "Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child" (1987, Random House).
"Babies who don't sleep well turn into middle-age adults and elderly who don't sleep well," said Weissbluth, who also wrote, "Your Fussy Baby: How to Soothe Your Newborn" (2003, Random House). "Adults don't sleep well because they never learned how to sleep as children because their parents didn't teach them."
In fact, the message about sleep most caregivers pass on to their youngsters is one better left unsaid, said Dr. Rafael Pelayo, a Stanford University neurologist who specializes in the relatively new medical field of sleep disorders.
"Children model the parents' attitudes about sleep, and most parents give the wrong message that sleep can be avoided," Pelayo said in a telephone interview. "We send the message that sleep is something bad; if the child misbehaves, we send him to bed early, but if he's good, we let him stay up."
It should be just the opposite, with a chance to get under the covers offered as a reward, not a punishment, he advised.
With the average sleep time slashed by 20 percent in the past 100 years, it might be time to wake up to the consequences of a nation that refuses to close its eyes, scientists said.
"The single, overarching, most important thing is to give sleep a higher priority than many, many other things, particularly on a daily basis," stressed Dr. William Dement, professor of psychiatry and founder of the Stanford Sleep Disorders Clinic in Palo Alto, Calif.
Is it possible to get too much shut-eye?
"My position is the more sleep, the better," asserted Dr. Clete Kushida, director of the Stanford Center for Human Sleep Research. "We're so chronically sleep deprived, extra sleep can't hurt."
Before Edison saw the light, Walker reminded, humans were sleeping on average 10 hours a night -- without ill effects.
"Treat yourself to a few sleep-ins!" he advised.
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Next: The growing threat of sleep disorders.
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E-mail Lidia Wasowicz at [email protected]
