The data are clear: Sacrifice sleep, sacrifice health. The health consequences of sleep deprivation are far-reaching, stretching from weight gain, to mood disorders, to diabetes.

Recent data have also connected insufficient sleep with greater likelihood of increased
heart scan scores and heart attack. This puts the issue square in our sights.

“The amount of sleep required by the average person is five minutes more.”

Wilson Mizener

What is sleep?

It’s not simply a few hours of inactivity. If that were true, all insomniacs who lie in bed for hours would be just as well-rested as someone who sleeps for the same amount of time. The insomniac is far from well-rested the following morning: Heavy eyes, struggle to focus, and edginess the following morning can’t help but reveal the lack of sleep.

Sleep is a mind-active, body-inactive state. Contrary to early concepts of sleep as a period of dormancy, the brain is active during sleep. Like the seasons of the year, the brain proceeds through a predictable series of phases distinguishable by intensity, frequency, depth, duration, and content.

The effect of disrupting the phases of sleep, even when full sleep duration is achieved, is evidenced by sleep disorders like sleep apnea, a condition caused by collapse of the airway that occurs during the deepest phases of sleep. Loss of the deep sleep phases results in daytime sleepiness, high blood pressure, higher c-reactive protein, greater likelihood of diabetes, reduced strength of the left ventricle of the heart, even greater risk for dangerous heart rhythms (ventricular tachycardia), and death.

Over the last several decades, Americans have sacrificed sleep, presumably due to increased time demands of modern life; the average sleep duration has been slashed by 1-2 hours per night during the latter 20th century (Kripke DF et al 2002). The National Center for Health Statistics recently reported that 30% of adults between the age of 30 and 64 years now sleep an average of 6 hours per night or less (Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 2005).

Sleep deficits develop in one of three ways:

1. Sleep fragmentation—Sleep is disrupted, as with hyperactive bladders, prostate disease, restless legs, noisy surroundings, etc.

2. Disruption of specific sleep stages—This typically occurs with sleep apnea, in which the deepest phases of sleep (phase 4 and REM) are interrupted by airway collapse, causing partial arousal towards more superficial sleep levels.

3. Sleep restriction—Reduction in sleep duration below the ideal.

For our purposes, we will focus our discussion on number 3, sleep restriction.

The destructive effects of sleep restriction

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