Going to bed only to lay there awake (or sleeping for four hours and then laying awake until the alarm goes off, if that's how you roll) is a personal form of purgatory many of us know all too well. If you've ever stared glassy-eyed at CNN's 20-minute news loop at 4 a.m. waiting for that fickle circadian rhythm to kick back in, then you know exactly of what I speak. Why can't I fall asleep?! Let's ask The Barenaked Ladies, who wrote the anthem for insomniacs.
Chances are, many readers of this post know exactly what I'm talking about, since an estimated 40% of Americans are constantly, chronically sleep deprived. As in, getting five (or fewer) hours of sleep every night, for years on end. That's a lot of random catnaps and five-second mental pauses during the day.
Why did I walk into this blog post again? [Pause.] Oh, yes. The National Geographic Channel premiered a 2-hour documentary on Sunday night** called "Sleepless In America," which I highly recommend. It is excellent. Among many other things, the documentary demonstrates how our jobs are making it harder to get proper sleep, and how our lack of sleep is leading to much bigger problems, from health issues to fatal accidents.
The unsung heroes among us who work the overnight shift have it the worst. We should thank these employees every day for all they do while the rest of us are asleep. (Or trying in vain to get to sleep, as the case may be.)
The documentary, which is a collaboration by National Geographic, National Institutes of Health and The Public Good Projects, also reveals how we used to sleep a long time ago. You know, when we actually reached a deep REM cycle and cleared our minds of the cobwebs. Back then, we would go to bed when it got dark because...well, what else was there to do? We had only candles, and no Internet connection. Yawn. So we would proceed to sleep for five hours, wake up, do something fun for a few minutes in the wee hours, and then fall back into a "sweet sleep" until the morning light. Gosh, I feel more well-rested simply reading about how our ancestors used to sleep.
But then electricity came along and our sleep cycle short-circuited and condensed into what we have now, which is to say, not nearly enough sleep. Goodbye, "sweet sleep" and hello, sweet tea to stay awake because we're working on five hours of fitful rest.
What can we do about it? Get more sleep, of course. We should go to bed earlier without turning on the television or surfing a tablet in bed; make the hours leading up to bedtime as stress-free as possible***; and get ourselves on a regular sleep schedule. Yeah, like that's going to happen anytime soon in our over-stimulated and overworked culture, but we can dream, can't we?
** The documentary airs again on December 7th at 9 a.m. (Eastern).
*** Don't exercise or pay bills right before bedtime, and that angry email from the client can wait a few hours until morning. No, really.
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