January 31, 2002
Take a couple more hours of sleep and see how you feel in the morning
You’re worn out all the time, you get tired very easily, that new weight-loss plan just isn’t working and you suspect you fell asleep as you were driving home after work last week. Should you buy some vitamins, enroll in a gym or maybe go see your health practitioner for some pills? While any of those alternatives might be a good idea, a solution for the immediate problem may be as close as your bedroom: getting enough sleep.
“The reality of our lives today is that sleep deprivation is almost expected,” says Dr. Eliza Sutton of UW Medical Center-Roosevelt and acting instructor in the UW School of Medicine. “It’s certainly very culturally accepted. There’s research that suggests there may be long-term consequences of sleeplessness. The rise of obesity and diabetes in the United States has been tied to sleep deprivation, along with lack of exercise and poor diet.”
Sutton cites figures that say people who are sleep-deprived or suffer from undiagnosed sleep disorders have about twice the average annual rate of car accidents, and two to seven times the average rate of multiple motor vehicle accidents, compared to people with normal sleep patterns.
Sutton says it is easy to understand why so many people are not getting enough sleep. People go to bed later and get up earlier in order to get other things done, whether it is surfing the Internet or watching a video, caring for other family members or working.
“Women are more likely to have their sleep disrupted by external factors,” Sutton says. “They tend to be more vigilant for noises, which may be tied in to the care of others. Also, more women in heterosexual relationships are awakened by their partners’ snoring, since more men than women snore.”
If you suspect you’re short on sleep, here are some coping strategies:
- Talk to your health care provider. Make sure you tell him or her about problems staying awake during the day, restless leg problems as you try to sleep or complaints from others in your household about your loud snoring.
- Avoid caffeine in the afternoon and evening.
- Don’t medicate yourself to sleep with alcohol. While a stiff drink may help you nod off, it also may cause you to wake up in the middle of the night.
- Get exposure to bright light early in the day. “Not getting enough bright light can actually shift your internal clock, making it difficult to sleep at night,” Sutton says. “Being exposed to bright light shortly after getting up affects how well you sleep later that night.”
- Get some daily exercise, but not within a couple of hours of bedtime.
- Think about your sleep expectations. Are you trying to sleep for eight hours, and tossing and turning for three hours each night, when you may need to sleep only five hours?
- If a partner’s snoring is waking you up each night, it’s time he or she went in for a check-up. Loud snoring can be a sign of sleep apnea, a potentially dangerous sleep disorder.
