If you are sleep deprived you may fall asleep briefly several times during the day and be unaware of it. And if you fall asleep–or if your reflexes are slow–when driving, it can kill you. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates almost 200,000 car accidents each year may be related to fatigue. “Drowsy driving” is potentially as dangerous as drunk driving, but public awareness of the problem is low, according to Dement.


How Sleep Debt Works

Your brain tallies up how much sleep is owed, like a stern taskmaster, and carries the debt over to the next day. “You can’t work off a large sleep debt by getting a good night’s sleep,” says Dement, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral science at Stanford’s medical school and co-author of The Promise of Sleep.

In other words, if you miss 2 hours of sleep one night, and then miss 1 hour for three nights in a row, and then miss 3 hours one last night–amassing a total “sleep debt” of 8 hours–you can’t fool your brain into thinking sleeping late on the weekend is enough. You need a full night’s sleep plus the hours you lost.

It’s hard to have a 16-hour Saturday sleep binge, however. Both your internal biological clock–which tends to wake you up at about the same time, even without an alarm clock–and the demands of daily life make it difficult. But this is what your body craves.

Sleep More Stay Younger

Insufficient sleep raises cortisol (a stress hormone) and blood sugar levels but lowers thyroid hormone, contributing to a sluggish metabolism. Too much cortisol can hurt how the brain works. These changes are also found in the aging process.

Eve Van Cauter, a research professor at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine, notes that even one night of less than complete sleep can result in a higher cortisol level. Cauter published a study of men age 18-27 in the Lancet in October 1999 in which those studied were deprived of sleep for nearly a week. The good news: The young men, who slept only 4 hours a night for six nights returned to normal after sleeping 12 hours a night for seven nights.

Nevertheless, a well-known 6-year study of over 1 million people by the American Cancer Society found that people who slept less than 7 hours per night were much more apt to die–within 6 years–than those who slept 7 hours or more. Research has repeatedly confirmed the findings of this 1965 study, however, an article in the British Medical Journal [December 1998] reported that people who spend a longer-than-average amount of time in bed sleeping each night have an associated increase in mortality.

Long Commute Short Sleep

People who commute long distances to work–a total of 2 1/2 hours or more each day–get almost 3 hours of sleep per week less than short-run commuters and are almost twice as apt to have high blood pressure, according to a September 1999 study in the medical journal Sleep.

Joyce Walsleben, a director of New York University Medical Center’s Sleep Disorder Center (located in Bellevue Hospital) who studied 4,715 commuters on New York’s Long Island Railroad, cautions that long distance commuting takes a long-term toll on people’s health. No matter how lulling the train sounds, short naps between stations can’t make up for health damage.

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Help answer the question about sleep disorder center

Mystery autoimmune disorder – help!?
I have been to more doctors than I can count and have decided to post a question here to see if anyone recognizes what I describe. Approximately 9 years ago, I noticed a decreased ability to squeeze the shampoo bottle, do anything strenuous with my left hand. I am a left handed individual. I began to experience pain and swelling in my left forearm (it was visibly swollen and had redness where the swelling was). I went to my PCP and he referred me to an orthopedist. The orthopedist tested me for MS, lyme disease, and Sleep Apnea. We had the nerve conduction test on my arm and hands. All negative. He referred me to a muscular specialist, neurologist, and hematologist. All tests came up negative for any known disorder. The hematologist suggested it was a psychosomatic illness. This happened over the course of a year and a half. By that time, my left arm, leg, and calf had swollen and eventually had atrophy. My left hand is is in a permanent claw like state from the compression on the tendons in my arm. When the "illness" is at its worst, I get muscle spasms on both sides of my face. I have the appearance of very slight palsy on my right side from the "contractions" I would have in my face. My speech gets affected as well. Extremes of any temperature affect it also.

I have been taking Skelaxin for all these years. In 2003, my right side started to manifest the same symptoms as my left side. The welling had travelled to my thighs and bicep on my left arm and started swelling in my right forearm. This was when I began to suspect an autoimmune disorder. I went BACK to my PCP and asked him to re-look at all my symptoms and see what we could find. We went thru all kinds of tests again and the only thing we came up with was that I have psoriatic arthritis — which is not related to this disorder. He has been patient and kind with me. I asked him if he thought it was a psychological illness of some kind and he emphatically disagreed with that concept. I saw the top neurologist and muscular specialist @ YAle New Haven Medical Center. They have chalked it up to being an autoimmune disorder of some kind and he just doesn't know what it is. When I became pregnant last July, I was concerned that going off meds would make my muscles work. He said it would be one more way to confirm this was indeed autoimmune. According to him, autoimune disorders take a leave of absence most times during the pregnancy, but come back with a vengeance post delivery. He was correct. My son is now 8 months old and I have serious concerns about how long I can go on like this. I have fallen twice with him — once while he was in the carrier and recently while he was in my arms.

I know this is lengthy, but if you recognize these symptoms or know of someone I can see, I'd greatly appreciate it

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