Mirror Magazine

Feeling tired the whole day? Catch yourself yawning at the most inopportune moments? Can’t concentrate? Then you’re a victim of sleep deprivation. Smriti Daniel has more on it

Menachem Begin, the Israeli Prime Minister from 1977-83, was tortured by the KGB as a young man. In his book, White Nights: The Story of a Prisoner in Russia, he wrote of losing the will to resist when deprived of sleep.

“In the head of the interrogated prisoner, a haze begins to form. His spirit is wearied to death, his legs are unsteady, and he has one sole desire: to sleep... Anyone who has experienced this desire knows that not even hunger and thirst are comparable with it. I came across prisoners, who signed what they were ordered to sign, only to get what the interrogator promised them.

He did not promise them their liberty; he did not promise them food to sate themselves. He promised them – if they signed – uninterrupted sleep! And, having signed, there was nothing in the world that could move them to risk again such nights and such days.”

Sleepless nights and endless days

If you’ve managed to cross the first decade of living on planet earth, you can understand a little of what this guy is talking about – those days when your eyelids feel weighed down by cement blocks, and your neck has all the stiffness of a spaghetti noodle. Of course, there’s nothing like having to sit through an exhausting lecture on the correct way to conjugate French verbs to make matters worse.

Recently, the pentagon admitted that they had used sleep deprivation, combined with rock music played at excruciating decibel levels to torture Iraqi prisoners. Sound familiar? After all, it’s what teenagers all across the world have been known to do – for entertainment – every other night. As a result most of them are running on a scant seven hours of snoozy time. The result? Fatigue.

In adults, such meagre sleep allowances are known to affect day-to-day functioning in a whole load of ways. In adolescents, (who are biologically driven to sleep longer and later than adults do), the effects of insufficient sleep are likely to be even more dramatic. In fact, in the great big US of A, some sleep experts are even shouting that early high-school start times are tantamount to abuse!

To put things into perspective, you only have to compare sleep to food. You can be on the verge of starvation and still be alive. We all know how horrible that could be, and yet there are those of us who live on the very edge of sleep starvation and just accept it.

So why does this happen? Well, perhaps you have examinations around the corner or you’re working the night-shift, perhaps you’re the not-so-joyful parents of a restless little baby or a harried advertising executive on an insane deadline. Either way, if you’re dead tired you should be extra careful, because not getting your daily requirement of zzzzz’s can literally be fatal.

Illnesses such as colds and tonsillitis can cause snoring, gagging and frequent waking, and have a direct effect on sleep by fragmenting it. Sleep disorders, medications (such as those used to treat epilepsy), an uncomfortable sleeping environment, and even bad habits such as drinking coffee or smoking cigarettes close to bedtime stimulates the nervous system and makes sleep less likely. If you’re the anxious type and are prone to lying in bed and worrying, than you also become a natural candidate for sleep deprivation.

A fatigued person is accident prone, judgement impaired and more likely to make mistakes and bad decisions. Staying awake for 24 hours leads to a reduced hand-to-eye co-ordination that is similar to having a blood alcohol content of 0.1. This is why sleep deprivation contributes to road accidents and work injuries. If you’re still in school, know that not only is your academic performance going to be mucked up, but you’re also risking depression.

Dinesh* and a bunch of friends decided to hang out at Unawatuna over the weekend. One thing led to another, and the group decided that they would stay over to party a little, and drive down late Sunday night when the traffic would be light. They set off around midnight, and Dinesh being the elected driver filled himself up with coffee. After a packed day – snorkelling at dawn, playing in the sea all day and partying for a few hours – he was tired, but coping. That was until they hit the Kollupitiya junction. Eyes drooping, Dinesh miscalculated and took the turn too sharply. When they collided with the island Dinesh broke his wrist and his sleeping friends were thrown forward against the seats resulting in a few deep gashes and sprained limbs. No one died, but it was a close run.

What do you need to watch out for? Well, most of this is quite obvious. But it’s also true that a lot of people simply dismiss these symptoms and plough on. For instance, if you find yourself constantly imitating a whale in hot pursuit of plankton (a.k.a. yawning) you’re in trouble mate. You probably doze off whenever you’re not caught up. Dropping off in front of the TV, for instance, might be part of your daily after dinner ritual. When you wake in the morning, you can’t see straight until you’ve had your dose of black, highly-caffeinated poison. Depending on how badly off you are, poor concentration and mood swings are almost inevitable.

Sharon* works the nightshift at a radio station and in the daytime she goes to university. Coping with her studies is a constant struggle for her. She’s invariably late with assignments, and as a result her lecturers are becoming unsympathetic. In the final run-up to her examinations, she’s been known to make do with four hours of sleep. When she’s sitting in front of her paper, she complains about simply ‘stalling’ mentally – finding herself unable to move beyond a certain thought. Tired and stressed, she’s found panic setting in and has been known to skip questions and forget to go back to them, or read them wrong and write an entirely inappropriate answer.

People like Sharon share not only such symptoms, but have been known to suffer from microsleep (brief periods of involuntary sleeping that range from a few seconds to a few minutes in duration). Microsleep – especially if you’re driving or managing machinery is obviously very dangerous.

Sometimes, it isn’t even a matter of hours; even minutes can make a big difference. A 1998 survey of more than 3,000 high-school students found that students who reported that they were getting lower grades in school obtained about 25 minutes less sleep and went to bed about 40 minutes later than students who reported they were getting higher grades and topping the class. Remember that sleep deprivation can occur over a period of months (sometimes years) before symptoms appear.

How much sleep is enough?

Sleep requirements differ from one person to the next, depending on age, physical activity levels, general health and other individual factors. In general,

*Primary school children – need about nine to ten hours. Studies show that increasing your child’s sleep by as little as half-an-hour can dramatically improve school performance. Remember that sleep deprivation affects children in different ways to adults – sleepy children tend to ‘rev up’ rather than slow down.

*Teenagers – need about nine to ten hours too. Teenagers have an increased sleep requirement at the time, when they are most likely to want to party till dawn or chat late into the night.

*Adults – need about eight hours, depending on individual factors. We tend to need less sleep as we age, but be guided by your own state of alertness – if you feel tired during the day, aim to get more sleep.

If getting to sleep early is not something that comes naturally, make the effort. Purposefully go to bed earlier each night and stay off cigarettes, alcohol or caffeine in the hours before bedtime. Improve your sleeping environment in any way you can – for example, wear earplugs if you have noisy neighbours or put out coils to banish any mosquitoes hovering around you.

Relaxation techniques can come in particularly handy. Starting from your toes, move upwards along your body relaxing each and every muscle on the way. Breathe deep and clear your mind. If you snore or have a partner who snores, seek professional assistance.