Are you tired right now?
For 80 percent of Americans, the answer would be a loud, resounding “yes.” (Or, more accurately, a deflated sigh of agreement, a sip of coffee, or a stifled yawn.) According to the Better Sleep Council, eight out of 10 Americans say they would feel better and be more prepared for the day if only they had an extra hour of sleep.
Why one hour? Health experts and the media are quick to praise the benefits of snoozing 60 minutes more: At least anecdotally, advantages of an additional hour of shut-eye include increased happiness, better memory and lower stress.
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But here’s the problem with this advice: In an era when 70 million Americans suffer from sleep deprivation, an extra hour means different things to different people. And even if an hour could fix America’s sleep problem, where would it come from? Should we be skipping our morning workouts, or ordering takeout instead of preparing healthy meals, to carve out more quality time in between the sheets?
As our lives become busier, as we’re bombarded by more apps, and as doctors increase their emphasis on other healthy habits like exercising regularly, it’s tempting to believe that an extra 60 minutes in the sack could make all the difference. But could it? We partnered with Sleep Number to find out.
Staying Up All Night: How Terrible Is It?
Let’s get one thing straight. Sleep deprivation is a serious problem. Short sleepers -- or people who get less than six hours of sleep per night -- have an increased risk of diabetes, heart disease and stroke. Sleep-deprived bodies often experience bloodshot eyes, increased blood pressure and fuller waistlines. Equally alarming are the negative impacts on the brain, like lost memories, cerebral shrinkage, false memories and even brain damage. If that isn’t concerning enough for you, sleep deprivation has been proven to be fatal for lab rats.
Despite all of this information, Americans are going to bed later and later. Research reveals that the number of hours an average person sleeps each night has been declining steadily over the past 10 years, especially during the workweek, alluding to a dangerous trend in the years to come. What’s scarier than that is, duration of sleep doesn’t equal quality sleep -- so we could be sleeping even less than we realize.
Dr. Scott Kutscher, an assistant professor at Vanderbilt University who specializes in sleep medicine, blames this deficiency on electronics and social pressure -- that we’re always supposed to be available for our jobs or for other people.
“One of the basic foundations of sleep is that it’s a time to unplug, restore and regenerate,” Kutscher says. This always-available mindset distracts us from what we really need.
“The problem is that we try to fit sleep to our lives, rather than our lives to our sleep -- and often end up with very ill-fitting patterns,” says Colin Espie, a professor in the Nuffield Department of Clinical Neuroscience at the University of Oxford. Espie likens many Americans’ approach to sleep (skimp during the week and catch up on the weekends) to footwear: “Imagine wearing shoes that are really a size too small one week, then two sizes too large on the weekend!”
For the millions of people who are underestimating their sleep needs and trying to make do with insufficient amounts (the National Institutes of Health recommends adults log between seven and eight hours), Espie advises getting more of it -- and more quality sleep, while they’re at it.
Exactly how much more, though, is up for debate.
Why ‘The Extra Hour’ Alone Is A Bogus Prescription
Prescribing an “extra hour” of sleep isn’t the magic answer to fixing the sleep crisis, according to
For 80 percent of Americans, the answer would be a loud, resounding “yes.” (Or, more accurately, a deflated sigh of agreement, a sip of coffee, or a stifled yawn.) According to the Better Sleep Council, eight out of 10 Americans say they would feel better and be more prepared for the day if only they had an extra hour of sleep.
Why one hour? Health experts and the media are quick to praise the benefits of snoozing 60 minutes more: At least anecdotally, advantages of an additional hour of shut-eye include increased happiness, better memory and lower stress.
But here’s the problem with this advice: In an era when 70 million Americans suffer from sleep deprivation, an extra hour means different things to different people. And even if an hour could fix America’s sleep problem, where would it come from? Should we be skipping our morning workouts, or ordering takeout instead of preparing healthy meals, to carve out more quality time in between the sheets?As our lives become busier, as we’re bombarded by more apps, and as doctors increase their emphasis on other healthy habits like exercising regularly, it’s tempting to believe that an extra 60 minutes in the sack could make all the difference. But could it? We partnered with Sleep Number to find out.
Staying Up All Night: How Terrible Is It?
Let’s get one thing straight. Sleep deprivation is a serious problem. Short sleepers -- or people who get less than six hours of sleep per night -- have an increased risk of diabetes, heart disease and stroke. Sleep-deprived bodies often experience bloodshot eyes, increased blood pressure and fuller waistlines. Equally alarming are the negative impacts on the brain, like lost memories, cerebral shrinkage, false memories and even brain damage. If that isn’t concerning enough for you, sleep deprivation has been proven to be fatal for lab rats.
Despite all of this information, Americans are going to bed later and later. Research reveals that the number of hours an average person sleeps each night has been declining steadily over the past 10 years, especially during the workweek, alluding to a dangerous trend in the years to come. What’s scarier than that is, duration of sleep doesn’t equal quality sleep -- so we could be sleeping even less than we realize.
Dr. Scott Kutscher, an assistant professor at Vanderbilt University who specializes in sleep medicine, blames this deficiency on electronics and social pressure -- that we’re always supposed to be available for our jobs or for other people.
“One of the basic foundations of sleep is that it’s a time to unplug, restore and regenerate,” Kutscher says. This always-available mindset distracts us from what we really need.
“The problem is that we try to fit sleep to our lives, rather than our lives to our sleep -- and often end up with very ill-fitting patterns,” says Colin Espie, a professor in the Nuffield Department of Clinical Neuroscience at the University of Oxford. Espie likens many Americans’ approach to sleep (skimp during the week and catch up on the weekends) to footwear: “Imagine wearing shoes that are really a size too small one week, then two sizes too large on the weekend!”
For the millions of people who are underestimating their sleep needs and trying to make do with insufficient amounts (the National Institutes of Health recommends adults log between seven and eight hours), Espie advises getting more of it -- and more quality sleep, while they’re at it.
Exactly how much more, though, is up for debate.
Why ‘The Extra Hour’ Alone Is A Bogus Prescription
Prescribing an “extra hour” of sleep isn’t the magic answer to fixing the sleep crisis, according to