Thought Leadership in Action

We don’t usually think much about sleep until we don’t get enough. But a lack of sleep not only makes us tired, it can have serious impacts on our health and even how well we do our work.

Unfortunately, a lack of sufficient sleep is so common in the U.S. that it is now recognized as a public health problem by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). According to the CDC, people who don’t get enough sleep have reduced on-the-job productivity and more car and industrial accidents, too. If that wasn’t alarming enough, research shows that sleeping too little raises the risk of chronic diseases such as obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure and depression.

How Much Sleep do You Need?

The National Sleep Foundation convened an expert panel of doctors and scientists to recommend how much sleep is best for most people, based on age. Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine sleep researcher Lydia DonCarlos, Ph.D., and other experts on the multidisciplinary panel examined findings from 320 studies that investigated sleep in healthy individuals, including the health consequences of too much or too little sleep.

The results of the study, published in Sleep Health: Journal of the National Sleep Foundation, came up with a fairly wide range of what constitutes a good night’s sleep. The panel recommends adults between the ages of 18 and 64 sleep from 7 to 9 hours a night. Adults who are 65 and older need less sleep, 7 to 8 hours, while teens (between the ages 14 to 17) should aim for 8 to 10 hours of sleep.

The Panel also Listed These Sleep Recommendations for Children Per Night:

• Newborns (0-3 months)- 14 to 17 hours
• Infants (4-11 months)- 12 to 15 hours
• Toddlers (1-2 years)- 11 to 14 hours
• Preschoolers (3-5)- 10 to13 hours
• School-age children (6-13)- 9 to11 hours

“We still have a great deal to learn about the function of sleep,” Dr. DonCarlos, an endocrinologist, said. “We know it’s restorative and important for memory consolidation. But we don’t know the details of what the function of sleep is, even though it is how we spend one-third of our lives.”

Why Skipping Sleep Can Increase Weight

Not getting enough sleep can not only make you feel tired, it may make you overweight, according to a University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine study published in the journal Scientific Reports.

“We wanted to uncover whether changes in regional brain function had an impact on our eating behavior following sleep deprivation,” said the study’s senior author, Hengyi Rao, Ph.D., a research assistant professor of Cognitive Neuroimaging in Neurology and Psychiatry.

The research team found that after a night of sleep deprivation, people not only ate more the next day – they specifically chowed down on more fatty foods. It turns out that a region of the brain known as the salience network appears to be triggered by lack of sleep. The result is an increased appetite for more high calorie, fat-laden food.

“This work has implications for the approximately 15 million Americans who work the evening shift, night shift, rotating shifts, or other employer arranged irregular schedules,” Dr. Rao noted.

How Naps Help

There’s good news for the sleep deprived. Researchers have found that even short naps may help relieve some of the bad impacts of a sleepless night. A study published in the Endocrine Society’s Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism concluded that napping can help relieve stress. It has a positive effect on the immune system, too.

“Our data suggests a 30-minute nap can reverse the hormonal impact of a night of poor sleep,” said researcher Brice Faraut, Ph.D., of Paris Descartes University. “This is the first study that found napping could restore biomarkers of neuroendocrine and immune health to normal levels.”

The researchers found that sleep deprivation caused a 2.5 increase in levels of norepinephrine, a hormone involved in the body’s fight-or-flight response to stress that increases heart rate, blood pressure and blood sugar levels. Lack of sleep also caused levels of interleukin-6, an immune system protein that fights viruses, to plummet. However, after sleep-deprived research subjects took brief naps, these body changes were normalized.

“Napping may offer a way to counter the damaging effects of sleep restriction by helping the immune and neuroendocrine systems to recover,” Dr. Faraut said. “The findings support the development of practical strategies for addressing chronically sleep-deprived populations, such as night and shift workers.”