Set a regular bedtime and stick with it

Most people in the US now sleep less than seven hours a night — which is about one hour less than the average sleep time 40 years ago. They usually hope to make up for lost sleep at some point during the week, say, the following day or the weekend.

Sleep researchers have long warned about the hazards of not sleeping enough (the recommended sleep time for adults is 7-8 hours): people who are fatigued by lack of  sleep cannot pay attention to routine tasks, have trouble learning, and are vulnerable to a long list of health problems ranging from chronic depression to elevated blood pressures.

There is now an added risk for people who lose sleep day after day. New research on animals and humans have shown that chronic sleep deprivation might lead to the individual losing or damaging the ability to catch up on lost sleep. The study has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The conclusion seems clear: people who do not get enough sleep night after night may no longer be able to recover the alertness and energy they need to perform adequately during the day.

It is not yet possible to say whether the damage can be reversed or not. But it is clear that people who report for work fatigued from one day to the next are likely to perform consistently below par.

Studies on healthy people showed in two groups, where one group got eight hours of sleep while the others lost 2-4 hours of sleep a night, the sleep-deprived group said they no longer felt tired during the day after two weeks of following this regimen. But actual test scores told the real story: this group had trouble paying attention, reacted much more slowly, and suffered impairments in memory.

The ability to fend off sleep, on a short-term basis, can be viewed as a mechanism that helps humans and animals survive a crisis period, as when forced to flee during a hurricane. But modern humans have made their days run at all hours.

Only further study can confirm the effect of continued sleep deprivation. But even if the damage is reversible, the damage to health may be more permanent. Sleep deprivation has been linked to obesity. Sleep loss is the likely cause in over 100,000 car crashes each year, many of them fatal.

Safety Tips:
* Do not put computers and TVs in bedrooms.
* Avoid staying beyond bedtime to surf the Internet or talk on the phone.
* Set a regular bedtime and stick with it.
* Do not exercise within three hours of bedtime.