In my last entry, I asked if you were getting enough
sleep. Our bodies require homeostatic
regulation, which means that without the required amount of sleep you develop a
sleep debt, which is cumulative. It is
fairly simple to determine what your sleep debt is. Take the amount of sleep your body needs
(discussed in previous blog entries) and subtract the amount of sleep that you are
getting. If your body needs 9 hours of
sleep a night and you are only getting 6 hours of sleep, then that is 3 hours
of sleep debt that you have acquired in one night. By the end of the week, 7 days times 3 hours,
you have accumulated 21 hours of sleep debt.
Accumulated sleep debt results in uncontrollable falling asleep,
regardless of the circumstances. In a
study done by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), it was found that 40% of
adults report falling asleep during the day at least once in the last
month. As discussed in the last blog, if
this happens when behind the wheel, that can be incredibly dangerous and
perhaps even deadly. According to the
CDC, 30% of adults get less than 6 hours per night and 70% of high school
student report getting less than 8 hours per night. In addition, many people who think that they
are getting the sleep that they need may not be getting that sleep due to
compromised quality of sleep, e.g. sleep disordered breathing, which affects
5- 25% of the population. What is your sleep
debt?
