</div> </div> <p>In desperate need of a good night’s sleep? If so, you aren’t alone.</p> <p><a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5353813/" target="_blank" data-ga-track="ExternalLink:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5353813/" rel="nofollow">Between 10% to 30% of adults experience insomnia</a>, and for <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5987897/" target="_blank" data-ga-track="ExternalLink:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5987897/" rel="nofollow">up to 1 in 10 adults, insomnia can become a chronic disorder</a>. Even people who manage to sleep like proverbial logs can end up sleep deprived if <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-how-much-sleep-do-we-need-29759" target="_blank" data-ga-track="ExternalLink:https://theconversation.com/explainer-how-much-sleep-do-we-need-29759" rel="nofollow">sleep is restricted</a> by staying up too late or waking too early.</p> <p>Whatever the cause, sleep deprivation can lead to mild to significant cognitive impairment while we’re awake. We’ve all felt the effects at one point or another. It might just be a case of pouring coffee on your cereal or alighting the wrong train while jet-lagged, but fatigue also causes more serious problems like work and motor vehicle accidents.</p> <p><a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5859531/#CR8" target="_blank" data-ga-track="ExternalLink:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5859531/#CR8" rel="nofollow">A recent study showed</a> that drivers who regularly get less than 6 hours of sleep a night have a 33% higher risk of a car accident than drivers who get 7 to 8 hours of sleep a night. This was the case even when the drivers didn’t report excessive sleepiness. Studies also show that accruing sleep debt over long periods of time can have a negative impact on mental health.</p> <p> </p> <p>So what is actually changing in the brain the longer we go without sleep? And why does a good sleep make us feel so refreshed?</p> <p>Interestingly, although sleep accounts for around one-third of our lives and plays a substantial role in our health and well-being, we still don’t know all that much about the biochemistry of sleep.</p> <p>From an evolutionary perspective, there must be a really good reason for going offline for hours at a time — snoozing instead of hunting, foraging, or mating — and being quite vulnerable while we do so.</p>
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In desperate need of a good night’s sleep? If so, you aren’t alone.
Between 10% to 30% of adults experience insomnia, and for up to 1 in 10 adults, insomnia can become a chronic disorder. Even people who manage to sleep like proverbial logs can end up sleep deprived if sleep is restricted by staying up too late or waking too early.
Whatever the cause, sleep deprivation can lead to mild to significant cognitive impairment while we’re awake. We’ve all felt the effects at one point or another. It might just be a case of pouring coffee on your cereal or alighting the wrong train while jet-lagged, but fatigue also causes more serious problems like work and motor vehicle accidents.
A recent study showed that drivers who regularly get less than 6 hours of sleep a night have a 33% higher risk of a car accident than drivers who get 7 to 8 hours of sleep a night. This was the case even when the drivers didn’t report excessive sleepiness. Studies also show that accruing sleep debt over long periods of time can have a negative impact on mental health.
So what is actually changing in the brain the longer we go without sleep? And why does a good sleep make us feel so refreshed?
Interestingly, although sleep accounts for around one-third of our lives and plays a substantial role in our health and well-being, we still don’t know all that much about the biochemistry of sleep.
From an evolutionary perspective, there must be a really good reason for going offline for hours at a time — snoozing instead of hunting, foraging, or mating — and being quite vulnerable while we do so.
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