Warwick Scientists: Lack of Sleep is Bad for Health

Source.

My initial thought was "no, really"?

Those statistics seem slightly worrying, though.

Uhhhh, doy?

It's one thing to know it intuitively, it's quite another to have it proven, documented.

^ Those were my feelings.

Lack of sleep for an extended period can be fatal.

^^^ You also don't really know what will happen to you. "I don't feel tired when I get regular sleep. My body wants me to get regular sleep, so I should" is one thing but for all you know it just increases stress because it affects how well you perform during the day or it makes you more likely to catch a cold.

You need to say "Lack of sleep => heart attack" before you get someone going "Hmm, all my ancestors died of infarctions, I'm going to stay in with a DVD" (and someone else going "Woo! It was stomach cancer for us, party!")

Indeed you need to rest.

If I remember correctly there is a rare genetic condition that when it kicks causes insomnia that progressively gets worse to the point where you can no longer sleep again. The end stage strikes me as a horrible way to die.

Fatal Familial Insomnia

edited 13th Feb '11 11:30:33 AM by TuefelHundenIV

More than nine hours is bad also? I didn't know that... I thought sleep patterns varied between 10 to 6 hours depending on age.

The article says that sleeping more than nine hours may be an indicator of existing illness, not that it causes illness. Correlation is not causation.

Yeah, sorry. But still makes me worried about me. I don't do it regularly but it's not unusual for me...

Reverse correlation actually.

The article was really really vague.
It also lacks a proper conclusion. The only thing they said was "Get enough sleep, we have a median and statistics" instead of drawing further theories and hypoteses, and getting out proper conclusions.
I am sort of disappointed that there was nothing on how to identify how much sleep your body needs, and how to measure how effective sleep is.

Groundlaying is like that. It's called pioneering. You wouldn't imagine how much Low-Hanging Fruit there is in the realm of statistics that only asks for a little funding.

But people only care about electoral polls.

The health effects of lack of sleep have been well documented for ages. This doesn't sound like anything new.

^ Anecdotally supported. Not 'documented'.

And the plural of anecdote is not data, but that's one damn hell of a lot of anecdotes.

But yeah, the best way to make sure about a problem is doing science to it.

I thought they'd already done sleep dep tests. I think they were done on prisoners of war though. Or maybe it was in that working hours thing.

I think those studies were on acute sleep deprivation, like not sleeping for a week straight and stuff. This is chronic deprivation, as in the kind of thing that millions of people do to themselves nightly (yours truly included).

Yeah, effects of staying awake for long periods straight are well-documented - after all, it's far easier to test effects over a two-week period than over the at least several weeks you'd need to see what not enough sleep over a long period does. And the former kind of deprivation is important for some powerful entities, by which I mean governments.

edited 14th Feb '11 12:26:47 PM by Tzetze

Lack of Sleep is Bad for Health

Oh, Crap!.

If people who go without sleep all get sick and eventually die, is that really ancedotal anymore?

Indeed See the blue link in the post They die because they can't sleep. Actually would be a very horrific way to die.

Stop. The very idea of dying of lack of sleep gives me nightmares. Which don't allow me to sleep. See were this is going?

Dont worry, if you dont have that sleep disorder, your body will eventually make you sleep, wether or not youre too antsy to fall asleep on your own.

I did that once... time went all sideways and then it was a couple hours later and my friend was trapped with one hand under my adorable, but heavy, body.