Didn't Get Enough Sleep? You Might As Well Be Drunk

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyclay/2013/09/04/didnt-get-enough-sleep-you-might-as-well-be-drunk/

by bparsons • 13 years ago

110 67 13 years ago

Swizec5• 13 years ago

Can't remember exact resource right now, but I've been researching sleep deprivation and related topics for a chapter in my book and apparently every hour of sleep deprivation reduces your cognitive performance by roughly 25%.

I found that rather fascinating.

bparsons2• 13 years ago

Swizec, if you are interested in additional resources for your book, I would be happy to connect you with some folks at Fatigue Science (they have a ton of data on how sleep deprivation contributes to reduced cognition and reaction time), or even hook you up with a two week trial of the Readiband for free.

Swizec5• 13 years ago

Oh man that would be incredibly awesome if you could! My email is swizec@swizec.com, I'm open for talking to anyone who knows this stuff better than I do.

DoctorHouse• 13 years ago

care to elaborate on your book?

Swizec5• 13 years ago

I'm writing a book called "Why programmers work at night" (http://nightowlsbook.com) and as part of it I'm tackling the problem of helping programmers (and their managers/clients) get the best out of their brain, which includes things like sleep deprivation, how nutrition impacts cognitive performance and feelings of fatigue etc.

tannerc• 13 years ago

This is interesting, especially for someone who has researched the concept before.

Some immediate questions come to mind, like: at what point do you start tracking hours as sleep deprived versus not? What areas of cognitive performance are being evaluated exactly? How was the research collected and what was the sample size?

Any time I see explicit numbers like this connected to neuroscience a bunch of little red flags start to fly up. But then again, I didn't sleep well last night.

Swizec5• 13 years ago

If memory serves, they measured reaction time, short-term memory and ability to solve complex tasks. Can't remember how they measured what is a sleep deprived hour and what isn't.

Also "ability to solve complex tasks" seems like it might be difficult to quantify and I can't remember how they did that.

But it's fairly easy to measure the difference in reaction times and capacity to remember strings of numbers.

dimitar2• 13 years ago

Good:

* The idea is pretty interesting; I feel like I'm drunk, but I'm undersleeping the last few months.

* The major reason I don't get enough sleep is that I need to binge from time to time to get things done or enjoy life. I think I'll do better if I could track my sleeping needs before I get to feel like I do now

Bad:

* TA looks like an advertisement

* The website uses words like "your workforce". I hope employers stay away from their employees sleep. What's next? Stool samples. Management in many places already likes to treat employees like lab rats or machines to be repaired.

plorkyeran• 13 years ago

I hope employers stay away from their employees sleep.

In theory it could turn out well, if it turned out that the numbers said it was better to pay people to take an hour nap in the middle of the work day.

In practice I assume it'd turn out to be more of a mandatory unpaid nap, of course.

aliciahatt2• 13 years ago

Thank you for your input. Upside of employees knowing how the staff sleep overall (nothing to a specific employee) could possibly lead to a better shift schedule and the ability to feel less fatigued in your free time

aliciahatt2• 13 years ago

Great thing with your Real-time feedback on the Readiband you are able to tell yourself if how your feel matches up to your bodies fatigue level.

dimitar2• 13 years ago

Exactly. That way I'll know if staying late is worth it. An hour of sleep doesn't "cost" the same at any time.

patbyrne• 13 years ago

I think you might be right except for airlines!!! I wouldn't want to be on a plane with a pilot that doesn't sleep well.

JHof• 13 years ago

I think pilots wearing Readibands would quickly reveal that a large number of airline pilots are working well into what would be considered a fatigued state.

sejje• 13 years ago

I'm a bit surprised that .08 BAC corresponds to 70% ability.

That means that in many cases, a good-but-legally-drunk driver will be vastly out-performing a terrible-but-sober driver.

I'm just glad my car will drive itself soon.

koof• 13 years ago

That means that in many cases, a good-but-legally-drunk driver will be vastly out-performing a terrible-but-sober driver.

How do you know what percentage of ability corresponds to bad driving?

bparsons2• 13 years ago

How do you know what percentage of ability corresponds to bad driving?

It is based on reaction time. So if you approach a stop light that turns red and you have a 70% score, you are taking approximately 30% longer to hit the car brakes.

6d0debc0712• 13 years ago

Good driving doesn't have that much to do with your reaction time. 40% slower to respond, with a well planned drive, is a lot safer than 40% faster driving too close.

jessaustin3• 13 years ago

Sure, but one aspect of "terrible" driving would be: following too close, leaving oneself insufficient space to brake in response to leading vehicles. So, someone who is terrible in that respect could be more dangerous sober than a better driver is when drunk.

sliverstorm3• 13 years ago

Well... I'd say good driving works to minimize the importance of your reaction time, but that doesn't make reaction time unimportant.

I do agree with your general point though.

enraged_camel• 13 years ago

>That means that in many cases, a good-but-legally-drunk driver will be vastly out-performing a terrible-but-sober driver.

Not really. Drunk-driving is illegal due to increased reaction times, not decreased driving ability. You can be drunk and properly follow the traffic laws, but if you run into a situation that requires quick reflexes you're much more likely to not react quickly enough.

Whereas terrible drivers are generally terrible in other ways.

iopq• 13 years ago

Someone who has a low reaction time overall might have a better reaction time drunk than someone with a reaction time of a dead cow. My friend claims 0.1 reaction time on a game where you have to click your mouse (I believe him because he's a professional gamer so it makes sense), while I score 0.2 at best (which is average) and older people score worse and worse

Daniel_Newby• 13 years ago

I bet the reason is unawareness of poor reaction times. I have found sluggish video game vehicles pretty easy to drive.

ComputerGuru• 13 years ago

(This is mainly unrelated but simply fascinating)

I came across an article on this same topic, regarding a man who after being shot in the head could no longer sleep..... and apparently lived (as a fully functioning human being??) for 40 more years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Kern

The problem is that I cannot find any scholarly articles that mention him (searched on Google Scholar, do not have access to other journals) and the wikipedia article has an extreme dearth of scientific details/sources on this individual; the citations listed are mainly mass media stories.

As someone who has (mainly unsuccessfully) waged a battle against sleep almost my entire life, this story that I came across yesterday intrigued me greatly, and the lack of medical details frustrated me to no end.

mjn• 13 years ago

Interesting question, both in its own right, and in terms of what Wikipedia should do about it (something I've had an interest in [1] for a while). Looking at the university databases I have access to, I don't really find anything substantive beyond what you've found on Google Scholar. All the stories allege that he suffered a brain injury in 1915 that left him unable to sleep, but the stories themselves are never earlier than the 1930s, and are relatively short newspaper articles (at least, those surviving reports that are digitized and searchable). Is it a real case? A hoax? Something in between, misreporting a real case? Something well documented in an undigitized archive somewhere, waiting to be discovered? No idea.

[1] http://www.kmjn.org/notes/wikipedia_notability_verifiability...

Swizec5• 13 years ago

For a definitive weapon against sleep you could look into modafinil. I haven't tried it because all the shady websites where you can buy it only ship to the US, but apparently it turns off your need for sleep completely with next to no effects of sleep deprivation.

But I wouldn't use it to skip more than a night of sleep. Sounds like a bad idea because you do need to sleep. Sleep is good for you.

yor• 13 years ago

Certainly not all! While I don't have the undying patience necessary to wade through Gwern's entire list of modafinil suppliers[1], it does seem statistically likely that at least one of those is semi-reputable[2] and ships to countries beyond the US. Whether any of them ship to your country is a lower — but still probably finite — probability depending your country's chemical restrictions.

[1] http://www.gwern.net/Modafinil#suppliers-prices

[2] See /r/nootropics or LongeCity for reviews.

computer2• 13 years ago

Just to make sure nobody takes the above as facts and decides modafinil is what they need: basically everything in parent is incorrect, except that sleeping is good for you.

Modafinil does have various side effects, does not allow you to never sleep, and you do have some effects of sleep deprivation if you use it to skip nights. The shady sites that sell it do ship to non-US addresses. Your doctor probably also has it (provigil), if you have narcolepsy.

timw6n• 13 years ago

Be very careful with modafinil: the side effects can be very severe

"later in the evening she fainted from exhaustion and woke up blind. It took the longest two minutes of all our lives for her eyesight to return fully, and she developed shakes like I’ve never seen, which we couldn’t stop"

“I was mid-conversation and my nose started to bleed uncontrollably, blood was gushing. I completely freaked out”

“Physically, he looked rough, says Charles. He was completely exhausted, his cheeks were pasty and grey, and his body was exhibiting clear signs of sleep deprivation.”

“One friend tried the drug just once, and was plagued by serious, mind numbing headaches. Another couldn’t sleep for two days, despite spending 8 hours in bed per night trying."

Source: http://www.nouse.co.uk/2009/06/30/modafinil-the-new-wonder-d...

withad4• 13 years ago

I found this article - http://tvblogs.nationalgeographic.com/2010/07/02/the-end-of-... - which mentions some other cases and claims that Paul Kern didn't sleep... but did close his eyes and rest for a couple of hours each day. The whole thing's setting off some skeptical alarms in my head. I think it's pretty telling that all but one of the examples are unverified and from before 1950, when things like EEGs weren't available to verify if someone was sleeping or "just resting their eyes". The only modern case was followed for just four days, which is a long time to go without sleep but certainly not impossible.

It reminds me of credulous studies of people who claim they don't need to eat and drink, surviving off sunlight or air or something mystical. Dig into them a little and you invariably find that they were only monitored for a few days or they were left alone to bathe or pray or whatever else provided some gap where they could go and get food.

EDIT: Did a little more research and I came across a possible explanation that does seem to have some decent scientific studies to back it up (more than any of the non-sleeping examples, at least). "Sleep state misperception" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_state_misperception), where a patient doesn't think they've slept much or at all, even though they actually have.

WayneDB4• 13 years ago

Prahlad Jani has yet to be debunked and he was observed twice (in 2003, 2010) round the clock for up to 15 days without food and water intake or waste movements.

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/International/man-eat-drink/sto...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prahlad_Jani

Very credulous. But, as the wise man says "We'll see." :)

gonehome• 13 years ago

This reminds of a rare genetic disease that prevented those effected by it from sleeping, eventually leading to death. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatal_familial_insomnia

Not sure if there's more conclusive information about this, but it does make me more skeptical of the article you linked.

bdclimber14• 13 years ago

I'm curious of the different impact between normal sleep deprivation and primary insomnia. It's common that insomniacs don't feel sleepy during the day as compared to a normal sleeper that simply didn't get enough.

tghw• 13 years ago

Out of curiosity, I went looking for medical error rates from before the max shift lengths were decreased a few years ago and, compared to now. The study I found on it concluded that error rates did not meaningfully change, even though the residents were theoretically better rested.

Upon further examination, they found that error rates due to fatigue had decreased, but that error rates related to patient handoffs had increased by a similar amount. The long shifts, while being a source of fatigue, did provide for good continuity of care, as the same doctor handled the case for longer.

Once the study team started addressing some of the problems in handoffs, such as going through the patients alphabetically instead of by severity, they began to see the error rates decrease.

contextual• 13 years ago

There's been a lot of scientific research and animal experimentation on sleep the past several decades. Michel Jouvet[1] forced cats to stay awake until they drowned. Most cats survived for 35 days.[2]

Tony Schwartz in his book "The Way We're Working Isn't Working" also mentioned a study on laboratory mice. They were deprived of ever sleeping until they died.

From this Tony Schwatz advises we have a daily nap.

I'm sure there are countless other hellish and inhumane experiments animals are going through to better our understanding of sleep. But it seems like we still don't know much.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Jouvet [2] http://psychology4a.com/sleep8.htm

educating• 13 years ago

Someone with sleep apnea here. I think it is great when the problem of lack of sleep gets more attention. Though my snoring and pain at night has caused my sleep apnea, the lack of sleep is what has caused all of my health and mental problems. I've tried CPAP, dental appliance, and every other type of device you can think of. Ended up with a dental appliance but I still get very little REM and not enough sleep in-general. I haven't woken well-rested in maybe 25 years. It is horrible. Depression, weight problems, CRS (can't remember shit), people think I'm an idiot, often irritated, hopeless, tired all the time. Basically, it really, really sucks.

zerooneinfinity• 13 years ago

You know I use to see these articles and think, 'that's not me, I can function just fine with 5-6 hrs and a nap, and it was true, I could function just fine.

What I didn't realize is the long term effects it would have on me, my memory became really bad, I was irritable to the point where I thought that's just who I was and worst of all I started having a really hard time grasping new concepts.

I've been getting 7-10 hrs of sleep a night for about two months now and I already noticed a drastic difference in my brains performance.

PSA: Those extra couple of hours of staying awake aren't worth it guys!

dpmehta02• 13 years ago

Here's some more short and sweet sleep info, straight from the man who founded the world's first sleep research laboratory: http://www.stanford.edu/~dement/sleepless.html

codezero• 13 years ago

The device apparently uses actigraphy, which is super common. It is just measuring movement when sleeping, same as WakeMate (RIP) and Jawbone UP. Besides that I don't see what they are doing that is special except targeting specific sectors that optimize for job safety.

cmccabe• 13 years ago

That's always been my philosophy too.

davidw• 13 years ago

As a very jet lagged individual, I have to concur.

chrisvineup2• 13 years ago

You ARE PRESUMHNING I'M NOT TDRUNK!

chrisvineup2• 13 years ago

AGAIN!! Always JUGINDG ME!

junto• 13 years ago

Try having kids. I've been sleep deprived for several years and my health has noticeably suffered.

I've also noticed that when I'm tired I tend to get stressed much faster.

Didn't Get Enough Sleep? You Might As Well Be Drunk

Related Stories