Literatus: Sleep debt needs to be ‘paid off’

SLEEP that knits up the raveled sleave of care The death of each day’s life, sore labor’s bath Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course, Chief nourisher in life’s feast.

William Shakespeare’s lines from Macbeth hold the common opinion that sleep is very important for recuperation, stress management, and a better condition of life. A multidisciplinary study involving eight researchers in the field of medicine, public health, medical technology, and psychology found that sleep deprivation reduces working memory capacity (WMC), and results to increased math, accuracy and speed errors. Previous studies found no serious impact on fine manual skills (e.g. surgery) an acute fatigue due to a 24 or 30 work-hour day without sleep in a four-day cycle.

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Of the increased errors observed, those in math had more than twice the errors committed in accuracy and speed tests; but all three were higher than those from people without sleep deprivation.

In addition to that, full recovery of WMC needs four days to happen. Meaning, you need four days of more than regular sleeping hours to recover a night of less sleep. This sleep debt apparently must be “paid off.” The person unrecovered from lack of sleep continues the days to come under the heavy burden of sleep debt.

Lead researcher Ashraf Gohar of the University of Minnesota and Regions Hospital (St. Paul, Minnesota) and colleagues reported in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine (2009 issue) that regular sleep deprivation does not strongly affect WMC, but irregular hours brings down WMC significantly.

However, a small number of participants successfully beat the test, and scoring as much or at times even better than those who were not sleep deprived. The researchers found no clear factor that can explain this. One of the explanations brought up was the difference between “morning” and “night” people where energy level peaks well during daytime and nighttime, respectively.

There is one special difference that sleep and wakefulness have. Plutarch observed wisely: “All men whilst they are awake are in one common world: but each of them, when he is asleep, is in a world of his own.”

This insight makes me wonder: Could the final sleep be a forced situation or somehow largely voluntary? A world where you can do anything you want without a boss looking at the security cameras, or a spouse active in your domestic world, or the noise of the world getting louder—maybe the ultimate incentive for calling it a day for life.