How Bad Is It That I Sleep Five Hours a Night?
Short answer: Not bad at all, if you don't mind nodding off on busy highways, drifting into rumble strips, battling your eyelids in afternoon meetings, being an incorrigible jackass to the people you like, and knowing that these problems will only get worse over time.
Yes, we realize certain people are "short sleepers"; genetic anomalies who can run hot on three hours' cold. Alexander Hamilton was one, probably, Thomas Edison, possibly Kanye, if we're making guesses. Unless you're one of those three, and we're pretty certain you're not two of them, you're probably not in that precious estimated 1% that doesn't need much shut-eye. The rest of us require an average of seven to eight hours a night, which you know if you ever talked to the National Sleep Foundation or your mom.
True, all sentient humans will suffer sporadic sleepless nights when we're subject to such acute stressors as finals exams, dragged-out breakups, jet lag, or shrieking babies. In fact, according to Indiana University Health behavioral sleep medicine specialist Dr. Yelena Chernyak, your body comes equipped with a reaction that powers you with adrenalin when you need to get through a chaotic life change. "The problem is when it doesn't turn off when the stressor goes away," she says. If you're insomnia is sustained, and you're in that Five Hours a Night region for too long, here's what's happening to your insides:
Short-Term (~ 1-3 nights)• Decline in cognitive ability, reduced concentration, being suddenly shitty at mazes and remembering birthdays
• Irritability, mood changes, enhanced likelihood of sucker-punching a priest
• Increased change of driving your car off an interstate ramp (the CDC says that 1 in 25 of us has fallen asleep at the wheel in the last 30 days, which is horrifying)
• Lowered work/sex/boxing performance
• Higher risk to abuse drugs, alcohol, and Red Bull
• Extreme high risk for blowing shit tons of money on salted caramel mochas
Moderate-Term (~ 3-4 nights)• Higher risk of infection, due to reduced antibodies
• Lowered immune system, increased risk of contracting the flu by touching a pole on the F Train
• Slower recovery time from F Train Pole Flu
• Need for catch-up sleep, in which your bodies tries to reset with a night of hard cold 9 or 10 hours (this is an emergency measure, and won't fix things for long)
Long-Term (~ 5 nights – 3 years and up)• Stroke!
• Cardiovascular disease!
• Morbid obesity!
• Diabetes!
• Punctuating probable-cause-of-death lists with distractingly enthusiastic exclamation points!
Chernyak says there's a difference between being sleepy (standard afternoon drowsiness) or tired (succumbing to bursts of micro-sleep in meetings, elevators or ballgames). If you're experiencing functional impairment—if your body feels like a sack of watermelons, you can't control your eyelids or you actually can't touch 4 p.m. without a significant stimulant—see your primary care doc before you do any more driving, please.
One thing, though: Odds are solid that doc will offer to prescribe something like Ambien, which may knock you out temporarily but might also, in the words of one friend, "makes the window blinds go all wavy." The gold-standard fix for five-hour insomnia, says Chernyak, is is cognitive behavioral therapy, which is recommended by the American College of Physicians. That's where you drill down into the actual stressor—your borderline-personality-disorder boss, your passive-aggressive bedmate, the Cubs in the playoffs—and address it. Once your mind is free of that trouble, whatever it is, your sleepy body will follow.
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