Fitting everything into an already overcrowded day can be like trying to jam a pizza box into a garbage bag. It may fit, but something’s got to give.
Much of the time, what’s giving is sleep. Instead of sacrificing a good book, a favorite television show, or a few extra minutes of social networking, people have found a way to stretch their days by stealing from their nights.
Most people need between seven and eight hours of sleep a day. Lisa Shives, MD, medical director of Northshore Sleep Medicine near Chicago, stretches the upper number to eight-and-a-half hours. But it’s the bottom number that most concerns her. “I think an hour less a night consistently is enough to start to see impairment in people’s cognition and mood,” she says.
Lately, she’s had patients tell her that they’re getting less sleep not because they can’t fit all their activities into their days. “What they’ll say is ‘I know I’m going to bed too late, but it’s that last hour that I take for myself,’” she says.
Some people swear they can get by on fewer hours and still feel fine. But mental alertness and a lack of headaches aren’t the only cues of how they’re handling sleep deprivation.