one-third of adults don’t get enough sleep, leading the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to call sleep deprivation a public health crisis. On deeper study, this is more substantive than the alarmist headlines imply. Sleep deprivation “causes more than $400 billion in economic losses annually in the United States and results in 1.23 million lost days of work each year,” according to a recent study from RAND. But the deleterious personal health effects are even more shocking. Here is a short list of the effects of lack of sleep:
Severely impaired mental abilities, such as decreased memory formation
Decreased learning ability
Mood changes and irritability
Weight gain
Increased risk of diabetes and heart disease
As this New York Times review states, adequate sleep is probably the easiest way to drastically improve your life.
Read NYT: You’re Getting Very Sleepy. (So Is Everyone Else.)
Read NYT: The Simplest Way to Drastically Improve Your Life - sleepRead CNN: The great American sleep recession
Read RAND: Why sleep matters — the economic costs of insufficient sleep