The often-overlooked value(s) of sleep

By Meghan Neal, P.W. Gillibrand, Co., Inc.

Do you think getting enough sleep matters when it comes to workplace safety? Well, current research shows that lack of sleep is a relatively new and increasing concern for our civilization, having originated only in the last 100 years.

Today, close to 65% of adults in developed nations are not getting the recommended seven to nine hours of sleep opportunity. This doesn’t equate to seven to nine hours of actual sleep time, but the opportunity for your body to obtain it. One-third of people in the U.S. get less than seven hours a night according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

If we don’t get the recommended minimum, many detrimental effects can occur to our health and longevity. These include effects to our cardiovascular, immune, and even digestive systems. New research has linked lack of sleep to Alzheimer’s disease due to preventing the body from removing beta amyloid and other neurological waste by-products. The brain’s rinse/wash cycle only happens during sleep. Incidentally, both Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan bragged about the little amount of sleep they got, and both suffered from this terrible condition.

The fact of the matter is, we cannot escape our biology. Humans have been hard-wired to be diurnal creatures; awake during the day and asleep at night. Almost 25% of people don’t work during the day and shift workers bear more negative consequences for gaming this biological need than their first shift counterparts. They are more likely to have adverse reproductive outcomes, cancer, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes. In 2020, the

World Health Organization classified night shift work as “probably carcinogenic to humans” (Group 2A). Third shift workers often push the limit of 16 hours of wakefulness before getting in a car and driving home for an extended commute, precisely when the thinking brain or prefrontal cortex is not receiving alert signals from the optic nerve in time to take appropriate action to avoid accidents. Response speeds for sleepy test subjects were 50% slower and accuracy was worse than the corresponding level of alcohol consumption. Going 17 to 19 hours without sleep is the same as having a Blood Alcohol Concentration (BAC) of 0.05%, or impaired on the legally drunk scale. Passing 20 hours without sleep equates to having a BAC of 0.08%, or at the legal limit.

Across the board, lack of sleep interferes with your neurons ability to translate what is being seen into coherent thoughts. The neurons in your brain fire more slowly and lose strength. People who get more sleep think more quickly, have quicker reflexes, and focus better. They are also more patient and creative. Ironically, sleep deprived people will not perceive their effort as being lesser than, but they cannot judge their own level of impairment precisely because they are impaired. Thinking slows down and becomes fixated. They are not able to think of alternative solutions. Can this affect worker safety? You bet. Especially during critical task completion or times when clear communication is essential.

Adequate sleep also benefits memory and learning, both for fact-based and skills-based information. Sleep spindles are responsible for memory encoding and retrieval. They flag items learned during the day and transfer the information to the brain’s long term memory reservoir. A full night’s sleep can increase memory retention by as much as 20-40%. One study found a 20% increase in performance speed and almost a 35% improvement in accuracy when subjects were tested the day after learning. Pause problems are removed and skills become fluid, implanted by sleep into the motor cortex and at the level of unconsciousness or automaticity. Sleep spindles are concentrated more on the area of the motor cortex that was involved in learning the routine during that day’s practice. And it isn’t the absolute number of sleep spindles that predict a person’s ability to learn and remember, but rather the rejuvenation of the spindles’ activity after a solid night’s sleep.

Most relevant to the business community may be how much lack of sleep can affect the bottom line. Health and safety impacts aside, researchers estimate sleepy employees can cost your company anywhere from $2,000 to $3,500 per employee per year, with the upper amount representing chronically sleep deprived employees. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, California had almost 17,500 manufacturing establishments in 2021, with an average employment size of 7,600 workers. Sleep deprivation is costing these companies anywhere from $15.2 to $26.6 million each year in lost productivity. If focusing on one driver has the potential for these returns, it’s a wonder why more companies are not promoting and incentivizing sleep with their employees. Of the companies that attended the CalCIMA Spring Thaw conference this year, only one reported having a program or policy designed around promoting adequate sleep. For more

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These incredible facts have been brilliantly revealed in Dr. Matthew Walker’s book, “Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams.” In his New York Times bestseller, Dr. Walker not only discusses the stages of sleep but, more importantly, why they are necessary to our physical, mental, and emotional well-being. He discusses some of the 17,000 plus scientific studies that have been done, which illustrate sleep’s benefits for our performance, and what the deleterious consequences are of shorting ourselves of this basic, fundamental biological necessity. n