When Paul Harris stays out late on a gig, he usually finds himself "in a fog" the next day. After getting only four hours' sleep, the 43-year-old musician and social activist says his singing voice and creativity suffer.
"I'm not as sharp," he says, sipping espresso diluted with decaf in a Charles Village coffee shop. "My body isn't running the way it should be."
Harris has plenty of company. While many of us have trouble getting a good night's sleep, many more scrimp on shut-eye because of work schedules, or simply by choice. American adults sleep less than seven hours a night on average, surveys show, and a third limit shut-eye to less than six hours to cram in more work or play.
Although some people do fine with less sleep, eight hours is still considered the norm - and there's a price to be paid for not getting it. Recent research indicates that chronic undersleeping does more than undermine productivity or make people more irritable and prone to dozing off. It also increases the risk of accidents and may contribute to serious, long-term problems such as obesity, diabetes and heart disease.
"Ours is a sleep-deprived society," says Dr. Steven M. Scharf, medical director of the University of Maryland Sleep Disorders Center. "We know that sleep is essential to life. Deprive rats of sleep, and they die."
Up to 60 percent of Americans report at least occasional sleep problems, according to the National Sleep Foundation. About 10 percent of adults suffer from chronic insomnia, which means they can't get to sleep, or they can't stay asleep through the night. About 6 percent have obstructive sleep apnea, in which the airways collapse repeatedly and disrupt normal slumber.
Willingly deprived or not, those who don't get enough sleep may be undermining their health, researchers say.
Nurses study
A national study published this year tracking 71,617 nurses found that women who got five hours of sleep or less nightly over a decade had a 39 percent greater risk of heart attack than those who managed eight hours.
Oddly, nurses who got nine hours or more also had more heart attacks than the eight-hour group. Dr. David White of Harvard Medical School, one of the study's authors, called that finding puzzling.
"There's not an obvious answer, unless there's some subtle sleep disorder we can't think of that's making them spend nine or 10 hours in bed," he said.
