Sleep Debt: ‘Societal Insomnia’?

Abstract

Many ‘normal sleepers’ in today’s society apparently suffer from chronic sleep loss, known as ‘sleep debt’. This ‘societal insomnia’ leads to claims that it causes obesity, cardiovascular disease and other disorders. Despite being largely based on debatable assertions that we slept for longer, one must also question whether such longer sleep was ‘better’ then, given that life was generally harder, with poorer living conditions, more illness and shorter life expectancies. Moreover, before the electric light and the industrial age, our sleep would naturally alter with seasonal changes in daylight, food availability and other waking pressures. Although by asking people, today, ‘how much more sleep would you like ?’, this often results in positive answers, it fails to discriminate between sleep need versus desire. Definitions of ‘habitually short sleep’ are unclear, often confounded by ‘time in bed’, and to judge sleep only by length, ignores the importance of its quality, as hour by hour, a night’s sleep is not equivalent in terms of recuperation, which declines as sleep progresses.