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Sleep Debt

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If you have been thumbing through our web site, you have found many references to sleep debt. In the following web page, we will provide you with a greater contextual view of the state of America in regard to sleep. We will also show how most of us actually are walking around half-asleep or definitely not fully alert and awake a majority of the time. And, this can have a huge impact on the quality of our lives.

A highly complimentary web page to this subject can be read in the Sleep and Mortality: The Importance of Sleep page of this web site. There you can read about how sleep debt can have amazing effects on our daily lives.

How much sleep is "enough"?

Well, the ultimate answer to this important question is that "enough" sleep is subjective, so it will range from person to person. For our purposes, "enough" sleep will be the amount of sleep that will allow us to feel alert and awake throughout the day. Statistically, this is about 8 to 10 hours for most people.

Unfortunately, this is not how much most of us actually get. Thanks to the fine support of the people, vis-à-vis government and private funding, the National Sleep Foundation helps us get a better understanding of where we as a culture in regard to sleep stand today. They found that on average we Americans only get about 7 hours of sleep each night during the week. Only 37% of people actually reach the 8 or more hours on average over an entire week! And amazingly, 31% of people sleep LESS than 7 hours on average in a given week!

Sleep debt is a pretty easy thing to understand. When we are awake, we accumulate sleep debt and we pay it back when we go to sleep. Just like any form of convenient credit, we spend on credit (increase debt) and eventually pay the debt back down to an equal balance. If we do not pay back our debt of spent energy every night, there are consequences to our actions. Our bodies' creditors come knocking on our door.

Most of us probably think if we miss 30 minutes or an hour of sleep at night, it will not hurt us, and we can 'get away' with it. Well, unfortunately, this is not the case over the long-term and the consequences of not getting the appropriate amount of sleep each night, which can add up and cause a variety of psychological and physiological issues, can be grave (literally).

There is a cumulative effect of sleep debt over time, therefore 30-minutes lost here and there can easily lead to hours of sleep debt over a weeks period of time, which does have an impact on your daily lives more than most of us are aware.

Some of the following can be signs we are not getting enough sleep each night:

• Feelings of tiredness at some point throughout the day
• You fall asleep within a few minutes when going to bed
• Decreases in levels of intolerance and increased levels of hostility
• Reduced ability to concentrate
• Slowed reflexes
• Impaired judgment
• Apathy
• Unusual weight gain or loss
• Change in body temperatures that lead to feelings of chilliness
• Unusual levels of anxiety
• Falling asleep when inappropriate
• Reduced creativity
• Reduced ability to think logically or handle complex tasks
• Increased levels of self-consciousness with increased levels of anxiety

If you find any of these attributes describe you, you might want to try to get a little more sleep each night. Please remember, your Stasis Sleep™ Pillow can help you greatly!

Amazingly, it can be hard to notice many of these symptoms because most of us are so used to or habituated to the lessened capacities, we think it is normal! Sometimes, we go unaware of our great sleep debt because of the amount of environmental stimulation, which can mask our sleepiness. The most noticed of the above symptoms is the daytime sleepiness or loss of alertness, with about 75% of the American adult population reporting daytime sleepiness. Another 34% actually say this daytime sleepiness interferes with their activities.

When actually tested by sleep scientists, we have found that of those who said there was no effect of daytime tiredness on their work performance, only 1 out of every 10 actually were at their peak level of performance! According to these studies, most of us could use more sleep, regardless if we know it or not!

"Dog tired!!"

If you are familiar with depression and anxiety disorders, you might notice a lot of items in the list above are in some cases very descriptive of both of them. That is how devastating it can be to our well being, if we do not get the proper amount of quality sleep our bodies need. We are not trying to scare, but lift the awareness of people so they, if they wish, can make the right steps to improve their lives. Take it or leave it, but we feel better about the way we do business, and we hope to help people help themselves! Who would have thought that getting the right amount of quality sleep could be so important?

We want to stress to you that, if you CHOOSE, we will send you a free book, The Stasis Sleep™ Pillow Companion Guide© that includes all the information in this web site and a lot more (while supplies last)! With this book, you will have a plethora of information to help you to identify areas of your life where you might make some adjustments to improve your sleep, including a sleep diary, self-diagnostic test, and more. How's that for value?

Let's get back to it…

"Why so much sleep debt in America?"

To some, it might be obvious. If you have ever taken a European vacation, you might have noticed the incredibly different pace of the people. It is that way in many areas of the world, including our neighbors Canada and Mexico. We here in America seem driven to do more and more, sometimes at the detriment of our own health. This amazing pace can be hard to see if we have nothing against which to compare it.

It seems to be the nature of our 24-hour, fast paced society to feel the pressure of work, family, and social obligations that keep us so busy we do not get the proper amount of sleep our bodies need. Approximately 40 million of us have chronic sleep disorders and around 20-30 million with cyclic, intermittent sleep problems. That is a lot of folks! This can lead to less satisfaction and productivity in our work, reduction in our good moods, and greater chances of suffering from health issues associated with a decrease in our immune systems…all in great part because we simply do not get enough sleep.

These are amazing statistics!

We, as a culture, have a good work ethic on the whole, but some of us must keep our priorities in order. The old saying, "At least you have your health", might change to "At least you have your work".

Ok, sorry for the rant. We just hope the best for all of us.

Please remember a highly complimentary page to this one is the Sleep and Mortality: The Importance of Sleep page of this web site. And, you can receive all of this information and more with the order of your new Stasis Sleep™ Pillow, if you choose to recieve the free sleep book. Hope some of the above information helps.

Sleep well…

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