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Category: Sleep
Here’s The Insomnia Recovery Rate Even Without Treatment
Even good sleepers frequently experience insomnia.
Even good sleepers frequently experience insomnia.
Around one-quarter of Americans who are ‘good sleepers’ experience acute insomnia each year.
However, without treatment 75 percent recovered without developing persistent sleep problems.
Of the rest, 21 percent got on to have recurring bouts of insomnia.
The remaining 4 percent developed chronic insomnia.
Insomnia is defined as having trouble falling asleep or staying asleep for at least three nights a week across two weeks.
The condition becomes chronic when it continues for three months.
Dr Michael Perlis, study author, said:
“Whether caused by stress, illness, medications, or other factors, poor sleep is very common.
These findings reveal new insights about the paths that acute insomnia takes and can inform interventions that target poor sleep and help people recover sustained sufficient sleep.”
The study tracked 1,435 adults for a year.
All were initially defined as ‘good sleepers’: able to fall asleep within 15 minutes and not remaining awake for more than 15 minutes during the night.
The study’s authors conclude:
“The incidence rate of acute insomnia (3 or more nights a week for between 2 and 12 weeks) is remarkably high.
This said, most incident cases resolve within a few days to weeks. Incident chronic insomnia only occurs in about 2 in 100 individuals.”
Adaptive insomnia
So, why is insomnia so common?
It may be that insomnia in response to stressful situations helped keep our ancestors alive — after all, it is sub-optimal to be fast asleep in your cave when there’s a pack of wolves outside it.
The study’s authors explain:
“…it is possible that AI [acute insomnie] may be normative (i.e. expected as part of the natural rhythm of sleep/insomnia) , if not adaptive.
One way this might be true is that the AI that occurs with stress may be an unrecognized part of the fight-flight response; a necessary override to the normal two process regulation of sleep timing, depth and/or duration.
Put differently, stress induced insomnia may prohibit the systematic imperative for sleep under unsafe conditions.”
Unfortunately, the knowledge that periodic insomnia is normal doesn’t make it any less unpleasant.
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The study was published in the journal Sleep (Perlis et al., 2019).
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Why Sleep-Deprived People Push Everyone Away (And It’s Contagious)
Almost half of all Americans report feeling lonely or left out.
Almost half of all Americans report feeling lonely or left out.
Sleep deprivation makes people feel more lonely.
Not only that, but lack of sleep makes people less likely to engage with others, so compounding the problem of loneliness.
The reason is that people feel socially unattractive when they don’t get enough sleep.
And others spot this: loneliness is spread, almost virally, from sleepy people to the well-rested after only a short encounter.
The study’s findings show that lack of sleep and loneliness interact with each other to make the problem worse.
Professor Matthew Walker, study co-author, said:
“We humans are a social species.
Yet sleep deprivation can turn us into social lepers.”
Sleep’s social cost
For one study, the researchers scanned people’s brains while they watched videos of strangers walking towards them.
Brain activity in the sleep deprived showed they would rather avoid social contact.
Professor Walker said:
“The less sleep you get, the less you want to socially interact.
In turn, other people perceive you as more socially repulsive, further increasing the grave social-isolation impact of sleep loss.
That vicious cycle may be a significant contributing factor to the public health crisis that is loneliness.”
Dr Eti Ben Simon, the study’s first author, said:
“It’s perhaps no coincidence that the past few decades have seen a marked increase in loneliness and an equally dramatic decrease in sleep duration.
Without sufficient sleep we become a social turn-off, and loneliness soon kicks in.”
Professor Walker thinks the lack of a safety net is why sleep deprivation can be so harmful:
“There’s no biological or social safety net for sleep deprivation as there is for, say, starvation.
That’s why our physical and mental health implode so quickly even after the loss of just one or two hours of sleep.
On a positive note, just one night of good sleep makes you feel more outgoing and socially confident, and furthermore, will attract others to you.”
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The study was published in the journal Nature Communications (Simon & Walker, 2018).
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