[Joss Fong] Your body is a temple…
but mine is also an underfunded museum of natural history.
It shuts down at noon, because I didn’t get enough sleep from the night before.
It turns out I’m not alone in this.
“This is hard to hear, but no shocker really...”
“The Center for Disease Control says insufficient sleep is public health epidemic…”
“More than a third of Americans aren’t getting enough sleep...”
The recommended amount of sleep varies by age, with newborns needing the most, and adults
needing at least seven hours.
But, while over 60% of Americans are getting enough restful sleep, there is a striking
disparity when you look at race.
Only a little over half of black Americans reported getting 7 hours or more of sleep.
Sleep is essential to health.
Everyone has to do it.
What does a good night’s sleep look like?
A good night’s sleep is spending at least 85% of the time sleeping in the bed — like
on an actual bed, not on the floor, not on the couch, not underneath someone’s desk, sorry Sam
— falling asleep in 30 minutes or under, waking up only once per night, and if you
do wake up it’s for less than 20 minutes.
And don’t forget the recommended 7 hours or more of sleep.
Bad sleep is spending less than 74% of sleeping time in bed, taking more than an hour to fall
asleep, waking up numerous times throughout the night, and if you do wake up it’s for
41 minutes or more during the night.
Getting too little or bad sleep can have negative effects.
There is a suspicion that disparities in sleep are also contributing to disparities
in other areas in health,
like heart disease, diabetes, obesity, and maybe even early death.
All these health risks and conditions disproportionately affect black Americans, who are five times
more likely to get short sleep.
Researchers point to stress caused by discrimination as one strong possibility.
Since 2000, over 700 published studies have established a connection between discrimination
and physical and mental wellness.
In one study, scientists found that the more discrimination a person felt, the less deep
sleep they experienced.
The black participants of this study perceived more discrimination and slept more in light
sleep and less in deep sleep.
Poor sleep quality is also strongly associated with how much money you make.
Black americans are more likely to live in poverty compared to white americans.
It's a function of economics.
It shows people who are working shifts probably won’t get the best sleep compared to folks
who have a consistent schedule.
[Lauren Hale} Generally, people who have more opportunities, more control over their lives,
are also better sleepers.
There’s a connection between neighborhood quality and sleep quality too.
Poor communities are faced with higher pollution, elevated noise levels, crime, greater population
density, and sometimes limited access to air-conditioning.
Even if black families are middle-income, they’re more likely to live in poorer neighborhoods,
which means these environmental factors could still influence their sleep.
All of these things — the environment, the economy, stress — can compound on existing health
conditions.
A consistent finding is that when we see sleep disruptions, we also start seeing signs of
insulin resistance— which is a precursor to diabetes.
You start to see signs of increased appetite. You start to see signs that people aren't regulating
their metabolism so well.
Long-term stress can lead to chronic elevated cortisol levels — which suppress the immune
system, increase blood pressure, contribute to obesity, and more.
Obesity — which affects almost half of all black adults in the US — contributes to
other serious sleep conditions like sleep apnea.
A disorder where breathing is interrupted during sleep.
And sleep apnea increase the risk for stroke and heart attack.
Bad sleep can even change your DNA.
Every single cell of your body has a clock that cycles that turns on and off throughout
the day.
All these clocks are producing feedback loops, so when you disrupt the big clock
in your brain, you're probably going to disrupt these little
clocks throughout your body.
Even modest sleep loss can trigger the immune system's inflammatory response to disease and
injury.
It all becomes a vicious cycle leading to worsening health conditions.
Having enough good sleep is a big deal.
But just telling people to "get more sleep" probably isn’t that effective.
Fixing the sleep gap means handling it at both the individual level and policy level.
Having accessible and affordable public transportation, and housing near jobs would help workers spend
less time commuting and more time sleeping.
Employers could use sleep wellness programs to incentivize workers to catch up on their
Z’s though a government mandate would make this more widespread.
Even some researchers are using community outreach to guide neighborhoods to better
sleep.
Then there are steps people can take for more restful sleep.
It seems pretty clear that there's a correlation between bad sleep and poor health outcomes.
It still not know if you give people better sleep, if those health outcomes will then improve.
And this research is still ongoing, so this is going to be a really key thing to know,
that if we can improve people’s sleep, we may be able to make them healthier.
And maybe tackling other inequalities in the US would be more of a reality and less of
a dream.