WAKE UP ‘SID’ , BUT WHEN!

Sleep is what I feel has been the most undervalued and overlooked  part of our daily life.  Everyone seems to be following a simple time management rule - “ Smuggle sleep”, but let me tell you that it is not a good rule  on any given day or should  I say any given night.Though there are also some who would refuse to cut down on  their normal sleep come hell or high water, but the trend is increasingly towards the former.

I received  one of those e-mail forwards .It was captioned “ What killed Ranjan Das (CEO of SAP labs) ?”

Being a techie myself I was quite taken aback and got curious to  read further.

“Ranjan, just 42 years of age, was the CEO of SAP-Indian Subcontinent, the youngest CEO of an MNC in India .  The Doctors investigated more on Ranjan’s lifestyle and habits in order to know what led to his death.They found out that Ranjan used to make do with 4-5 hours of sleep.

1.  Short sleep duration (<5 or 5-6 hours) increased risk for high BP by 350% to 500% compared to those who slept longer than 6 hours per night.

2. Young people (25-49 years of age) are twice as likely to get high BP if they sleep less. Paper published in 2006.

3. Individuals who slept less than 5 hours a night had a 3-fold increased risk of heart attacks. Paper published in 1999.

4. Complete and partial lack of sleep increased the blood concentrations of High sensitivity C-Reactive Protein (hs-cRP), the strongest predictor of heart attacks. Even after getting adequate sleep later, the levels stayed high!!

5. Just one night of sleep loss increases very toxic substances in body such as Interleukin-6 (IL-6), Tumour Necrosis Factor-Alpha (TNF-alpha) and C-reactive protein (cRP). They increase risks of many medical
conditions, including cancer, arthritis and heart disease. Paper published in 2004.

6. Sleeping for <=5 hours per night leads to 39% increase in heart disease. Sleeping for <=6 hours per night leads to 18% increase in heart disease. Paper published in 2006.

In conclusion:
Barring stress control, Ranjan Das did everything right: eating proper food,exercising (marathoning!), maintaining proper weight. But he missed getting proper and adequate sleep, minimum 7 hours. and, that killed him.”

The credibility , of the above findings and conclusion, is questionable, so I tried to find out more authorized information to solve this ‘sleep suspense’. 

Understandably so , when you are being told that your wrong sleeping habits are a  ‘potential poison’ , you would very much want  to know the right dose of sleep. At least I wanted to.

So I asked Uncle Google, and he referred me to one of the threads in TIME magazine. http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1812420,00.html

The counselor in this discussion was Daniel Kripke, co-director of research at the Scripps Clinic Sleep Center in La Jolla, California. Impressed by the credentials and going by the reputation of TIME magazine , I prepared myself mentally to take daniel’s word. But to my surprise, the plot thickened as I slowly read through what he said and I quote “ Studies show that people who sleep between 6.5 hr. and 7.5 hr. a night, live the longest. And people who sleep 8 hr. or more, or less than 6.5 hr., they don't live quite as long. There is just as much risk associated with sleeping too long as with sleeping too short. The big surprise is that long sleep seems to start at 8 hr. Sleeping 8.5 hr. might really be a little worse than sleeping 5 hr.”

This got my goat , I started with the view that sleeping less is a curse , but now I was told that sleeping more is even a bigger curse. This sleep thing really became a nightmare for me.
At the end of it, I learnt that ‘ Improper sleep’ cuts both ways and it cuts really sharp. So, I decided to make my peace with the magic number of ‘6.5-7.5 hrs’, and not loose anymore sleep over this matter.