Being Sleep Deprived Could Cause Serious Accidents

Exercise 4, Chapter 11

You may think that not sleeping as much is viewed as a good, cool thing to do, but it could

Diana Gant has been a professor in the Psychology Department at Anoka Ramsey Community College for 17 years. She is recognized as one of the nation’s leaders in the study of sleep. She started studying sleep even before graduation from college, writing her thesis as a graduate student.

Gant said that when she started out, she was interesting in writing about people who got little sleep and continued to be productive. However, a problem arose when her subjects got a chance to sleep in dark, quiet rooms and slept for nine hours. That added to other work convinced her that most people suffer from sleep deprivation.

Gant has found that people should get about nine to 10 hours of sleep each night, though the average person only gets around seven. She has also found that when a person doesn’t get enough sleep they are much more susceptible to causing accidents.

Gant has looked at major disaster like the space shuttle Challenger, the accident at Russia’s Chernobyl nuclear reactor and the Exxon Valdez oil spill. She says that the element of sleeplessness contributed to all of them and “probably caused all of them.”

Through studies of the number of car accidents in the state right after daylight savings time in the spring, Gant has found that there is an 8 percent increase the day after the time change, since most people lose an hour of sleep. She found a corresponding decrease in accidents in the fall when people gain back that hour of sleep. She says that the increase in accidents as a whole is because not only are people losing that hour of sleep, but their biological clock must be reset until the fall, when in must be reset again.

If you aren’t getting enough sleep, Gant recommends you relax for an hour or so before going to bed by watching TV or reading a book. Don’t drink or eat much, especially things with caffeine or sugar in them, as that will upset your sleep. And when you’re going to bed, shut off the lights and close the blinds, a silent and dark room will best help you sleep soundly.