Sleep Deprivation: Habits, Solutions, and Strategies Teach-Out

Sleep deprivation is a silent epidemic. Since the invention of the light bulb, we have increasingly had less sleep than our ancestors. We prioritize work, school, socializing, sports, screen time – just about everything – over sleeping. Sleep is viewed as compressible, something that can be made up at any time, but rarely is. Most believe this poses little risk. Unfortunately, they could not be more wrong.

The truth is an adequate amount of good-quality sleep is critical to good health. Lack of sleep leads to deadly crashes, reduces productivity, and harms the quality of life. Insufficient or disordered sleep can increase the risk for anxiety, depression, heart attack, stroke, arrhythmia, heart failure, and early death. This Teach-Out can be your first step in doing something about sleep deprivation.

By joining this Teach-Out, you will be able to:

• Understand how the sleep deprivation epidemic affects your health and well-being.
• Implement solutions to improve your sleep habits.
• Identify strategies you can harness to improve the quality of sleep within your community.

Welcome!

Throughout this Teach-Out, we'll cover many different aspects of the conversation around Sleep Deprivation. In the following section, we'll introduce sleep deprivation as an epidemic and answer some commonly asked questions about sleep: What do we know about the social impact of chronic sleep deprivation? What are the negative consequences of sleep loss? How can you assess your sleepiness, and what does it tell you?

In the following video, Ron Chervin M.D., M.S., Director of the University of Michigan Sleep Disorder Center and Professor of Neurology, speaks with Louise O’Brien, P.h.D., M.S. Research Associate Professor in the Sleep Disorder Center in the Department of Neurology, about the epidemic of chronic sleep deprivation and how to become more knowledgeable about sleep deprivation in your own life.

Then, Jonathan Barkham, M.D., Instructor in Internal Medicine and Instructor in Neurology, Medical School, answers some frequently asked questions and debunks common myths about sleep.