March 29, 2011, 1:30 pm
Writing for USA Today’s Your Life, Dr. Qanta Ahmed spotlighted the term “sleep machismo“” Americans, in general, are sleep deprived; as their doctors, those in my profession are often no different. Ours is a culture which values “Sleep Machismo,” a term coined by leading chronobiologist Dr. Charles Czeisler in his sentient article in the Harvard Business Review some years ago. I direct every patient who comes to see me to read this important paper; his ideas are that important. Sleep Machismo means valuing sleep loss over sleep, placing all activities above the basic human need of sleep and celebrating the machismo of the sleep-deprived. Americans perceive sleep as an expendable luxury, rather than a biological necessity. Day after day, week after week, we choose to defer bedtime in the interests of a favorite TV show, reading one more article, answering one more e-mail, or catching up on the phone. All the while, we are accumulating sleep debt — a debt which, like financial debt, incurs steep penalties. In 2006, Czeisler argued that “contemporary work and social culture glorifies sleeplessness in the way we once glorified people who could hold their liquor.”
Read the rest of the article here.
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