This article was originally published at The Mad Genius Club on July 14, 2018. Sleep is getting more attention in the last few years, which is a good thing. Also, the careful reader will attend to my passing comments on virology, two years before a global panic would take place.
the innocent sleep,
Sleep that knits up the raveled sleave of care,
The death of each day’s life, sore labor’s bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course,
Chief nourisher in life’s feast.
--Shakespeare, Macbeth Act 2 Scene 2
I slept in. This is not an apology for that - I really needed the sleep for a variety of reasons. Sleep is important, and while sleeping too much can get you a stigma of being lazy, sleeping too little can actually make you crazy. Studies also show ¹that while the detrimental effects of lack of sleep are generally known, the worst thing you can do to yourself is to have partial sleep loss - long term sleep deprivation you can actually adjust to and cope with, although you will certainly see an impact to your motor skills, mood and thinking ability. But interrupted sleep takes that and makes it three times worse (and those are numbers from the meta analysis I linked above.) Yes, coffee does actually help², although according to that study, not necessarily as quickly nor as long as people seem to assume. Ninety minutes until the caffeine in serum peaks, and 12 hours until it's gone. But eventually psychoactive legal drugs aren't going to help (writes the author after having taken a long sip of her hot coffee). Your mood, your performance, and your motor skills are going to be shot until you can get adequate rest. And if you're sick, you need more sleep than normal.
Understanding the effects of the lack of sleep on the human psyche can not only help the writers among us live more rested and productive lives, but can help us model and mold realistic characters. Under the influence of sleeplessness, a normally smart person can make profoundly stupid decisions. For one thing, sleep deprivation affects our ability to think creatively - the ability to make 'rules based' decisions seems to be uninhibited³, but emotion is harder to control and can lead to some very peculiar and out of character actions. Sleep deprivation doesn't necessarily affect the physiology of the sleepless person4, but their work performance is nonetheless impacted. For an author's purpose, this means that pressure can be built up on our heroes simply by depriving them of sleep - especially sleep that allows them the deep and continuous rest their brains need. There are a number of ways this can easily and naturally be written into a story. I myself have dealt with the effects and can, ruefully, imbue them with all my own experience of having been a young mother who rarely got more than a few hours at a time... There were other experiences, but I suspect all of us can name a time when we weren't sleeping well, and as a result made stupid decisions.
Other than coffee (or mocha, my preferred vehicle of maximal caffeine intake), there are other ways to try and combat sleepiness when one cannot fall asleep or Bad Things Happen. Turning on the lights, exercising... but they only work well during the normal wakeful hours5 of your circadian rhythm. For most of us, that's during the day, although humans can certainly adapt to night shift work. However, with that adaptation is associated more health risks6, and the worst kind of sleep disturbance comes with people who have to work on moving shifts - sometimes day, sometimes night, sometimes both... like nurses. It adds up, and takes a toll. More accidents, poorer overall health, decreased alertness and cognition...
There's a reason I wanted to sleep in. Sleep also allows the body down time to heal. Despite the fact that in the last couple of years I can look back and see that I am healthier now than I was a decade ago, by far, I still know that I'm older and will heal more slowly. But it did get me thinking about writing characters who are human: we get sick. Even if you are writing a super-advanced science fiction, it is highly unlikely to have conquered all disease. Pathogens are a slippery lot. Look, the cold virus mutates at the drop of a hat. Bernadette Durbin made me giggle the other day talking about drawing up a cartoon of the flu virus showing up at a human's door in halloween costumes every year, and the human's immune system lets them in, because it's dumb and a sucker for hats and false mustaches. Which isn't quite how it works, but close enough to make me laugh. And that spaceship crew who is immunized against all the big known diseases, with loads of antibodies... isn't going to be any smarter. Most of us here have complained about con crud. How about planetary leave crud? Or what happens when that partial sleep deprivation we discussed above depresses your immune system7 enough for you to catch a germ you wouldn't normally be affected by? I suddenly have a vision of a spaceship that is undermanned, has been on high alert, and an opportunistic pathogen takes hold... As an author, this is fun. As a person, it's all too true and part of life, so I sleep responsibly.
So there's another tool in your writer's workbox. Yet another way to torture your main characters and influence them in ways they are probably unconscious of. Or have a spaceship's doctor become the hero by advocation of sufficient sleep to knit up the crew. Or a way to show your villain in a murder mystery slowly falling apart because he can no longer sleep and his psycopathic wife is nagging him into madness. You know what to do.
Bibliography:
1. June J. Pilcher, Allen I. Huffcutt; Effects of Sleep Deprivation on Performance: A Meta-Analysis, Sleep, Volume 19, Issue 4, 1 June 1996, Pages 318–326, https://doi.org/10.1093/sleep/19.4.318
2. Penetar, D., McCann, U., Thorne, D. et al.; Caffeine Reversal of Sleep Deprivation Effects on Alertness and Mood, Psychopharmacology (1993) 112: 359. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02244933
3. Killgore, W. D. (2010). Effects of sleep deprivation on cognition. Progress in Brain Research, 105-129. doi:10.1016/b978-0-444-53702-7.00007-5
4. C. D. Rodgers, D. H. Paterson, D. A. Cunningham, E. G. Noble, F. P. Pettigrew, W. S. Myles, A. W. Taylor; Sleep Deprivation: Effects on Work Capacity, Self-Paced Walking, Contractile Properties and Perceived Exertion, Sleep, Volume 18, Issue 1, 1 January 1995, Pages 30–38, https://doi.org/10.1093/sleep/18.1.30
5. Rachel Leproult, Olivier Van Reeth, Maria M. Byrne, Jeppe Sturis, and Eve Van Cauter; Sleepiness, Performance, and Neuroendocrine Function during Sleep Deprivation: Effects of Exposure to Bright Light or Exercise, Journal of Biological Rhythms Vol 12, Issue 3, pp. 245 - 258, https://doi.org/10.1177/074873049701200306
6. Härmä, M., Tenkanen, L., Sjöblom, T., Alikoski, T., & Heinsalmi, P. (1998). Combined effects of shift work and life-style on the prevalence of insomnia, sleep deprivation and daytime sleepiness. Scandinavian Journal of Work, Environment & Health,24(4), 300-307. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/40966779
7. M Irwin, J McClintick, C Costlow, M Fortner, J White, and J C Gillin; Partial night sleep deprivation reduces natural killer and cellular immune responses in humans, FASEBJournal, Published Online:1 Apr 1996https://doi.org/10.1096/fasebj.10.5.8621064
header image: 'Clockwork Dimensions' by Cedar Sanderson
I myself have realized the importance of sleep a mere two years ago. Combing all the knowledge concerning the circadian rhythm with proper exercise and diet has made a profound difference in how I feel. My mind and reflexes are sharper and quicker, not to mention my creative processes. I reckon I'm scratching at the surface of what normal should be.
Yep sleep in good and lack of such is a bit of a bother. I dimly remember putting in a 72 hour straight shift when I went back to work after the flood, followed by a week or so of 16 hour shifts and sleeping at the plant (OK, I admit I'm of an age where there's much I remember only dimly but that occurrence is a particularly dim memory.) .
Nowadays if I'm upright after ten I may tend to be a bit cross the next day.
Day before yesterday my computer lost it's voice, audio output dead, nonexistent. I was up until after midnight tracing wires and currents in the real world and one and knots (Misspelling intentional) on the computer in terminal mode finding that Intel's device7ad0 (revision 11) or perhaps HP's device 895c may be faulty. So far Intel can't tell me if a device7ad0 is the descriptive of an item in their system or if they have a replacement. I will allow that I shouted a few words harsher than OH POOP at the universe.
Yep sleep's important though sometime you have to, or at least think you have to muddle on. I admit the older I get the harder it s to keep on muddling.
I must also admit, even now, two days after burning and ounce or three of the midnight oil I'm still not at my best.