In Search of Sleep

Fresh perspectives for a culture that can’t wind down

by Wendy Kagan and illustrations by Annie Internicola, October 26, 2011

I’ve been on the lookout for a good night’s sleep since I was 10 years old. It was a bout of perfectionism over a fifth-grade science project that first threw my delicate dream rhythms off balance. On the eve of my bat mitzvah, my father kindly slipped me a Valium—cut precisely in half for a makeshift child’s dose. I indulged in some pint-sized handwringing over sleeplessness, but by the time I got to college I had fully embraced my wakeful nature. Insomnia was in fact my secret superpower: Needing less sleep than others meant that I could study well into the night. I graduated with high honors, a bouquet of awards, and bags under my eyes. After two babies, an insurmountable sleep debt began its steady climb. Perhaps my weaker adult metabolism couldn’t handle the deficit, because navigating life after a bad night felt like stumbling through heavy fog. Sleep was the new sex—and I wasn’t getting enough.

I know I’m not alone in my quest for that sweet elixir: more Zs. As many as 30 to 40 percent of Americans experience occasional sleeplessness, according to the American Sleep Association. The number of chronic insomniacs is smaller, estimated at 10 percent. Yet even the average, easy sleepers among us are not getting as much shut-eye as they used to. In 1960—when most television stations went off the air at midnight and the Internet and cell phones didn’t yet exist—a National Cancer Society survey found that most people reported an average of 8½ hours of sleep a night. Today, surveys peg the average sleep time to be a Spartan 6½ to 7 hours.

Sleep is simply not fashionable in the 21st century. In these days of digital stimulation, omnipresent Starbucks, and overpacked schedules, it’s more likely that we’ll boast of how little sleep we need and how much we’ve accomplished than regale our friends with tales of long, luxurious stretches of unconsciousness. Bill Clinton is a poster boy of the “short sleeper,” claiming to need only four or five hours of slumber a night; likewise for other world-dominators like Martha Stewart, Margaret Thatcher, and Condoleezza Rice. Yet is there a health price to pay for short-changing our biological needs? Is there hope for the sleep-challenged among us—whether we’re night owls by nature, suffering from true sleep disorders, or simply conforming to a highly caffeinated societal norm? My snooze-deprived mind buzzing with questions, I call a sleep doctor for answers. In fact, I call three—and all are too busy to call me back. Sign of the times?

Your Brain on Less Sleep
While I can’t seem to get a small-town sleep doctor on the phone to save my life, one of the world’s preeminent sleep researchers—Dr. David Dinges—returns my call almost immediately. As the head of the Sleep and Chronobiology Laboratory at the Hospital at University of Pennsylvania, Dinges performs sleep studies for the likes of the National Institutes of Health, NASA, and the Department of Defense. For the past 15 years, you might say that he’s been hosting a continuous sleepover party in his lab, with one crucial ingredient in short supply: sleep. “We probably study more healthy people undergoing chronic partial sleep loss than any other laboratory in the world,” says Dinges.