In today’s success-obsessed society, sleep is often looked at as a bad thing. We tend to admire and respect those who brag about how much sleep they don’t get because they’re too busy “grinding” or “getting this money”. We throw around phrases like “sleep when you die” and “sleep is for broke people” in our never-ending quest for success. What we have to keep in mind though is that good health IS wealth. Getting a good night’s sleep is not a negative thing, but a necessary component for your mind and body to function properly. Some people function well on only a few hours of sleep at night while others need a full eight hours of sleep to function properly…and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that! It’s what you do with the hours that you’re awake that count! This is a story of a young woman who, unfortunately, did not know how much damage sleep deprivation can do to your body and paid the ultimate price after a 30-hour work binge. Read her tragic story plus the 10 surprising effects of lack of sleep below and use it as a cautionary reminder the next time you’re bragging about how much sleep you DON’T get….
Mita Diran regularly turned to Twitter and Tumblr to vent about working ridiculously long hours for her employer, Young & Rubicam Indonesia. “The more you spend time at the office, the more you consider moving your bed here,” she wrote back in October. Her tweets were often accompanied by the hashtag #AgencyLife.
The very dedicated employee often posted updates about her hectic job.
An employee of the young woman's father posted explained she was drinking too many energy drinks to stay awake and it attacked her heart.
The Jakarta copywriter as 'working over the limit,' according to her mom.
Family and friends of Mita Duran urged other to know their limit.
On December 14, Diran was again on Twitter. “30 hours of working and still going strooong,” she tweeted. Hours later she suffered heart failure and slipped into a coma from which she wouldn’t awake.
Though Diran’s death was immediately attributed to overwork — A Path post attributed to her father, an ad agency employee himself, suggests Diran may have been working for up to three days straight — local media reports say her regular consumption of the energy drink Krating Daeng (also known as “Thai Red Bull”) may have also contributed to her sudden demise.
On Nov. 14, the 24-year-old slept in an hour and called it the 'sweetest sleep I've had in a long time.'
Sadly, Diran is not the first young ad agency employee this year to die after spending an impossible number of hours in the office.
A 24-year-old Ogilvy & Mather employee dropped dead suddenly of a massive heart attack in the august ad agency’s Beijing offices after… Read…
In May, Ogilvy & Mather China confirmed that 24-year-old Li Yuan collapsed at his desk from an apparent cardiac arrest after working until 11 p.m. every day for a month.
He was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital. – Via Gawker
10 Surprising Effects Lack of Sleep Can Have On Your Body:
1. Sleepiness causes accidents – the recent Metro North train accident in the Bronx that killed 4 and injured 63 caused by a sleepy motorman is a perfect example. Sleep loss is also a big public safety hazard every day on the road. Drowsiness can slow reaction time as much as driving drunk. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that fatigue is a cause in 100,000 auto crashes and 1,550 crash-related deaths a year in the U.S. The problem is greatest among people under 25 years old.
2. Sleep Loss Dumbs You Down – Sleep plays a critical role in thinking and learning. Lack of sleep hurts these cognitive processes in many ways. First, it impairs attention, alertness, concentration, reasoning, and problem solving. This makes it more difficult to learn efficiently.
3. Sleep Deprivation Can Lead To Serious Health Problems – Sleep disorders and chronic sleep loss can put you at risk for:
Heart disease
Heart attack
Heart failure
Irregular heartbeat
High blood pressure
Stroke
Diabetes
4. Lack of Sleep Kills Sex Drive – Sleep specialists say that sleep-deprived men and women report lower libidos and less interest in sex. Depleted energy, sleepiness, and increased tension may be largely to blame.
5. Sleepiness is Depressing – Over time, lack of sleep and sleep disorders can contribute to the symptoms of depression. In a 2005 Sleep in America poll, people who were diagnosed with depression or anxiety were more likely to sleep less than six hours at night.
6. Lack of Sleep Ages Your Skin – Most people have experienced sallow skin and puffy eyes after a few nights of missed sleep. But it turns out that chronic sleep loss can lead to lackluster skin, fine lines, and dark circles under the eyes. When you don’t get enough sleep, your body releases more of the stress hormone cortisol. In excess amounts, cortisol can break down skin collagen, the protein that keeps skin smooth and elastic.
7. Sleepiness Makes You Forgetful – Trying to keep your memory sharp? Try getting plenty of sleep. In 2009, American and French researchers determined that brain events called “sharp wave ripples” are responsible for consolidating memory. The ripples also transfer learned information from the hippocampus to the neocortex of the brain, where long-term memories are stored. Sharp wave ripples occur mostly during the deepest levels of sleep.
8. Losing Sleep Can Make You Gain Weight – When it comes to body weight, it may be that if you snooze, you lose. Lack of sleep seems to be related to an increase in hunger and appetite, and possibly to obesity. According to a 2004 study, people who sleep less than six hours a day were almost 30 percent more likely to become obese than those who slept seven to nine hours. Not only does sleep loss appear to stimulate appetite. It also stimulates cravings for high-fat, high-carbohydrate foods. Ongoing studies are considering whether adequate sleep should be a standard part of weight loss programs.
9. Lack of Sleep May Increase Risk of Death – In the “Whitehall II Study,” British researchers looked at how sleep patterns affected the mortality of more than 10,000 British civil servants over two decades. The results, published in 2007, showed that those who had cut their sleep from seven to five hours or fewer a night nearly doubled their risk of death from all causes. In particular, lack of sleep doubled the risk of death from cardiovascular disease.
10. Sleep Loss Impairs Judgement, Especially About Sleep – Lack of sleep can affect our interpretation of events. This hurts our ability to make sound judgments because we may not assess situations accurately and act on them wisely.
Sleep-deprived people seem to be especially prone to poor judgment when it comes to assessing what lack of sleep is doing to them. In our increasingly fast-paced world, functioning on less sleep has become a kind of badge of honor. But sleep specialists say if you think you’re doing fine on less sleep, you’re probably wrong. And if you work in a profession where it’s important to be able to judge your level of functioning, this can be a big problem.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/worl...icle-1.1551317