This Is What Chronic Sleep Deprivation Looks Like

Once upon a time, I was young and single and had no kids. I had nothing better to do than look after my own health and well-being. I regularly slept 8 or more hours a night.

Those days are a fond but fading memory. Like many modern people, I burn the candle at both ends trying to get everything done and still have some semblance of a life.

I'm one of a vast legion of folks who, voluntarily or not, are getting far too little sleep. But research shows we might be causing ourselves problems beyond just bags under our eyes.

A Typical Day

4:30 A.M.: My 17-month-old child wakes up for the day and cries for me. (No, I don't know why she is such an early bird. I've tried everything.) I wake abruptly, startled out of my dreams. My heart immediately stars pounding with fight-or-flight adrenaline.

I stumble to her crib, pick her up, whisper gently about how 4:30 is too early to get up, put her back down, cover her with her blanket, and walk out. This never works.

5:00 A.M.: Kid cries again. I get up with her. Sometimes I read her a book. Other times I keep the lights off and cuddle her on my lap while I stare blearily out the window at the pitch-black sky.

5:00-7:45 A.M.: Get both children dressed, fed, and ready for school and daycare. Get myself ready for work. Act perky and patient for the kids' benefit. Drink coffee. Place eye drops in my perpetually red and tired eyes.

I dare you to look at these and not yawn.
(Image credit: scienceinseconds.com)

8:15–4:15: Work. More coffee. Smile and act like I have my sh** together. Try not to let my exhaustion cause any embarrassing incidents, such as nodding off during an afternoon meeting or forgetting some important instruction from my boss.

5:15 P.M.: Home from work. Get children fed, bathed, and put to bed.

8:00 P.M.: Dishes, laundry, cleaning, tidying, bill paying. Make an effort to spend a bit of time with my equally exhausted husband. Sometimes I write a blog post, read a book, call a friend, or watch a TV show off the DVR. Other times I'm too wiped out to do anything except play Candy Crush or read Facebook statuses that I don't remember the next day.

10:30-ish P.M.: Collapse into bed and sleep like the dead... for 6 hours max, because that's when the baby will be up again.

Weekend: Try to make up some sleep by napping when the baby naps. This effort is complicated by the 4-year-old who no longer naps.

What Are We Doing to Ourselves? And Is It Worth It?

Long-term sleep deprivation or "short sleep" is associated with poor memory, heart disease, cancer, auto accidents, obesity, and type II diabetes. Take a gander at the scientific literature:

• Sleep: A Health Imperative. An overview of the health effects of sleep deprivation, from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and the Sleep Research Society.
• The sleep-time cost of parenting. A study of employed adults that concludes: "Parenting minor children is associated with shorter sleep duration." (Thanks, Einstein, I could have told you that. Where's my million-dollar research grant?)
• Sleep deprivation and neurobehavioral dynamics."Chronic sleep restriction likely induces long-term neuromodulatory changes in brain physiology." In other words, we may be permanently altering our brains. Scary stuff.

I can tell you what effect chronic "short sleep" has on me:

• My memory is complete crap, to the point that it's embarrassing. I forget events, news, bank transactions, phone calls, people's names, things they told me.
• I fantasize about sleep like a starving person fantasizes about a huge, delicious meal.
• With no reserves to draw upon, I lack patience and I'm quick to jump to negative conclusions.
• My blood pressure, at 120/80, is higher than it's ever been (it used to average 100/60). 
• My right eyelid twitches. A lot.
• My alertness is OK, because I run on adrenaline and caffeine constantly.

Yet somehow I do a decent job at work, and as a parent. I have no idea how.

I just think I'm tired. This dude is REALLY tired.
(Image credit: imdb.com)

By the way, if you want a great movie about a guy whose insomnia has reached frightening levels, don't watch "Insomnia" (2002) with Al Pacino. Watch "The Machinist" (2004) with Christian Bale, who gives one of the eeriest, most haunting performances I've ever seen.

What I Fear... and What I Hope

Have you ever had a stressful time in your life where you had to GO, GO, GO for a while, and you slept little? And finally it was over, and you slept a ton, and then you got sick? That happened to me during college finals. I would run on adrenaline for days or weeks, then collapse when the semester ended. Most of the time, I'd immediately come down with a cold or other virus.

It was like my body went into super-overdrive. It poured every ounce of energy into keeping me going while I finished my papers and exams. Afterward, my body was drained—literally. Drained of the ingredients it needs for everyday body functions, like the immune system.

I haven't slept 7-8 hours a night regularly since 2008, when my first child was born. I fear a large-scale version of the cold I used to get after finals. I fear the nature of the beast that lurks, lying in wait for me.

And yet, others have it much worse than I do. Insomniacs. People with sleep disorders. People with chronic pain. Parents of colicky twin babies.

We survive because the human body has an amazing capability to adapt when huge demands are placed upon it. If you'd asked me 10 years ago whether I could sleep just 5-6 hours a night for a year and still function, I'd have said no freaking way. And yet that's pretty much what I did after each of my kids was born. And here I am, still sane (I think), to tell the tale.

Ahhhh.

It's a testament to our strength. And it amazes me. And it reminds me that I have to respect this wonderful biological machine. Since I can't change my wakeup time (for now at least), I have to turn off the computer and force myself to go to bed at 8:30 some nights. It's worth it.

In the meantime, I raise my cup of coffee to you, my fellow short-sleeping zombies. We'll make it through. And if we don't, then it's like they say—we'll sleep when we're dead.