Sleep deprivation could be seriously impacting your life and mood. A new website reveals how Brits are struggling without a good night sleep, and exactly how many hours YOU are losing in a lifetime…
‘I really need to catch up on sleep’, you moan as you roll out of bed this morning. Have you ever considered how many hours of sleep you are losing every year? Or that this could amount to the time it watch 715 baseball games a lifetime? A new tool casts a light on how sleep deprived you really are, and how this will stack up over a week, month, year, and even over your whole life.
Noisy neighbours are the largest factor keeping Brits awake
The Lost Sleep Calculator asks for your age and how many hours sleep you got the night before. It then tells you how many hours you are missing, based on the recommendation of 8 hours a night. It reveals the persistent thoughts that are keeping people tossing and turning, based on new evidence from a poll of 2,550 Britons. At the top of the list for reasons people are kept awake, with 11 per cent, is arguments with friends or family. But it ranges from thoughts of sex with partners (8 per cent), to money (13 per cent), to death (2 per cent).
Noisy neighbours were the largest factor keeping Brits awake, a total of 28,123 hours of those surveyed. This was followed by the pesky snoring partner next to you, at 21,773 hours.
Effects of sleep deprivation
The website, ran by interior brand Hillarys, discloses some serious findings about the consequences of sleeplessness; poor sleepers are 7 times more likely to feel helpless, 5 times more likely to feel alone, and twice as likely to struggle to be productive, and some of us know that one all too well.
This month, research at South Australia University shows that a lack of sleep gets in the way of a false memory – something we use to generalise new information. Volunteers memorised related words like bed and dream. About half an hour later, when recalling these words, they also remembered sleep, because our brains link related concepts. However a tired person, in the study the volunteers had slept on average 4 hours sleep for 4 nights, wasn’t able to do this. This means not only were they less able to learn items, but also to extract meaning from them.
3 per cent of GDP is lost due to lack of sleep
Sleep can also increase your chances of dying young. Experts at RAND Europe in Cambridge have found that people who sleep less than six hours a night have a 13 per cent higher motrality risk, than if they slept for seven. At a national level, up to 3 per cent of GDP is lost due to lack of sleep, and an increase in sleep could add to the economy.
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What WE could do with our lost hours
Some of the Healthista team worked out exactly what they could have done in the hours of lost sleep during their lifetime…
On 6.5 hours of sleep: Editor Anna loses 15.8 hours a week. She could work an extra 23 weeks in that time. Digital Director Yanar loses 7 years of sleep in a lifetime, in which time she could walk 19656 miles
On 7 hours sleep: Food and Lifestyle writer Vanessa loses 10.5 hours a week, and 6 years over a lifetime. In that time, she could travel on 33 flights to Sydney.
On 7.5 hours sleep: Video Producer Will only loses 5.5 hours a week, but over that time within his life, he could read War and Peace 12 times.
Calculate your lost hours of sleep here.
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