Driver Lifestyles

Sleep Facts You Need!

Drowsy driving is the primary culprit in a significant number of the more than 5,000 commercial truck crashes that happen on average each year, though estimates vary widely on just how many.

A report from the National Highway Transportation and Safety Administration identified over-the-road truckers, among other workers with irregular schedules, as one of three highest-risk groups.

There are several signs to indicate fatigue while driving, and most of us will be familiar with these:

*Impaired concentration

*Difficulty focusing, frequent blinking, or heavy eyelids

*Trouble keeping your head up

*Yawning repeatedly

*Trouble remembering the last few miles driven, missing exits or traffic signs

*Drifting from your lane, tailgating, or hitting a shoulder rumble strip

*Irritability or jumpiness

*Wandering or disconnected thoughts

Why do we need sleep?
With all of our advances in medicine and technology, with millions of dollars invested in numerous research studies, science still has not been able to definitively understand the purposes behind the natural, inevitable act of sleep.

The exact reasons for why we do it, and why we do it for so long, remain a mystery. Most of what we do know about it comes from understanding it backward: though we don't know why we sleep, we do know that when we don't sleep, our health will soon suffer.

Sleep helps to restore your body in these ways:
• Muscle tissue is rebuilt and restored
• Growth hormone is secreted (this is important for kids but also for rebuilding tissue in adults)
• Mental energy is restored

Sleep is something our bodies drive us toward — the need for sleep is controlled by processes that go on below the level of our waking minds. The daily rhythms of the body are controlled by the circadian pacemaker, a group of cells in the hypothalamus region of the brain, and there are particular times during the day when it’s easier or harder to sleep.

Your biological clock tells you when its lunchtime, gives you energy at certain times of the day, and affects your body temperature. Most people's clocks run on a daily rhythm of approximately 24 hours, but "body time" varies individually.

"Morning people" feel most alert in the early part of the day, while "night people" enjoy staying up late. Many teenagers and young people have clocks that make it easy for them to stay up late and sleep late. As people get older, they tend to wake up earlier and go to bed early.

Certain times of the day are "danger zones" for fatigue. For example, almost everyone's biological clock is programmed to make them feel sleepy in the middle of the afternoon. Many fatigue-related collisions occur between 1:00 p.m. and 4:00 p.m., during this "afternoon lull."

The need for sleep is particularly strong between 2 and 6 o'clock in the morning. Drivers who regularly drive at night can become sleep deprived even though they may not exhibit sleep-deprived-performance problems. But these same drivers also lose the ability to perform at a high level.

One study
As reported in the New York Times, French researchers tested the driving performance of two dozen sleep-deprived motorists. Participants first drove a two-mile course on the highway between 6 p.m. and 7:30 p.m., to measure their driving skill on a normal amount of sleep.

On other days, they were asked to take the driving test again between 2 a.m. and 3:30 a.m. They were given either a placebo (decaffeinated coffee), regular coffee or allowed to take a 30-minute nap. A driving instructor in the car counted the number of inappropriate line crossings during each driving test. Line crossings were measured because drifting over the center line or off the road causes 65 percent of sleep-related accidents.

The decaf drinkers racked up a total of 159 line crossings while drowsy, compared to just 2 line crossings during the daytime driving test. Nappers did better, crossing lines only 84 times. But surprisingly, the coffee drinkers did the best in the sleepy driving test, crossing lines a total of 27 times.

But what was surprising is that the effect of coffee and napping varied by age. For middle-aged drivers, aged 40 to 50, coffee was a far better choice. Caffeinated coffee lowered risk for these drivers by 89 percent, while the nap only reduced line crossings by 23 percent. But among younger drivers, a nap was almost as effective as caffeine. Among 20- to 25-year-old drivers, the risk of line-crossing fell by 66 percent after a nap, and 74 percent after drinking caffeinated coffee.

The authors noted that the effects of caffeine on driving performance weren’t altered by age, but that the younger drivers slept longer and more deeply than middle-aged drivers during the half-hour nap, and appeared to experience more restorative benefits of sleep.

While the study shows that caffeinated coffee is a better option than napping for drowsy drivers, the better choice is to get off the road entirely and get a full night’s sleep.

Are you sleep deprived?
"If you are falling asleep at times when you don't plan to, that's a sign you're not getting enough sleep," says Thomas Roth, director of the Sleep Disorders and Research Center at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, Mich. Signs you're sleep deprived include:

• Struggling to stay awake when inactive, such as when watching TV or reading
• Feeling tired when waking up
• Needing an alarm clock consistently to wake up
• Waking up often and having trouble going back to sleep
• Falling asleep after a heavy meal
• Having difficulty remembering or concentrating
• Needing a nap most days
• Sleeping longer on weekends
• What you can do to get more sleep

Managing your sleep debt is easier said than done. Today's 24-hours-a-day society makes our days longer and nights shorter. One researcher suggests trying to get at least eight hours of sleep a night, catching up on missed sleep on weekends and napping when possible--and not treating sleep as a luxury.

Sleep disorders such as insomnia and sleep apnea further increase the sleep debt. Increase your chances of getting some quality shut-eye with these tips from the National Sleep Foundation:

-Consume less caffeine (or none at all)
-Avoid alcohol
-Drink fewer fluids before going to sleep
-Establish a regular bedtime and waking schedule (Difficult or impossible for the expediter)
-Avoid nicotine
-Avoid heavy meals close to bedtime
-Exercise regularly, but do so at least three hours before bedtime
-Try a relaxing routine, like a hot bath, before going to bed (Again, difficult for the professional driver)

Sleep Quest
American Sleep Apnea Association
National Institutes of Health, National Medical Library PUBMED
(Sleep Research)
National Sleep Foundation