Editorial: Hey, wake up

Tuesday, Sept. 4, 2007 | 7:17 a.m.

A new report says that even though many Americans spend long hours at work, they still are finding time to play.

They just aren't sleeping as much - and, experts suggest, they aren't sleeping enough.

The report by Mathias Basner, a University of Pennsylvania researcher, was released last week and appears in the most recent issue of the journal Sleep.

Basner's findings revealed that the amount of time people spend at work is the most significant factor in determining how much sleep they get. The second most significant influence was how much time people spent sitting in traffic while commuting to work.

And a lack of sleep does more than make people grouchy, researchers say. According to the National Sleep Foundation, a nonprofit organization that focuses on helping people with sleep disorders, federal highway safety officials estimate that each year sleep-deprived drivers cause 100,000 traffic accidents that require police response. These wrecks result in about 1,550 deaths, 71,000 injuries and about $12.5 billion in financial losses annually, the foundation reports.

In a story by USA Today on Thursday, James Walsh, executive director of the sleep medicine and research center at St. Luke's Hospital in St. Louis, said drowsy workers are more likely to have trouble paying attention and remembering information and to suffer other mental lapses that can adversely affect their work.

And there is mounting research that shows a strong correlation between people who don't get enough sleep and weight gain. Sleep deprivation increases levels of the hormone that triggers feelings of hunger and decreases the hormone that makes people feel full. As a result, people who don't get enough sleep could eat too much.

Basner also analyzed a federal survey conducted from 2003 to 2005 that shows American adults get about 6.5 hours of sleep nightly - less than the seven to eight hours that experts say is recommended for adults. (Teens need nine hours or more, experts say.)

And although it is popular to try catching up with lost sleep on the weekends, experts say that cannot offset a lack of sleep week after week.

So what should American workers to do? It's pretty simple: Log off the computer, put on their jammies and go to bed.