TOADTalk: Sleep Deprivation
Heather Grant shares the negative impacts of sleep deprivation, including repulsing others.
Monday morning’s All-School Assembly launches with the Teacher On Active Duty (TOAD) sharing something of interest—a reflection, a story or song, a demonstration of some sort, or a simple poem. In this way, every week of the school year, the community gets to know one of our own a little better. Heather Grant, whose TOADTalk is featured below, teaches biology and chemistry, coaches the girls’ lacrosse and soccer and is active in the School’s community service program, the Sustainability Council and the Environment action Committee. Ms. Grant, joined the Thacher faculty in 2006.
Three years ago, I stood before assembly and delivered a TOADTalk about the biochemical mysteries of breastmilk in anticipation of the birth of my first child. Since then, I have had two kids, and as a biology teacher I found pregnancy to be infinitely weird and fascinating. As a new parent, I now consider myself to be a walking case study in sleep deprivation.
During the first two weeks of Max’s life I remembered that a former advisee, Annie LeFevre, presented her Senior Exhibition on cults, and that in her presentation Annie mentioned that sleep deprivation was one of the universally-employed tactics used to break and then indoctrinate unsuspecting people into new cult membership, because after enough days without sleep, a person would agree to just about anything in order to get some sleep.
Just this weekend, Dr. DelVecchio shared a talk from Dr. Matthew Walker called "Why We Sleep: The New Science of Sleep and Dreams."
This 35-minute talk summarizes the findings from a number of studies that show how important sleep is for learning (something we talk about a lot here at Thacher). There is quite a bit of evidence that schools with early start times (like 7:00 or 7:30) that require students to leave their houses as early is 5:00 am have lower scores on standardized testing. One surprising thing he mentioned was from a study that traced the impact of a later school start for a high school population, was that in addition to better SAT scores and other metrics of learning, the leading cause of death in teenagers (automobile accidents) was significantly decreased in populations with later school start times.
Next, he highlighted studies that showed what a “destabilizing influence a lack of sleep has on our emotional integrity,” where brain scans provided evidence that brain activity in those with sleep deprivation mimicked the neurological markers of those with psychological conditions like depression, schizophrenia, or bipolar disorder.
Lastly, he described studies that set out to measure the physiological impacts of sleep deprivation; specifically, the impact on neurological activity, cardiovascular health, and immune function. In some cases, like the one-hour shift incurred from daylight savings, even a small loss or gain of sleep had a perceptible impact on national mortality rates. Of particular note were statistics that he provided about significant drop off of immune system function (in the form of natural killer cell counts) following a night of interrupted or limited sleep. These cells, among other things, attack and destroy mutated cells that could otherwise go on to form tumors. The research he cited showed increased rates of tumor growth in sleep deprived individuals, in rodent studies. Other studies have measured depressed levels of natural killer cells in humans with disturbed sleep patterns.
In case it is hard to relate to the sleep deprivation experienced by new parents or you don’t find the research about the impact on learning or disease compelling, perhaps this final study will be more interesting. This comes from an article that I read during the middle of the night this summer with the attention grabbing title “Lack of Sleep Can Ruin Your Social Life, Study Claims. With the subtitle: “Sleep-deprived people are more likely to appear socially unattractive to others.” While the experimental design of this study has me a little skeptical about the conclusions they draw, I thought I’d tell you about it, because the headline made me laugh so much, and because I thought you might find social repulsion a more compelling reason for getting a good night of sleep than anything else.
It turns out that this study was done by the same professor who gave the talk that Dr. D sent me the other day. In it the study’s senior author Matthew Walker, professor of neuroscience and psychology at UC Berkeley, says, "We humans are a social species. Yet sleep deprivation can turn us into social lepers."
"The less sleep you get, the less you want to socially interact. In turn, other people perceive you as more socially repulsive, further increasing the grave social-isolation impact of sleep loss."
Then there’s this: “People who come in contact with a sleep-deprived individual, even through a brief one-minute interaction, feel lonelier themselves as a result, indicating viral contagion of social isolation caused by sleep loss.”
Pretty compelling, right?!
Just in case getting a full night of sleep seems like an unachievable goal, I want you to know that I’m continually impressed by the things that Thacher students achieve. They frequently surpass expectations and set new standards for one another through genuine engagement and intellectual curiosity. You do that in your classes, but also outside of the classroom. There are even some of you who apply these standards to carefully tending to your sleep habits. It’s not necessarily an achievement that everyone hears about, but some of your peers have shown that it can be done. I’ve heard them talking about the sleep they get. So, my challenge to you for this school year, is to make sleep a priority. With the goal of getting a full night’s sleep, better learning outcomes and social engagement should follow. As Dr. Walker stated, “sleep is a nonnegotiable biological necessity” so we should all strive to “reclaim our right to a full night of sleep.” And as a parent of two small humans, I couldn’t agree more!
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