Chronic sleep deprivation can have serious physical and psychological consequences, which the French are unfortunately not sufficiently aware of. Investigation.
“When I don’t sleep, the next day, I have no strength in my arms and legs, I lose my memory, my head hurts a lot, my eyes are burning, nausea and terrible stomach aches”. Marie-Bénédicte Adda, 51, has been an insomniac for 26 years. She struggles to fall asleep, wakes up several times a night and very early in the morning, to the point of rarely accumulating 5 consecutive hours of sleep.
“While I slept very well, my sleepless nights began with the birth of my first daughter, without me ever being able to understand why”, remembers this school teacher very precisely. Three serious ones will follow depressions. Professionally, the first pushes her to resign from her commercial executive position, the third to work part-time, following her retraining. “When you don’t sleep at all three nights in a row, facing a class is extremely difficult. It really is the cancer of my life,” she describes.
Coronary disease and stroke
Like Marie-Bénédicte, 73% of French people say they wake up at least once a night, and 36% say they suffer from at least one sleep disorder (insomnia, apneas, restless legs syndrome…). Among them, only 18% are undergoing treatment. However, researchers from the Onassis Cardiac Surgery Center (Greece) have just established that the length of an ideal night should be between six and eight hours of sleep. Short sleepers (less than 6 hours) have an 11% increased risk of developing or dying from coronary heart disease and stroke.
Another cohort of 3,974 adults, presented by the Spanish National Center for Cardiovascular Research (CNIC) in Madrid, also proved that people who slept less than six hours a night or who repeatedly woke up during their sleep developed more asymptomatic atherosclerosis. Middle-aged men who sleep less than five hours a night also double their risk of serious cardiovascular disease, according to the Swedish University of Gothenburg.
“People don’t make sleep a priority”
Chronic sleep deprivation has also been associated with weight gain, obesity, the contraction of infections, the development of breast and prostate cancer (hormono–dependent), hypertension or depression. “For the past 15 years or so, the heavy physical and psychological consequences of sleep deprivation have now been proven. The problem is that this message has not been passed on to the general public. People do not make their sleep a priority. priority, while it should be an incompressible time of everyday life “, deplores Dr Sylvie Royant-Parola, president of the Morphée Network, psychiatrist and sleep doctor. “When you don’t sleep well over a long period, and you don’t understand why, you have to consult,” she insists.
It then remains to find the right treatment, which is far from obvious. Sport, diet, medication, hypnosis, acupuncture, behavioral and cognitive therapies, relaxation, meditation… “I have tried almost everything”, says Françoise Rousseau, German teacher and secretary of France Insomnia patient association (1). “It works for a while, sometimes for years, and then it stops working. So, we look for other alternatives; the goal is above all to limit the intake of drugs, which is stunning and bad for long-term health.” .
Impaired quality of judgment and drowsiness
At 61, she knows, like her colleague, how to date very precisely her first insomnia. “I was 17 and a half. I did not sleep the day before my baccalaureate, and never well since. However, I was a good student. Impossible thereafter to pass my exams. I had insomnia every nights for months, despite the medication, which diminished my intellectual faculties. “
Since then, there have been many difficult days, combining bad mood, impaired quality of judgment and drowsiness, especially in the afternoon. After a bad night, you can’t make an important decision or drive more than three hours without stopping to sleep. “The immediate risk is indeed accidentology, at work or on the road “, confirms Dr Sylvie Royant-Parola, before identifying stress as the main cause of chronic lack of sleep in the French. Something to think about the origin of this biological imbalance, which mainly affects 30 – 45 year olds.
1) France Insomnia is a national 1901 law association established in March 2016, on the initiative of insomniac patients and health professionals specializing in sleep. Its purpose is to unite natural or legal persons around sleep disorders linked to insomnia and to promote the recognition of insomnia and its management.
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