While two-thirds of French people complain of sleep disorders, the Terra Nova think tank urges the public authorities to act to improve the quality of our sleep.
Performance, competition, overactivity… Today’s society prevents us from sleeping. “Everyone is, explicitly or tacitly, invited to make their sleep an adjustment variable”, warns the Terra Nova report published on Monday and entitled “Getting back to sleep, a public affair”. According to these authors, a policy of insomnia has been carried out in recent years, relaying sleep to a desire when it is indeed a physiological need, just like eating.
Result: two-thirds of French people cannot sleep. In 25 years, adults have lost 18 minutes of sleep per night and adolescents, 50 minutes. The screens are the main culprits. For their parents, it is work that keeps them awake.
Jean-Pierre Giordanella, public health doctor and author of the report: ” Advance the idea that day and night are the same. We see it in a caricatured way in capital cities or world cities, the night never stops. “
A society on sleeping pills
To sleep soundly, 11 million French people are turning to sleeping pills. “With 131 million boxes of benzodiazepines sold in 2012, France is the 2th largest consumer of sleeping pills in Europe behind Portugal ”, notes one of the authors of the report, Dr Jean-Pierre Giordanella, interviewed by Why actor. A massive prescription of anxiolytics and hypnotics which does not always follow the recommendations and exposes consumers to serious side effects. Dependence and habituation, drowsiness, falls and memory loss in the elderly are part of the long list of dangers. Artificial sleep which is costly to society and which in no way responds to the problem of sleep, deplores the public health doctor.
In addition, because of these treatments and the accumulated fatigue – especially among the 6 million French people who work at night or in staggered hours – this insomniac society is increasingly drowsy. However, drowsiness is one of the most frequent human factors of accidents. About a third of road fatalities are related to drowsy driving. But that remains an estimate because the police cannot officially consider drowsiness as a possible factor of accident. “If we had a more refined approach, we would be closer to reality and that would perhaps invite us to review our recommendations. It is for this reason that we propose to introduce drowsiness as an accident factor, ”explains Dr Giordanella.
Give more room to rest
Faced with the collateral damage caused by the sleep debt, the public health doctor and his colleagues point out that the public authorities are on the front line to promote measures to protect sleep. Among these, experts insist on the health impact of noise and light pollution. “When the speed on the ring road was reduced, the decibels dropped, which favored the sleep of the residents,” notes Dr Giordanella. A model to follow on noisy road sections, according to the report. Another possibility is to take into account the noise and light produced by large-scale structures during their construction in order to limit this pollution as much as possible.
Jean-Pierre Giordanella : ” Noise and light affect the internal structure of sleep. The phases are jostled, shallower and even if we have slept for a certain number of hours, the quality is not there. “
In their report, they also suggest stepping up communication and public awareness of sleep and its issues. For example, they propose to supplement the famous slogan “Eat better, move more” by “sleep well”. Children and adolescents are the preferred targets according to them. Short entertainment program to be broadcast on television, sleep education in schools, benchmarks in the health record for the little ones are offered in particular.
Finally, the authors recommend a nap for young and old. For the latter, the authors encourage companies to discuss the organization of work in order to free up time for rest. “Everyone needs a 15-20 minute break in the day and it can very well be incorporated into the lunch break. This is not to encourage idleness, there is no harm in taking a nap for a few minutes for those who feel the need, ”insists Dr. Giordanella, who emphasizes that employees in great shape are less productive. “You have to know what you want,” he concludes.
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