Sleep Debt: A Growing Human Deviation with Complex Global Fallouts

Abstract

The insatiable quest for comfort, fame and financial security along the course of human history, have continued to dictate human actions on earth. Driven by a perfidious capitalism, the world of the 21st century possessed by, and agog in its frenzied speed towards technological and economic success (developmental equation), appear to be cumulatively antagonistic to all vestiges of nature and its endowments, hence the litany of unfolding deadly global health and environmental challenges. The much celebrated technological appurtenances of the present era, have rather paradoxically promoted man’s anxiety, stress and fatigue, through an adaptive trending deprivation and disorganization of the natural circadian shutdown of restful sleep. On the other front, how can a proactive professional academic be on top of his stock in trade without studious and energy-sapping research, which would always demand sleep denials involving distortion in sleep time/quality and quantity regimen? Unfortunately, this anomaly has permeated all theatres of human endeavor, marginalizing productivity and exacerbating terrible systemic complications and fallouts. Quite phenomenal as it has risen to be, sleep debt has inexcusably been silently accommodated and enamored, hence metastising almost through all aspects of human engagements, due to its attractive face-value, largely masking its cumulative fatal consequences. Poised towards deepening public awareness with regards to this problem, this study, under the cloak of Health History, adopted the eclectic research approach towards unearthing, sieving and evaluating available information. Nevertheless, in order to fully understand the general implications of sleep debt, one has to first appreciate the nature and essence of healthy sleep, hence the quality and quantity. The importance of quantitative and qualitative analysis cannot be ruled out in this study. The paper submits that since sleep debt is a proven human derivative resort posing innumerable challenges to global productivity and development, drastic cautionary measures should guide attitudinal change in all human endeavors to interject and turndown this anomaly.