Sleep Deprivation:
It isn't just frost season anymore. Now with the stress of the cranberry crisis causing sleepless nights, many growers are suffering from lack of  adequate sleep.

The lights are on in the wee hours in a cranberry grower's house.

by Hal Brown, LICSW
Rural Mental Health Psychotherapist

Revised June 26, 2000

 

No discussion of farming stress can be complete without looking at the universal need for sleep, and the consequences of not getting enough sleep or having erratic sleep patterns. The occupational stress of farming that takes perhaps the biggest toll on physical health is lack of sleep. This can be caused by poor sleep habits and by emotional distress. Due to the increase in the later, it is likely more cranberry farmers are suffering from sleep deprivation than were a year ago.

I know cranberry growers are currently awake in the wee hours of the morning just by reading the times they send me email and post on the Forum. Writing is not a bad idea, as one of the expert recommendations for dealing with insomnia is to get out of bed if you can't sleep and do something else. Lacking someone sympathetic to talk to at 2AM about your worries, it can be helpful to write them down. Of course, if doing so just makes you angrier so you never fall asleep, it is better to distract yourself by watching reruns on television. 

Sleep is being studied in a number of research centers around the world. Odd data keeps being reported. For example, it was reported in a reputable magazine, Science, that researchers have demonstrated another way to combat the effects of jet lag. Previously it has been known that bright light focused on the eyes could reset your biological clock after a flight over several time zones. Now unexpected results confirm that shining a light on the back of the knee, of all places, can have the same effect. No one knows why this is the case. Blind people have more sleep problems than the sighted, so I suppose it's possible that they can benefit from this research just by wearing shorts and allowing the light to hit their legs.

Sleep research is a fascinating and important science. Some of the best medical minds are working on it. I just report what I learn, but despite a flurry of media reports on how the United States is a chronically sleep deprived nation,  farmers still lag dismally behind the times in appreciating the limits of the human body and the untoward effects of sleep deprivation on performance.

Studies have clearly shown that traffic accidents go up significantly the day after the annual time change when people loose an hour of sleep, and go down significantly the day after they gain an hour of sleep. There is no doubt that farm stress in general and sleep deprivation in particular are major causes of farm accidents. Chronic sleep deprivation has been proved to compromise the immune system and contribute to a host of opportunistic diseases. Simply being tired slows reaction time and can lead to a reduction in your being less coordinated than usual. It can cause momentary lapses in attention which can be disastrous when operating machinery or driving vehicles. 

I doubt I'd lose money betting that any farmer suffers from sleep deprivation during frost season. It goes with the job; but it shouldn't, it doesn't have to. But I doubt personal habits will change. After all, you aren't a 747 pilot responsible for three hundred passengers. Does your picking crew really care if you are so bleary eyed after a few frost nights that you're having trouble keeping your eyes open while driving the picking reel? But you are risking your safety (and theirs) if you're sleep deprived.

 
Consequences of sleep deprivation

If you don't get the sleep your body requires, you may be moody, grumpy and irritable. Your temper may flare and your sense of humor may be lost. You may not notice it but others probably will, unless they're too sleep deprived themselves to care. Co-ordination and judgment can also be effected, as studies of airline pilots and even NASA ground control personnel have demonstrated. In the long run, as with any kind of stress, your immune system can be compromised and you can get sick.

Why do you think you sleep so much when you have the flu? It isn't the flu causing this, it's your body fighting off the flu. Sleep has great healing power.

Lack of sleep is one of the biggest causes of farm accidents. In fact, on the road, more car accidents are caused by drivers falling asleep than are caused by drunk drivers. 

Insomnia is both a symptom of depression and a condition that makes it worse. 

From a quality of life perspective, if you don't sleep enough during the work week and find yourself making up for sleep on weekends, you are sacrificing recreation time to your biological need for sleep. 

What can be done to prevent sleep deprivation?

The simple answer of course is to get enough sleep. But what with your farm responsibilities, it is virtually impossible  to get enough sleep in one block of time. As you get older, it is harder and harder to get by on less than the sleep your body needs: current research indicates this varies from person to person, and to the state of one's current health, but is from six to nine hours in a twenty-four hour period. Most adults need around eight hours of sleep.

Your bedroom should be comfortably cool. If you find you are unable to fall asleep, most doctors suggest that you get up and do something until you are tired enough to fall asleep.

Do not use alcohol as an aid to sleep. If you do this on a regular basis, you already have a serious problem and need to discuss it with your physician and perhaps a therapist ! 

Do not drink caffeine within six hours of sleep time. You may be able to fall asleep with caffeine in your system if you're very tired, but if you wake up in a few hours less tired, the caffeine will still be active and you won't be able to fall asleep again.

Over the counter medicines like Sominex are really just antihistamines that have the side effect of drowsiness in some people. If they work for you, fine. But they are not recommended for long term use.

As a last resort you can talk with your doctor about prescribed sleeping medication to be used on a short term and irregular basis. You should be aware that there are currently no safe and effective medications available for long term nightly use. There is, however, a new medication which can be taken in the middle of the night if you can't sleep and is mostly out of your system by morning. Again, this is not for long term nightly use.

Another answer is creative napping!

How to get the most of naps.

Your body "wants" to take a nap in the early afternoon. This is a fact recognized in countries where an afternoon siesta is built into the work day. Farmers in America, a chronically sleep deprived country, are lucky in one sense. They often can make their own schedule and catch a nap after lunch.

Any nap over three minutes is better than none. A ten minute nap can have amazing restorative power. An hour long nap is excellent as long as you don't wake too abruptly during the wrong level of sleep. Several ten minute naps can be just as effective as a longer uninterrupted nap. Once you get into a pattern your body learns to maximize the restorative power of your nap cycles. But you have to be consistent. Don't fool with Mother Nature.

Studies of individuals who soloed across the Atlantic on sailboats show that you can actually get by for days at a time just taking naps. You can also "store sleep" in advance of a period where you know you'll be going without sleep by sleeping a little extra a few days prior to the time you'll be unable to sleep.

Creative Napping

Ideally you should allow yourself to take a nap on a break and if you can't go home, make a "nap room" available. The room should be dark and comfortable, with both a cot and a recliner to suit personal preferences. If you don't already have one, get an extended cab pick-up next time you need another truck so the seats recline and you can nap there. If inside where you can control your environment, the temperature should be around 70 (people actually fall asleep best when the temperature is between 70 and 80, but sleep better when the temperature is lower). You should have a "white noise" machine to use if noise distraction keep you awake.

You might want to use one of those little electronic kitchen timers to regulate how long you nap.  Try to figure out exactly how to time the nap so you wake up refreshed, and not from too deep a sleep. If you wake from the wrong sleep level abruptly you may feel disoriented and it could take a few minutes to recover your senses. Also, you don't want to sleep too long, so you have trouble falling asleep at night.

More science.

In order for most people to cycle through the levels of sleep needed to restore and revitalize their bodies they need three hours of uninterrupted sleep. Some people teach their bodies to adjust to sleeping in two blocks of time in a twenty-four hour period and report this has worked well for them for years. Human beings are essentially biphasic sleepers, which means that we are designed to sleep in two periods during each twenty-four hour period. The ideal seems to be the "afternoon siesta" practiced equatorial countries. People have a natural low point during the afternoon (or midpoint during a midnight shift, about an hour after eating) where they become drowsy. This is when your body wants to take a nap and when the miracle drug, caffeine, is consumed in great quantities along with the added carbo-charge of a donut or two.

You can tell if you are sleep deprived if you find yourself "making up for lost sleep" on your days off and sleeping ten or twelve hours at a stretch. Fortunately, you can recover from sleep deprivation if you sleep several extra hours for two or three days. In fact, if you stayed up for eight days and nights, you could fully recover within three days.

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