DailyJim: How many of us are sleep deprived and what is it doing to us?

Hello everyone, welcome to another Daily Gym. This is the episode for Thursday, May 9th, and it's currently Thursday, May 9th, 2024. And what I want to talk about is how sleep-deprived I think we are as a species.

As you can hear a dog in the background, I wonder how much that leads to not sleeping well. But there is, you know, I noticed that I didn't sleep very well last night. I didn't sleep very long last night. And I noticed that when I don't sleep very well, I tend to be tired the next day. And when I'm tired, I tend to want to move very fast because if I start to slow down, I fall asleep. And so I've noticed this on different conferences where I would go to these conferences, week-long conferences, and maybe we sleep three, four, five hours a night. And the energy has to be very fast paced for me to stay awake and pay attention so typically we'll play fast music people will be moving hustling the schedule is very packed and i also notice the effect that it has on my health like my digestion gets screwed up my posture gets screwed up sometimes my circulation seems screwed up and i wonder how much of that is, just not sleeping and therefore being tired and therefore having to move fast to think quickly move quickly pull out my phone scroll scroll scroll because if i slow down then i want to sleep.

And so much of society it's not just the u.s but i see it in east africa and i'm sure it's in other parts of the world where people are almost considered lazy if they slow down and rest And so, what does that do when we don't let ourselves slow down?

What impact does that have on the body, on the digestion, on the heart, on the lungs, on the legs, the arms, the back, the whatever other parts we have, the reproductive parts? What happens when we're constantly moving at this super high speed mostly so we don't fall asleep, or maybe part of it is because if we slow down we start to cry i think that's another aspect to it um this this resistance to slowing down at least in this talk about um because of the resistance of sleeping and if we see what they say well i'll sleep when i die well if you don't sleep you will die pretty quickly. I think it's, what, two, three days if somebody doesn't sleep, they die? Or they get really, really messed up? Humans have to sleep.

So I wonder...

How much culture plays a role in this and how much we reinforce the, hey, don't sleep. Oh, you're being lazy. Oh, you got to get up. I remember, I think living in East Africa or Tanzania or somewhere, there was huge pressure to wake up to have breakfast. I'm like, but I went to bed at five o'clock. Why am I going to wake up at eight o'clock for breakfast? Can I please just sleep? I don't need food. I need sleep. I need much more sleep than I need food. I can last much longer time without food than I can without sleep.

Yeah, but again, I don't think it's just in East Africa. I think it's in other parts of the world where there can be this pressure to stay awake as long as possible.

And again, that resistance to sleeping, that almost demonization of sleeping sometimes. times. And I just wonder what impact that has on our bodies, on our relationships, on our politics, on our society in general. How many people are just sleep deprived? And how would things change if we just slept a little more? I say this as I'm preparing to go out to dance and hope to sleep a little bit more tonight, but also hope to sleep a little bit more tomorrow. And um i don't have the answers i'm still human right i still like dancing it's hard to dance in the morning it's hard to dance very slow um but uh sorry during the day to dance most of the time dancing takes place at night sometimes later at night and anyways as you can tell i'm probably rambling i should probably sleep i'll probably sleep later i hope to dance a little bit and And to stop trying to think and come up with something profound. Because I am pretty much out of profound thoughts right now. I think my body can move a little bit, kind of shake up the bones, and then sleep might be really nice. So if you haven't heard the message, which I said over and over and over again, probably because I'm so tired, this idea that we have such a strong resistance to sleeping, and so many of us are sleep-deprived, And I think that has huge impacts on our society. And I wonder what it would be like if we actually slept a little more and slowed down. I forget what the title of this was going to be, but that's okay. I'll put something about sleep deprivation and fighting, blah, blah, blah. And then I'll talk to you next week. So take care, y'all.