Coping with Shiftwork

I wrote this article a few years ago, but it still has a profound message for the sleep-deprived.

On a documentary channel a few years ago, a story was told that immediately grabbed my attention. I have no recollection of the incident because it occurred when I was very young.

In the 1950s, a radio disc jockey by the name of Peter Tripp engaged on what was (and still is), a popular radio amusement, the "stunt.  In Peter's case, his objective was to break the world's record for staying awake. He didn't sleep for days while he played records and bantered with his audience from a glass booth in Times Square. He was on the air for about 3 hours per day. The rest of the time, he was kept awake by nurses who nudged him when he began to drop off. Doctors and scientists who were studying him also played games with him, asked him questions continually, and did everything they could to keep his attention.

In all, he was able to stay awake for a total of 201 hours before he simply passed out. That's over eight days! But it came with a price.

During the wake-a-thon, and after only a couple of days, Peter Tripp began to hallucinate. He saw cobwebs on his shoes. He saw mice and kittens that weren't there. He rummaged through drawers looking for money that never existed. He also accused a technician of dropping a hot electrode into his shoe. Basically, he had totally "flipped out."

When he finally ended the ordeal, he went to sleep for over 13 hours.

But that's not exactly the end of the story. Unfortunately he was also involved in the infamous "Payola" scandal, and disgraced, reverted to lowly radio jobs and bounced around the business world in several occupations. He was married and divorced four times and died in Los Angeles a few years ago in relative obscurity.

Peter Tripp's first spouse and closest friends said that after the sleep deprivation stunt, he was never quite the same again.

The National Sleep Foundation's "Sleep in America" Poll revealed that the average American gets only 6.9 hours of sleep per night, with shiftworkers getting about 6.5 hours. (That seems high to me, since I never got more than 5 hours of sleep when I worked night shifts.) The poll also indicated that these numbers have been trending downward over the last five years.

This is not to say that shiftworking Americans and Canadians are on the slippery slide to Peter Trippville, but the issue of sleep deprivation has far-reaching significance. For instance, drowsy driving is an immediate threat to the safety of everyone on the road.

During the Korean War, 36 out of 59 captured U.S. airmen had confessed to committing war crimes against the United States! A psychiatrist, Dr. Louis J. West studied these airmen when they returned to the U.S. After interviewing these men, he found that the enemy had simply used sleep deprivation to elicit the confessions. Dr. Richard Schwab, Medical Director of the University of Pennsylvania Center for Sleep Deprivation, states that sleep deprivation for even one night can impair judgment, slow reaction time, cause people to have trouble making decisions, and makes them prone to mistakes. After two nights of sleep loss, they can have psychotic reactions and hallucinate. In the case of these airmen, it was simply a matter of keeping them awake until they could not distinguish reality from fantasy.

In Prince George County, Maryland, police questioned suspects in murder investigations for up to 80 hours and have elicited many confessions. Unfortunately, they have been in error several times when it was later proven that the confessions were false. Dr. Schwab comments, "Depriving people of sleep during prolonged questioning can help extract confessions, even from the innocent." A seventeen-year -old boy was unjustly incarcerated for over a year in a case where his confession followed many hours of nonstop, non-sleep interrogation.

If we don't sleep, we die. In a rare neurological disease, Fatal Familial Insomnia, rogue proteins attack the brain and prevent the victim from sleeping. The result is death from lack of sleep. The disease often attacks middle-aged adults, and by the time they die, they look many years older than they really were.

The Sleep in America Poll suggests that too many employers force shiftworkers to work beyond their limits, even when the worker complains of sleepiness. It is time we rethink our methods and policies for 24 /7 operations. In terms of the shiftworker, it is more than a question of workplace functionality. To deprive one of sleep many continuous hours can be a recipe for a catastrophic result. I don't want a doctor operating on me who has been awake for 24 hours. And the policeman who stops you on the road may already be at the breaking point.

These stories of terminal and irreversible sleep disorders may be extreme, but they should make us all take notice that we're playing with fire when it comes to sleep deprivation.

Sources:

Buysse, Daniel, Ganguli, Mary, "Can Sleep be Bad for You? Can Insomnia be Good?" Archives of General Psychiatry, February, 2002.

Hilts, Philip J., "Louis J. West 74, Psychiatrist who Studied Extremes, Dies," New York Times, January 1999.

Guterman, Lila, "Researchers Track the Cause of Rare But Fatal Form of Insomnia," The Chronicle of Higher Education, March 22, 2002.

Ravo, Nick, "Peter Tripp, 73, Popular Disc Jockey," New York Times, February 13, 2000.

Witt, April, "In P.R. George's Homicide, No Rest for the Suspects," Washington Post, June 4, 2001.

National Sleep Foundation, "Sleep in America" poll, March 2002.