We’ve looked in the past on the concept of “second sleep,” that is, the idea that, in the period before electric lights, people usually slept in two shifts; one shift would be from roughly 7-8 pm until midnight or 1 am, while the second shift would be from 2 or 3 ’till 6 or 7 am. This post is about the opposite issue–a group of workers who get almost no sleep and, in fact, suffer greatly from the effects of sleep deprivation.

It’s the nature of their work that keeps these people–they are all men, by the way–awake. They work in the evenings usually, and they travel. That cycle of not sleeping during the day then working then going to the next place of business severely disrupts these workers circadian rhythms. They can’t sleep during the day because daytime is often when they prep for the work they do in the evenings.

All that’s left for them to do is to try to catch some sleep while they’re on the way to the next meeting. And, if you’ve ever tried to sleep while sitting up…well, you know it’s nigh unto impossible. And what is the result of months of sleep deprivation? Scientists have a good bit of data on this subject, actually.

It seems that when a human doesn’t sleep well or much for extended periods, the human body begins to break down in almost every area. Heart disease can develop because there’s almost never a resting heartbeat. Diabetes becomes an issue as people begin to eat/consume bad calories in order to try to stay awake for their jobs. The risk of stroke and heart attack dramatically increase. And then there’s the depression.

And it’s this depression that has made sleep deprivation among this relatively small group of workers such a public health issue. The depression that has come about due to their lack of sleep has manifested itself in increasingly bizarre and self-abusive behaviors: Drug and alcohol addictions, extreme risk-taking, violence, and radically poor life-choices.

In an effort to combat all of these symptoms of sleep deprivation, the organization these men work for has hired “sleep doctors” to not only monitor the effects of the deprivation on the workers but to also help them carve out time during their workdays to create sleep events. These sleep specialists have been working to get these men the help they need to fight their on-going battles with depression and the other physical and emotional toll the job takes on them. Now, you might think that the workers should quit or that the jobs they have should be eliminated out of concern for the workers.

However, simply terminating the type of job that is causing these workers to not be able to sleep is unthinkable and practically un-American. After all, the National Basketball Association generates too much money to let their players sleep.