Poor, limited sleep costs billions of dollars annually.
By some estimates, lack of sleep costs a whole lot of money: Hundreds of billions of dollars are spent and/or lost annually as a result of poor or limited sleep, according to the Institute of Medicine Committee on Sleep Medicine and Research, part of the National Institutes of Health.
There’s the obvious. Daytime sleepiness, inadequate sleep time, insomnia and other sleep disorders burden the health care system.
Indirect costs include sickness and death, absenteeism from work and school, disability, loss of productivity, industrial accidents, motor vehicle accidents, hospitalization and increased alcohol consumption. (Some, wrongly, use alcohol as a sleep aid.)
A study of obese individuals with obstructive sleep apnea showed women were hit harder, seeing a loss in income as well. Work performance problems and more sick leave were also reported.
For instance, 12 percent of people reported they were late for work in the month before the poll was taken because of sleepiness.
The bottom line? The costs of leaving sleep disorders untreated is far more than costs of delivering adequate treatment.
For much more detailed information, visithttp://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK19958/ and http://sleepfoundation.org/sleep-polls.
