If you do, like most other Americans, you're probably not getting enough sleep. Some make it up on the weekends after spending the week snacking for energy and complaining about poor memory. Fatigue is a widespread symptom of sleep privation in this country, says sleep expert James Walsh.
Many people never make the connection between fatigue and the hour or so sleep missed every night.
Long-term sleep deprivation increases the risk for diabetes, hypertension, obesity and other problems. A survey by the Sleep Foundation found that work is increasingly the culprit that's cutting into time for sleeping. Walsh, who runs the Sleep Medicine and Research Center at St. Luke's Hospital in St. Louis, Mo., says that people are fooling themselves if they think they're getting ahead. It used to take me two days to write a paper that I can now write in three hours,'' he said. The difference is that he sleeps eight hours a night now instead of the five he got as a young medical researcher.