From RAND: Complete Post through this link…
Hallie Levine learned a hard truth on those bleary mornings when she dragged herself to work after a night of insomnia: “Caffeine is temporary.”
Nearly a quarter of all adults in the United States have experienced the tossing-turning frustration of clinical insomnia symptoms. Levine, a freelance writer in Connecticut, describes her existence on the days that follow as “death on wheels.” Yet from the doctor’s office to the corner office, good sleep is often overlooked as a key part of well-being.
We pay for that. Researchers at RAND and RAND Europe estimate that chronic insomnia pulls down the U.S. economy by more than $200 billion every year. Other major economies also forgo tens of billions of dollars in lost productivity. The condition is so debilitating, researchers found, that sufferers would pay 14 percent of their income to get better sleep.
“We encourage this as a society,” said Levine, who documented her life with insomnia in a 2017 article for Prevention magazine. “Someone is always emailing, and then you respond and you get sucked down the rabbit hole, and then it’s 11 o’clock at night. We normalize it. There’s this idea that it’s good to be sleep-deprived, that you’re up and you’re busy.”
Insomnia is the most common sleep disorder in the world. It blurs thinking, dulls concentration, and drives up the risk of workplace accidents. Some evidence suggests its prevalence has been on the rise since COVID scrambled routines and gave people something new to worry about at 2 a.m. One 2021 Canadian study found a fourfold increase in new case rates of insomnia during the early months of the pandemic.
