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What You Can Do About Sleep Deprivation: Lessons from Around-the-World Solo Sailors

Not Enough Sleep?

At first approach, one may think that the problems of fatigue, alertness impairment and sleep deprivation faced by competitive athletes sailing solo around-the-world couldn’t possibly relate to everyday living. However, the reality is that the issues that these competitors face are not substantially different from those experienced in the workplace and the strategies they use to deal with sleep deprivation could have a great deal of relevance. Indeed, the around-the-clock availability of key services is becoming a necessity in this era of technological innovation, increased automation, and downsizing. Hospitals must be available to handle emergencies; police and firefighters to protect our lives; trains, airplanes, and road vehicles to ensure swift transportation of people and goods across the globe; power plant operators to provide uninterrupted electrical service. Competitive pressures of the global economy are forcing a growing number of organizations and businesses to provide their services twenty-four hours a day. Furthermore, it is estimated that over 20% of the workforce in industrialized countries work some form of night or shift-work. The problem is that there is a fundamental conflict between the demands of our modern civilization and the design of the human brain. Our patterns of sleep and wakefulness are governed by internal biological clocks. These internal clocks are elegantly attuned to the rhythms of night and day that belong to an era where humans hunted by day, slept at night, and never traveled more than a few miles from sunrise to sunset. In contrast, we now work, travel by jet to the opposite side of the globe, and make crucial decisions, at all hours of the day and night.

Inevitably, with these new challenges comes more risk. It is not a coincidence that the most notorious industrial accidents of our times - Three Mile Island, Bhopal, Chernobyl, the Exxon Valdez - all occurred in the middle of the night or early morning, when operators with major responsibilities were dangerously fatigued. Most transportation accidents are caused by human error, and the leading cause of human error is fatigue. Sleep deprivation leads to as many as 200,000 road accidents each year in the U.S. alone, and results in one-third of all fatal heavy truck accidents. It is estimated that fatigue cost the U.S. economy at least $ 20 billion each year in decreased productivity and accidents.

Sailing Solo Around the World Can Be Very Tiring…

In 1960, Sir Francis Chichester took 38 days to cross the Atlantic Ocean, from Plymouth, UK, to Newport, R.I., winning the first Observer Single-handed Transatlantic Race (OSTAR). Less than three decades later, the winner of the 1988 edition of the OSTAR crossed the Atlantic in only 10 days. Such a remarkable achievement has been largely determined by the phenomenal improvements in yacht design, construction techniques, electronics and navigation technologies. Today, the limiting factor is no longer technology - virtually all competitors sail on extremely fast and state-of-the-art racing machines - but the human element. Races are won by solo sailors who, pitting themselves against nature’s elements for months at a time, are capable of wisely administering their own resources of stamina, skill, organization, self-discipline and determination.

The key to success in these great human adventures and athletic contests is proper management of sleep and rest. For these solo sailors, the temptation to reduce sleep to dramatically low levels is constantly present at any time of day or night in order to continuously optimize boat performance and speed, to survey tactics of competitors and study meteorological reports, and to avoid collisions with ships or with icebergs in the Southern Oceans. The danger often overlooked is that the deleterious effects of sleep deprivation are manifested by subtle decreases in awareness and ability to perform, resulting in errors of judgement and reduced ability to assess one’s own capabilities, even before these symptoms become fully obvious and escalate into physical fatigue.

Ultimately, lack of proper sleep management undermines not only race performance but, more importantly, safety. Indeed, fatigue and sleep deprivation have been reported as causes for, or contributing factors in, many of the accidents which occurred in past races. In a pioneering effort to address this important safety issue, for the first time in the history of any sailing contest, the Alertness, Sleep and Safety Assurance Program has been launched in the Around Alone 1998-99 competition. Covering 27,000 nautical miles and spanning four oceans, this single-handed marathon (formerly The BOC Challenge) is the longest race on earth for an individual in any sport. Based on state-of-the art research and on solutions adopted in certain industrial, space and aeronautical settings, the program provides competitors with knowledge and tools that substantially contribute to their safety, as well as maximize their efficiency and alertness levels. In addition, the program is an invaluable research tool, generating data and information which will significantly contribute to a further understanding of sleep deprivation and its management. This knowledge will be applied in a variety of occupational and workplace settings.

The core components of the Alertness, Sleep and Safety Assurance Program for the Around Alone competitors are education and training. Prior to the start of the race, competitors attended an intensive workshop on the fundamentals of sleep-wake states, alertness, and circadian (twenty-four-hour) regulation. Particular emphasis was given to recognizing the first and subtle signs of sleep deprivation or alertness impairment. Sleep is an active and complex physiological state that is vital to survival. Individual sleep needs may vary considerably from person-to-person and depend also on a number of external factors such as motivation and mood. Some people need 6 hours or less, but others require up to 9 hours to feel wide awake and to function at their peak level. However, quality of sleep - which includes keeping regular sleep schedules, proper exercise and nutrition - is equally, or more important, than quantity. When severely deprived of sleep, the brain can shift uncontrollably from wake to sleep. Such spontaneous episodes of sleepiness can be very short (microsleeps) or extend for several minutes, and are associated with significant performance deterioration and may put an individual at risk.

What Works for Them May Work For You…

In the workshop, competitors have been instructed on a variety of strategies for combating sleepiness and fatigue and for optimizing alertness and performance. Because there is no better antidote to sleepiness than, you guessed it, sleep itself, the main focus was placed on how to get the most benefit out of short sleep episodes. Indeed, napping is an age-old response to the basic biological rhythm that controls sleeping and waking. Studies have shown that naps improve judgment, performance, memory retention and mood. The best approach is to nap in advance to prevent sleepiness during a long stretch of wakefulness. It is no coincidence that a number of highly productive and creative individuals were nappers. The list includes Albert Einstein, Winston Churchill, Napoleon and Thomas Edison, whose invention of the light bulb placed man in an around-the-clock world and keeps so many people up past their natural bedtimes.

I have been involved with numerous studies over the past 20 years that have shown that multiple napping schedules (or polyphasic sleep strategies) have allowed trans-Atlantic sailors to maintain much of their performance levels. Based on these observations and on the fact that over 85% of species in nature show typical polyphasic rest-activity patterns, we believe that polyphasic sleep is the strategy of choice for maintaining acceptable alertness levels under situations of continuous work. This strategy is not new, for apparently it had been successfully tested as early as half a millennium ago by no other than Leonardo da Vinci, undisputedly a highly productive and creative master. According to anecdotal reports, Leonardo would sleep 15 minutes out of every four hours, for a daily total of only 1.5 hours of sleep. Our controlled laboratory studies - including those recently commissioned by NASA in an effort to design sleep management schedules for emergencies in space missions - have shown that Leonardo’s idea makes significant biological sense. Individuals sleeping for 30 minutes every four hours, for a daily total of only 3 hours of sleep, performed better and were more alert, compared to when they had 3 hours of uninterrupted sleep. In other words, under conditions of dramatic sleep reduction, it is more efficient to recharge the sleep "battery" more often.

Following the workshop, competitors have been individually coached toward personalized optimal sleep and alertness management plans, tailored to their physiologic and circadian profiles, and based on their own wealth of experience. For example, it is important to determine whether a competitor is a morning or an evening person. Morning people (larks) usually require more regular routines than do evening people (owls). On the other hand, larks tend to feel very refreshed following even very brief naps, while owls generally require longer naps to feel satisfied.

During the entire 8-month long race, sailors wear wrist activity monitors (a microcomputer the size of a wristwatch) which continuously collect data on quality and duration of their sleep and wake activities. This information is downloaded at the end of each leg and, after sophisticated analyses, is shared and discussed with each competitor in debriefing sessions to further optimize their sleep management strategies. Data from leading competitors who recently stopped in Cape Town after the month-long Leg 1 is currently being analyzed. Preliminary findings indicate that some of the winners managed to remain highly alert and competitive with a total of only 4 hours of sleep per day, thanks to their dividing sleep into multiple short naps throughout the 24 hours.

Summary

We live in a 24-hour society that never shuts down to meet the increasing requirements of a global economy. However, these around-the-clock demands represent a major challenge for the human physiology, disrupting sleep, brain clocks, and generating decrements in alertness and performance. Ultimately, the increase in fatigue observed in our society often result in errors and accidents in the workplace, with a dramatic impact on safety and productivity. Scientific research conducted over the past two decades has shown that there are strategies to improve safety, alertness and performance that can be tailored to specific work environments. By examining the pioneering research being conducted to enhance safety in one of the most grueling sporting events in the world--around-the-world solo sailing--we can learn a great deal about innovative solutions which we can adapt for our own lifestyles, and generate tangible benefits to our overall safety, alertness and productivity.