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American Morning

The Big Question: Are Americans Getting Enough Sleep?

Aired April 02, 2002 - 08:41   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: The Big Question this hour, are Americans getting enough sleep? A new study that looks at the toll September 11th has taken on us says probably not. The new survey finds that nearly 50 million Americans are not getting enough sleep -- I am one of them -- to remain alert the next day.

We go to Dr. Gupta, who is sleepless in Atlanta.

Good morning, Dr. Gupta.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: That's right, yes, I think I'm with you, Anderson, not getting enough sleep. We're here at a coffeehouse actually, where a lot of people who haven't gotten enough sleep actually do come the next morning. A few people here, we want to sort of take an informal poll to see how they're sleeping and how well they're sleeping.

How did you sleep last night, how many hours did you get?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I slept about seven hours, and since I have to get up at 4:30 to be here at 5:30, I sleep like a rock.

GUPTA: A lot of people must come here that haven't slept well enough. Can you tell us about those folks?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We've had a lot of people in this morning, with -- talking about their strange dreams from last night, didn't sleep long, and some dream about babies, and sunglasses and swamps. Don't quite get that, but, yes, it's been kind of strange this morning.

GUPTA: Got you.

Mary, how about you, you sleeping well?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I sleep well. We get up early in the morning to be here, so I have no trouble sleeping.

GUPTA: All right. A couple people who get enough sleep.

Yvonne, how much sleep -- are you sleeping OK at night?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm sleeping OK, a little less since having kids, a little less sound. But I get about seven hours. Because I kind of have to go to bed with them, but I always get up in the middle of the night to check on them.

GUPTA: Well, I'll tell you, seven hours of sleep just around the tables here, and that's a little bit more than the national average, which is about 6.9 hours of sleep a night on week days, about 7.5 hours of sleep on the weekends. About 60 percent of America complains of insomnia. That's more than half the country that actually thinks that they don't get enough sleep or don't sleep very well at all -- Anderson.

COOPER: What is enough sleep, exactly? And why is it so important to get it?

GUPTA: Well, you know, people have thrown this around for years, and there's been a considerable amount of research done in what is enough sleep and why does sleep matter so much? Eight hours is still what the National Sleep Foundation says, but more interesting than that, they actually say that sleep actually does many things, including restore your psychological well being, actually repairs some tissue damage that occurs, which otherwise you will age more quickly. If you don't get enough sleep, you will metabolize food much more slowly. So despite the fact that you're up longer, you can actually put on more weight, and also it's associated with diseases like diabetes, heart disease. People who don't get enough sleep have those diseases as well.

COOPER: Perhaps that's why I have gray hair at the young age I am. I got a question, does all the sleep have to occur at once?

I mean, I sleep, you know, typically, five hours at night and then two hours in the afternoon. Is that an OK way to do it?

GUPTA: What they say is you have two kinds of sleep. You have what is called REM sleep, which when your eyes are rapidly moving around, rapid eye movement sleep, and non-REM sleep. The actual non REM sleep is actually supposed to be more restorative.

If you sleep in chunks like you do, Anderson, oftentimes it's harder for you to get to the non-REM sleep, so it may not be quite as good in the long run to sleep in chunks like that.

COOPER: All right, Dr. Cooper, thanks very much.

GUPTA: Thank you.

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