"Our modern industrial society seems to have forgotten the importance of sleep," Van Cauter said. "We are all under pressure to perform, in school, at work, in social and professional settings, and tempted by multiple diversions. There is a sense that you can pack in more of life by skimping on sleep. But we are finding that people tend to replace reduced sleep with added calories, and that's not a healthy trade."

Modern scientific study of sleep began at the University of Chicago in 1953 with the discovery of REM sleep and subsequent studies that described the multiple stages of sleep. For many years, research on the consequences of sleep deprivation focused on the brain. Since 1999, however, the Van Cauter laboratory has published a series of studies describing the metabolic and hormonal consequences of chronic partial sleep loss which is now common. Such studies include:

• A 1999 study showing that a significant sleep debt could trigger metabolic and endocrine changes that mimic many of the hallmarks of aging.
• A 2000 paper that mapped out the stages of age-related sleep deterioration and showed how changes in sleep were mirrored by changes in hormone secretion, which in turn reduced sleep quality.
• A 2001 study demonstrating that inadequate sleep could foster insulin-resistance, a risk factor for Type 2 diabetes.
• A 2002 study showed that sleep deprivation could slow the response to vaccination, suggesting that sleep loss could reduce the ability to fight off an infection.

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Contact: John Easton
John.Easton@uchospitals.edu
773-702-6241
University of Chicago Medical Center
6-Dec-2004