In June 2016 a new study on the relationship between sleep and human capital was released.
There had been previous studies on this topic but this one was conducted on a much larger scale. What the researchers did was the following. Over the first decade of the new millennium they looked at all the countries having the daylight saving time structure. Those countries are setting clocks forward one hour in spring and backwards one hour in fall.
But they didn’t only look at those 2 days. They looked at the whole year and compared regular events with those happening over the two days when clocks changed and how it affected people.
And the results are remarkable.
The hospital consensus was very clear. When people were getting one hour less sleep there were severe health effects. A lot of them even required inpatient stays.
What that means is that people who were on the verge of needing medical attention tipped towards actually needing it. And we are not simply talking about a small incident. The risk of strokes actually increases by 25% during that day.
But that’s not all. On top of that, they discovered that when the clocks were set back one hour, meaning that the sleep duration was longer for the sleep deprived, there was a self reported health increase. Hospital admissions decreased significantly for four days.
So in essence this study is one of the first to prove that even minor changes to sleep patterns can affect human capital in significant ways.
Just think about all the medical costs that could be reduced if our society prioritized sleep.
Think about the health benefits and wellbeing that would increase.
This one day that allows people to catch up with their sleep debt is already making a massive difference.
So just think about how much good you can do to your body when you start welcoming sleep in your life instead of maybe seeing it as a nuisance, stealing you time.
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