Sleepless in America

Guests: Sigrid Veasey, Ilene Rosen, Lauren Hale

Getting a bad night’s sleep feels awful. And in recent years we’ve learned that there are far more serious health effects from long-term sleep deprivation other than feeling cranky, cloudy, and achy. There are links to Alzheimer’s, memory impairment, obesity, depression, even cancer, and diabetes. And enough Americans are sleep-deprived that the CDC calls sleep deprivation a major public health crisis. This hour, we talk about why Americans aren’t getting enough sleep and what all those restless nights do to our minds, bodies, and lives. We’re joined by University of Pennsylvania sleep experts SIGRID VEASEY and ILENE ROSEN. And we’ll also be joined by LAUREN HALE, a professor and preventive medicine researcher at Stony Brook University on the racial sleep gap.