Some people may think that they don't actually need as much sleep as recommended, and prefer to spend much of their time on work and climbing up the corporate ladder. Yet the truth is that fatigue is dangerous.
Most of us take sleep as granted, without trying to understand what it actually entails. We just know that we need sleep and that it restores us, physically and mentally. A study shows that those who sleep fewer than six hours a night don't live as long as those who sleep seven hours or more.
A lack of sleep constantly leads to disasters - be it road accidents that constantly happens around us, or major misfortunes which grips the world's attention like the Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe, which there points to a lack of sleep being partly linked to the incident. These people can face higher stress and with bodies tired enough to fall asleep, it results in reduced productivity which can cost the economy billions of dollars.
Studies show that some of the more serious accidents happened during the night shift, and human errors are inevitably involved in these cases. It is during this timing that the body prefers to shut down and take a rest. Some of the times, one part of the body has fallen asleep, while another part keeps on functioning. This dangerous state of mind and body is most prone to accidents and tragedies happening.
However public awareness on this critical issue is often lacking, and most often in going forward and trying to achieve one's goals, we tend to push our bodies to the limit, and sacrifice sleep. The competitiveness of our society, and the productivity oriented mindset in our industrialized nation is a major cause factor of it. We want to get done as much as we can get into the twenty-four hours that we have in a day. Some will even brag about their ability to go without sleep.
With the trend of the economy in the past years, the hectic schedules of businesses, increasing number of factories operating twenty-four hours, seven days a week, this society needs more far-reaching education efforts to state just how important sleep is.