Gustavus' 60th Nobel Conference shines spotlight on sleep

When it comes to living a healthy lifestyle, eating right, staying hydrated and regularly exercising are often what comes to mind. But with over a third of Americans getting less than seven hours of sleep each night, according to the CDC, the importance of a good night’s rest is often glossed over.

However, the consequences of unhealthy sleep habits on public health should keep people wide awake. The long-term impacts of sleep disorders and sleep deprivation have been associated with increased risks of obesity, depression, diabetes. cardiovascular disease and other health issues.

It’s why Gustavus Adolphus College is shining a light on this often overlooked sector of human health in the postsecondary institution’s 60th annual Nobel Conference, “Sleep, Unraveled.” On Tuesday Oct. 1 and Wednesday, Oct. 2, the conference will bring together an interdisciplinary panel of experts analyzing the biological and neurological function of sleep, its relationship with public health, and how sleep is shaped by racial and socioeconomic inequality.

“We gathered together chronobiologists, neuroscientists, historians, medical authorities and even public policy experts all trying to hone in on that central issue of sleep,” said Gustavus Associate Professor and Nobel Conference Chair Philip Voight. “That’s one of the purposes of the conference is to take people from different disciplinary sub-specialties who may never have been in conversation with one another and bring them in together in public to help them understand a scientific issue.”

Featuring lecturers tackling sleep from both scientific humanities-based perspectives, “Sleep, Unraveled,” includes voices as wide-ranging as Marishka Brown, who plays a pivotal role in advancing the field of sleep medicine as Director of the National Center on Sleep Disorders Research; Amita Sehgal, a University of Pennsylvania neuroscientist whose research on fruit flies answers important questions on why we sleep and Tricia Heresy, a theologian, performing artist and author of New York Times best-seller “Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto,” which examines a good night’s sleep as a rebellion against the exploitative and damaging effects of” grind-culture.”

Among these voices is one of the leading pioneers of sleep in childhood and adolescents, Mary Carskadon. Those who don’t know the Brown University Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior by name, may nonetheless be familiar with the findings of her research at Stanford’s Sleep Camp, which revealed that teens going through puberty often need more sleep than younger children — flipping conventional wisdom at the time on its head.

While teenagers have a reputation for being moody and groggy in the morning, Carskadon says it’s not the adolescent’s fault, it’s the early morning wake-up times thrust upon them. One of the most notable findings of Carskadon’s early research was that teen’s circadian rhythms (their internal clocks) are aligned to fall asleep later at night and wake up earlier in the day. But school schedules, which often start between 7 and 8 a.m., don’t accommodate teenagers’ natural sleeping instincts.

“The problem is biology and when they’re not getting adequate sleep, there are consequences depending on how little sleep they’re getting,” said Carskadon.

With significant sleep deprivation, those consequences can include increased risk-taking behaviors from unsafe driving to self-harm, weight gain, and challenges with reaction times, learning and memory. In effect, poor sleep can inhibit teens’ performance whether they’re in the classroom, on the football field or behind the driver’s seat.

“There’s a tendency to say just go to bed earlier, but it’s not that easy because their biology is fighting against that and so it’s really a big challenge,” said Carskadon. “They can go to bed earlier, but they might not fall asleep and being in bed is not the same as being asleep.”

Carskadon’s research and advocacy has played an important role in influencing school districts all across the country to shift their middle school and high school start times to 8 a.m. or later. Recently, states like California and Florida have followed suit, passing laws requiring high schools refrain from starting classes until at least 8:30 a.m.

While Carskadon approaches sleep from the perspective of enhancing adolescent development, Benjamin Reiss, Professor of English at Emory University, studies how sleep is intertwined with racial inequality.

Growing research has shown that Black Americans are disproportionately likely to experience sleep disorders and poorer rest than white Americans. This disparity isn’t biological, said Reiss, but a symptom of structural inequality. In addition to Black Americans being more likely to work late shift jobs and live in noise-dense areas which can disrupt sleep, Reiss said the stress carried from experiencing racism and discrimination can put a truly restful sleep out of reach.

“Some of that has to do with the feeling of stress that comes with living in an unequal society, the feeling of being afraid of being pulled to the side of the road by police, of being accused of shoplifting, of being viewed with suspicion,” said Reiss.

In his work, Reiss has traced back the racial sleep gap in the present day to the inequalities in sleep which arose during the Atlantic Slave Trade and the Industrial Revolution. Through the lens of sleep, Reiss said the world white and Black Americans experienced couldn’t be more different. As wealth generated from the Industrial Revolution made homes with private bedrooms more accessible than ever to America’s growing white middle class, slaves being shipped from Africa to the Americas were forced to sleep shackled together in the tightest, most unsanitary conditions imaginable.

The slaves who survived the journey to the New World did not have the privacy or comfort allotted to them that white Americans enjoyed. Disrupting sleep became one of the many ways slavers exerted control over their slaves, sometimes conducting random spot checks on slaves in the middle of the night as they tried to snatch a few hours of rest.

The racial sleep gap which emerged as a consequence of the slave trade still has ramifications today, said Reiss, passed down as racial inequality has persisted and generational trauma the sleep habits of the past to the present. Due to sleep’s profound impact on health, Reiss said it is an under discussed element social inequality which deserves more attention.

“When we talk about social inequality and at-risk populations or vulnerable populations, we tend to think about things that happen when they’re awake, their access to school, to healthcare, to nutritious food, shelter, all those kinds of things — but all those things are affected by sleep,” said Reiss. “It seems to me that kind of forgotten dimension. If we shine a light on it, it won’t solve all the other problems, but without thinking about how people sleep we’re really missing a big part of the picture.”

The general public will have the opportunity to hear from the Nobel Conference’s panel of lecturers both in-person and online. Due to the contributions of past and present donors, the Nobel Conference is completely free to the public for the first time.