by Sophie Mendell
Pop Quiz:
- What’s more dangerous, drunk driving or exhausted driving?
- When exposed to a variety of stimuli, what caused spiders to lose their ability to spin organized webs the most: caffeine, amphetamine, or sedatives?
- If considered as a cause of death, how highly ranked would medical errors be?
As you may have guessed by this article’s apparent subject, driving while tired can be more dangerous than drunk driving. Shockingly, being awake for 24 hours straight results in the same level of impairment as having a blood-alcohol-content (BAC) of 0.10%. For reference, in the United States, you’re considered driving under the influence at a BAC of 0.08% or higher. Part of why drowsy driving can be considered more dangerous than drunk driving is due to the fact that when you fall asleep while driving, you cannot react. Drunk drivers may have slowed and exaggerated responses, but sleeping drivers have no reaction at all!
To combat heavy eyelids, exhausted commuters often drink caffeinated beverages to “wake up;” however, caffeine is the compound that made spiders most sporadic in their web weaving (Figure 1). It makes you wonder: could caffeine also impact our levels of control and efficiency? Caffeine is the most widely used central nervous system stimulant in the world. By binding to adenosine receptors, caffeine prevents adenosine from acting. Adenosine accumulates in our brains throughout the day, working to slow nerve activity and promote sleepiness. By blocking adenosine from binding, caffeine promotes wakefulness. Depending on which adenosine receptor caffeine binds, dopamine can be released, resulting in a good feeling after its consumption. However, when taken in extreme doses, caffeine can cause anxiety, irritability, and palpitations (rapid or irregular heart beats).
While drowsiness can be dangerous on the road, it can also be dangerous in the clinic. Medical errors are thought to result in upwards of 400,000 deaths, which if ranked with other causes of death, would make it the third killer in the U.S., behind cancer and heart disease. Unfortunately, many healthcare professions have 12, 24, and 36-hour long shifts. As we’ve discussed, just 24 hours of sleep deprivation (much less chronic sleep deprivation) results in impairment equivalent to the legal limit for being drunk. If anyone showed up to their job intoxicated, they would likely be fired. But many jobs promote similar impairment with how they schedule shift workers.
Knowing what we’ve just learned, how can we expect someone to work well at any job for 24 hours, much less one where the great responsibility of life-saving care is present? For those with this responsibility, they’ll likely combine such a work shift with too much caffeine, leaving themselves exhausted, irritable, and worn-thin. This prevents nurses and physicians from reaching their potential, and sometimes can expose patients to poor bedside manners. Simply put, our medical system often overworks employees, increasing the chances of medical errors. Every worker deserves to come to their job well-rested and ready to perform. By failing to give this to healthcare workers, everybody pays the price. So next time you’re studying and considering an all-nighter, or driving through the night and craving a Redbull, think about the spider spinning its web. Do you want your web to be organized and efficient, or chaotic and insufficient. Sleep is not for the weak, sleep is for all!
Figure 1. The effects of various stimuli on spider web weaving behavior. Of all substances tested, including marijuana and amphetamines, caffeine is shockingly the most disruptive to the spider. Image source: NASA Tech Brief, published in New Scientist Magazine, 29 April, 1995.
