Ranjan Das, CEO and MD of SAP India died after a massive cardiac arrest on Wednesday. One of the youngest CEOs, he was 42.

Reports said the Das collapsed at his Raheja Bay home at Bandra after returning from a work-out at the in-house gym on 21 October in Mumbai. He was soon rushed to the Lilavati Hospital where he passed away. Das was fitness freak. He was hard-working. Yet he believed that he needed only four hours of sleep a day to stay fit and fresh. He had run Chennai marathon a couple of months ago.

It was certainly a wake-up call for corporate India. How could a fit athlete die of heart attack, that too at 42? Did Ranjan die due to a stressful life? Those who know him say that he was not a victim of stress. The real reason, was stated in a small line in the news that Ranjan used to make do with 4-5 hours of sleep every day.

What happens if we don’t get enough sleep?

Many of us want to sleep as little as possible. There is so much to do that sleep seems like a waste of time. Yet sleep, an essential time of rest and rejuvenation, benefits our minds and bodies in many ways. When you continuously don’t get the amount of sleep you need, you begin to pay for it in daytime drowsiness, trouble concentrating, irritability, increased risk of falls and accidents, and lower productivity.

Sleep deficit can lead to your death! Complete and partial lack of sleep increases the blood concentrations of High sensitivity C-Reactive Protein (hs-cRP), the strongest predictor of heart attacks. Even after getting adequate sleep later, the levels stays high!! Just one night of sleep loss increases very toxic substances in body such as Interleukin- 6 (IL-6), Tumour Necrosis Factor-Alpha (TNF-alpha) and C-reactive protein (cRP). They increase risks of many medical conditions, including cancer, arthritis and heart disease.

Sleeping for 5 hours or less per night leads to 39% increase in heart disease. Sleeping for 6 hours or less per night leads to 18% increase in heart disease.

Sleep benefits to our mood, memory and concentration.

Have you ever pulled an “all nighter” to study for a final exam, only to find that you can barely remember what you studied during the test? Sleep helps to organize memories, solidify learning, and improve concentration. Proper sleep, especially sleep where you are actively dreaming (REM sleep), regulates mood as well. Lack of sleep can make you irritable and cranky, affecting your emotions, social interaction, and decision making. Sleep deprivation also affects motor skills, enough to be similar to driving while drunk if seriously sleep deprived. Driver fatigue, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, causes over 100,000 accidents and 1500 deaths each year.

Sleep benefits to our immune system, nervous system and development.

Immune system. It doesn’t seem fair. Right when you are exhausted after a stressful move or a big project at work, you come down with a cold. That’s no accident - sleep is essential to the immune system. Without adequate sleep, the immune system becomes weak, and the body becomes more vulnerable to infection and disease.

Nervous system: Sleep is also a time of rest and repair to neurons. Neurons are the freeways of the nervous system that carry out both voluntary commands, like moving your arm, and involuntary commands, like breathing and digestive processes.

Hormone release: Many hormones, substances produced to trigger or regulate particular body functions, are timed to release during sleep or right before sleep. Growth hormones, for example, are released during sleep, vital to growing children but also for restorative processes like muscle repair.

Repair and Growth: Sleep is composed of two stages: REM (Rapid Eye Movement) and non-REM. The former helps in mental consolidation while the latter helps in physical repair and rebuilding. During the night, you alternate between REM and non-REM stages 4-5 times. The earlier part of sleep is mostly non-REM. During that period, your pituitary gland releases growth hormones that repair your body. The latter part of sleep is more and more REM type.

Signs of Lack of Sleep

How do you know if you’re getting the sleep you need? If you are falling asleep as soon as your head hits the pillow, regularly need an alarm clock to wake up, or feel the need for frequent naps during the day, it is very likely you are sleep deprived.

Other signs you may be suffering from sleep deprivation include:

•difficulty waking up in the morning

•poor performance in school, on the job, or in sports

•increased clumsiness

•difficulty making decisions

•falling asleep during work or class

•feeling especially moody or irritated

Sleep deprivation can be dangerous not only to you but others, since it affects motor skills like driving. Chronic sleep deprivation is also thought to cause long term changes to the body, which contribute to increased risk for obesity, diabetes and heart disease.

Typical Sleep Needs

Infants - About 16 hours per day of sleep

Babies and toddlers - From 6 months to 3 years: between 10 and 14 hours per day. Infants and young children generally get their sleep from a combination of nighttime sleep and naps.

Children Ages 3 to 6: between 10 and 12 hours of sleep. Ages 6 to 9: about 10 hours of sleep. Ages 9 to 12: about 9 hours of sleep

Teenagers: About 9 hours of sleep per night. Teens have trouble getting enough sleep not only because of their busy schedules, but also because they are biologically programmed to want to stay up later and sleep later in the morning, which usually doesn’t mesh with school schedules.

Adults: For most adults, 7 to 8 hours a night appears to be the best amount of sleep.

Older adults: Older adults are also thought to need 7-8 hours of sleep. However, this sleep may be for shorter time spans, is lighter than a younger adult’s, and may include a nap during the day. See Sleep & Aging for more detailed information.

Pregnant women: During pregnancy, women may need a few more hours of sleep per night, or find that they need small catnaps during the day.

Paying off sleep debt

Sleep deprivation adds up to what is called a sleep debt. A sleep debt can range from one night’s very poor sleep to the accumulation of many days of not enough sleep.

Short term sleep debt: For a short term sleep debt, like a night or two of little sleep, you may just need a day or two of increased sleep to make it up. However, try not to make it a habit. Making up sleep on the weekends so you can sleep less during the week, for example, can disrupt overall sleep quality. Your sleep will be better if you go to bed and wake up at roughly the same time each day.

Long term sleep debt:If you have been chronically sleep deprived, you might need a longer time to make up your sleep debt. You may even need to take a sleep vacation, where you devote a few days to sleeping as long as needed. Although it may seem excessive at first, soon your body will revert to your optimum sleep needs.

SLEEP STAGES:

Understanding sleep stages and the sleep cycle can help you get better sleep. Your sleep is regulated by an internal body clock, sensitive to light, time of day and other cues for sleep and awakening. When you fall asleep, your sleep goes in cycles throughout the night, moving back and forth between deep restorative sleep and more alert stages and dreaming. As the night progresses, you spend more time in dream sleep and lighter sleep.

There are two main types of sleep. REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep is when you do most active dreaming. Your eyes actually move back and forth during this stage, which is why it is called REM sleep. Non-REM (NREM) sleep consists of four stages of deeper and deeper sleep. Each sleep stage is important for overall quality sleep, but deep sleep and REM sleep are especially vital.

# Stage 1 (Drowsiness)

# Stage 2 (Light Sleep)

# Stage 3 & 4 (Deep Sleep)

# EM sleep (Dream Sleep)

Deep Sleep

Each stage of sleep offers benefits to the sleeper. However, deep sleep is perhaps the most vital stage. It is the first stage that the brain attempts to recover when sleep deprived, and the strongest effects of sleep deprivation are from inadequate deep sleep. What might disrupt deep sleep? If you are caring for someone around the clock, whether it is a small infant or an elderly relative with a serious illness, you might need to attend to them suddenly in the middle of the night. Loud noise outside or inside the home might wake you. If you work the night shift, sleeping during the day may be difficult, due to light and excess noise during the day. Substances like alcohol and nicotine also disrupt deep sleep.

Maximize your deep sleep. Make sure your sleep environment is as comfortable as possible and minimize outside noise. If you are being awakened as a caregiver, make sure that you get some time of uninterrupted sleep, especially if you have had some unusually disruptive nights. Don’t be afraid to ask for help.

REM sleep

REM sleep, or dream sleep, is essential to our minds for processing and consolidating emotions, memories and stress. It is also thought to be vital to learning, stimulating the brain regions used in learning and developing new skills. Most of dreaming occurs during REM sleep, although it can happen during other sleep stages as well. There are different theories as to why you dream. Freud thought that dreams were the processing of unconscious desires. Today, researchers wonder if it may be the brain’s way of processing random fragments of information received during the day. Much of dreaming is still a mystery. If REM sleep is disrupted one night, your body will go through more REM the next to catch up on this sleep stage.

Getting more REM sleep

Studies have shown that better REM sleep helps boost your mood during the day. How can you get more REM sleep? One simple way is to try to sleep a little more in the morning. As your sleep cycles through the night, it starts with longer periods of deep sleep. By the morning, the REM sleep stage is longer. Try sleeping an extra half hour to hour and see if your mood improves.

Improving your overall sleep will also increase your REM sleep. If your body is deprived of deep sleep, it will try to make that up first- at the expense of REM sleep.

Sleep tips:

1. Keep a regular bedtime.

2. Stay active during daytime; avoid siestas.

3. Avoid a large meal just before sleep.

4. Have your dinner at least 2 hours before bedtime.

5. A bed time snack such as milk and peanut butter sandwich or a banana can promote good sleep.

6. Avoid caffienated drinks and foods such as chocolate before bedtime. Alcohol interferes with sleep contrary to popular beliefs.

7. Sleep on a large enough bed that helps you to stretch and relax.

8. Never keep a TV in your bedroom.

9. Unplug your phone and keep your mobile phones in silent mode.

10. Make sure that unwanted noise and light are cut out of your bedroom.

11. If married, spend a good chunk of quality time with your spouse before bedtime.

12. Pray and commit your worries into God’s hands.