It accounts for a third of your life and a big chunk of your health and longevity. So why aren’t you sleep­ing enough? — By Jim Gor­man, Men’s Health

What a night. The woman of your dreams appeared. Your pulse raced. Heavy breath­ing ensued. You do remem­ber it, right? Oh, wait, you were asleep. And that’s not all you missed. Under cover of night, sleep floods your veins with age-defying human growth hor­mone. Sleep raises an army of T cells and sends them into bat­tle against colds and infec­tion. Sleep resets the appetite con­trols that tell you to not hit the turn sig­nal when you pass a McDonald’s. And, of course, sleep helps you above the neck as well as below the belt.

“It sta­bi­lizes your wak­ing brain, makes you more alert, and allows you to process infor­ma­tion faster,” says David Dinges, Ph.D., who stud­ies shut-eye at the Uni­ver­sity of Penn­syl­va­nia. “It helps you remem­ber things and con­sol­i­date those mem­o­ries.” You won’t get that from a Red Bull. So then why are we engaged in a society-wide exper­i­ment in sleep depri­va­tion? Aver­age nightly sleep time dur­ing the work­week in the United States is down nearly 20 min­utes in the last decade, to six hours and 40 min­utes. And men ages 30 to 44 are the worst offend­ers: Thirty per­cent of them say they log less than six hours of sleep at night, accord­ing to a sur­vey from the Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Prevention.

The price you pay for this sleep deficit is more than just lost pro­duc­tiv­ity — your health can suf­fer too. So wake up! It’s time to shed some light on this dark territory.

Suc­cess­ful, dri­ven guys should be good to go on five hours a night: MYTH

True, Napoleon slept four to five hours a night, and Thomas Edi­son got by on four. But world dom­i­na­tion and the light­bulb might have been mere warm-ups had these guys slept more. Sleep sci­en­tists esti­mate that only 10 per­cent of adults are hard­wired to need appre­cia­bly less (or more) sleep than the rec­om­mended seven to eight hours. And by cheat­ing on sleep, you’re limp­ing through life with the cra­nial equiv­a­lent of a torn calf mus­cle. Scarier still, peo­ple who are sleep-deprived often don’t even know they’ve turned into zom­bies. After divid­ing 48 vol­un­teers into four sleep reg­i­mens — eight, six, four and zero hours a night (a.k.a. torture).

Uni­ver­sity of Penn­syl­va­nia researchers found that the six-hours-a-night group fared as poorly on mea­sures of alert­ness and mem­ory after two weeks as the no-sleep crew did after 24 hours. But par­tic­i­pants in the six-hour group didn’t feel very sleepy even when they were per­form­ing at their worst. Accu­mu­lat­ing a sleep deficit also leads to “microsleeps” while you’re awake. “Your brain becomes unsta­ble and will go ‘off-line’ for half a sec­ond,” Dinges says. The more sleep-deprived you are, the more fre­quent and longer the lapses.

Snooze strat­egy:

If you didn’t sleep seven to eight hours every night this past week, go to bed this week­end at your reg­u­lar week­day time, but don’t set your alarm clock. Did you rise on Sat­ur­day and Sun­day at the same time you would have on, say, a Tues­day? Then you may be one of those few peo­ple who can sleep less yet remain healthy. The rest of us mere mor­tals can begin to repay our sleep debt by doz­ing 10 hours a night on week­ends and then stick­ing to seven to eight hours dur­ing the week. Your brain will use this strat­egy when­ever you accu­mu­late a sleep debt, says Ruth Benca, M.D., Ph.D., med­ical direc­tor of the Wis­con­sin Sleep Cen­ter. Oth­er­wise, you want to stay con­sis­tent with your sleeping.

Fre­quently need­ing to pee in the mid­dle of the night might indi­cate a health prob­lem: TRUTH

That first stum­ble to the bath­room in the dark can be chalked up to the beer you drank watch­ing the Knicks game. The sec­ond one can spell trou­ble. “If you habit­u­ally take two or more bath­room trips a night, you prob­a­bly have obstruc­tive sleep apnea,” says Alex Che­diak, M.D., med­ical direc­tor of the Miami Sleep Dis­or­ders Cen­ter. With sleep apnea, the soft tis­sue at the back of your throat blocks your upper air­way dur­ing sleep, stop­ping your breath­ing for any­where from 10 sec­onds to a minute or even longer. This can occur hun­dreds of times in a night, depriv­ing you of restora­tive deep sleep and starv­ing your vital organs of oxy­gen. No won­der sleep apnea has been linked to heart dis­ease, hyper­ten­sion, and mood disorders.

But why does it wake you up to pee? Because those mini-suffocations result in lower cir­cu­lat­ing oxy­gen lev­els, your heart pumps harder, rais­ing your blood pres­sure. As excess fluid builds up in your veins, a feed­back loop trig­gers the release of a pressure-relieving diuretic, mak­ing you need to pee. An enlarged prostate and high blood sugar can also prompt middle-of-the-night bowl breaks. But with those con­di­tions, says Dr. Che­diak, you’ll pee a lot day and night.

Snooze strat­egy:

Rais­ing the pil­low end of your bed by a few inches can help pre­vent that tis­sue from block­ing your throat. Snor­ing could also be wak­ing you in the mid­dle of the night, and one major cause is nasal obstruc­tion. Wash out mucus and irri­tants by mix­ing 1/4 tea­spoon of table salt in 2 cups of warm water and flush­ing your nose twice a day using a med­ical or bulb syringe. Japan­ese researchers found that peo­ple with nasal obstruc­tion were twice as likely to expe­ri­ence day­time fatigue as peo­ple with clear pas­sage­ways. For video instruc­tion on the tech­nique, visit mayoclinic.com and search “nasal irri­ga­tion.” If the pee­ing per­sists around the clock, sched­ule a prostate exam and have your blood-sugar level checked by your doc­tor after an overnight fast.

The post-lunch bonk can’t be avoided: MYTH

Many Euro­peans scarf down a carb-loaded lunch and then shut down from 1 to 4 in the after­noon. But with unem­ploy­ment soar­ing, let’s assume a three-hour nap won’t play well at the office. If you find your­self enter­ing what amounts to a food coma after lunch, you’re prob­a­bly eat­ing too many car­bo­hy­drates in the morn­ing. And what you’re not get­ting enough of is mak­ing it worse. “A postlunch crash is a tell­tale sign of poor night­time sleep, as is doz­ing in meet­ings, the­ater per­for­mances, or sim­i­lar envi­ron­ments,” says Dr. Benca. Not sure if you’re expe­ri­enc­ing a mod­est dip or a true crash? Take a minute or two to fill out the Epworth Sleepi­ness Scale. This online ques­tion­naire is the same one sleep docs use on their new patients.

Snooze strat­egy:

Along with improv­ing your nightly sleep pat­tern, eat three small meals spaced two hours apart in the morn­ing. Try a pro­tein shake at 7 a.m., two eggs and a small cup of oat­meal at 9, and an apple and a hand­ful of almonds at 11. You’ll con­sume fewer car­bo­hy­drates, and you won’t be as likely to overeat at lunchtime. In fact, a salad with grilled chicken and avo­cado on top should be enough to keep your mind focused and your head off the desk all after­noon, says Keith Berkowitz, M. D., med­ical direc­tor of the Cen­ter for Bal­anced Health in New York City.

Wak­ing up at 4 a. m. every day just means I’m an early riser: MYTH

More likely, you — along with 60 mil­lion other Amer­i­cans — have insom­nia, an inabil­ity to fall or stay asleep. “Insom­ni­acs wake at the slight­est dis­tur­bance and feel unre­freshed in the morn­ing,” says Dr. Benca. Insuf­fi­cient sleep exposes the suf­ferer to a litany of per­for­mance and health prob­lems. In a study pub­lished in the Jour­nal of Psy­cho­so­matic Research, researchers found insom­ni­acs were more than twice as likely as nor­mal sleep­ers to call in sick for long periods.

Snooze strat­egy:

Let’s assume that you’ve already cut back on caf­feine. What you want to do is make your sleep more effi­cient, says W. Christo­pher Win­ter, M.D., med­ical direc­tor of the sleep med­i­cine cen­ter at Martha Jef­fer­son Hos­pi­tal in Char­lottesville, Va. Dr. Win­ter likens poor sleep to a book­case miss­ing a few vol­umes, rep­re­sent­ing gaps in your sleep. By going to bed an hour or so later, those gaps won’t be as long as or fre­quent. Soon enough, you should be wak­ing up after the roost­ers, not before them.

A tir­ing work­out before bed will help me sleep more soundly: MYTH

Reg­u­lar exer­cise is one of the best sleep-promoting reme­dies, but work­ing out late at night risks leav­ing you wide-eyed in bed. “It’s eas­i­est to fall asleep when your core body tem­per­a­ture goes rel­a­tively quickly from very warm to very cold,” says Dr. Che­diak. “After exer­cise, that cool­ing process takes four to six hours.” It’s bet­ter to take a hot bath or sauna ses­sion close to bed­time. “Any­thing that raises core body tem­per­a­ture will help get you started on sleep,” says Dr. Che­diak. He says the cooldown period into the sleep zone fol­low­ing a bath takes just two hours—half that of an exer­cise session.

Snooze strat­egy:

Work out — but do it first thing in the morn­ing for all-day energy and a quick drift into deep, rest­ful sleep. Stud­ies show that exer­cise improves sleep as effec­tively as a class of sleep­ing pills that includes Resto­ril and Halcion.

Alco­hol can help me sleep at night: MYTH

Only if you equate a good night’s sleep with pass­ing out drunk on your girlfriend’s sofa. Alco­hol messes with the nor­mal sleep cycle, espe­cially the back end of the cycle. “Four hours into sleep, alco­hol wears off and leaves you in an excitable state,” says Dr. Che­diak. You’ll sleep lighter, wake more eas­ily, and be hung over when you do wake.

After three nights of intox­i­cated slum­ber, even the ini­tial knock­out punch begins to wane. Dr. Che­diak warns of another draw­back to using a six-pack as a sleep aid. “Being a mus­cle relax­ant as well as seda­tive, alco­hol can even cre­ate sleep apnea symp­toms in snor­ers who don’t oth­er­wise have the con­di­tion,” he says. Unfor­tu­nately, liquor is a go-to ther­apy for many sheep coun­ters, used as often as over-the-counter sleep­ing pills and more often than pre­scrip­tion sleep meds.

Snooze strat­egy

Be con­sis­tent with your over­all sched­ule and you won’t need booze. “Your inter­nal clock is a struc­ture in your brain called the suprachi­as­matic nucleus,” says Dr. Win­ter. “To set this clock, eat your break­fast, lunch, and din­ner at exactly the same time every day for a week.”

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