Sleepless nights in Kingdom

IF you are reading this in the office, you may want to carry out this small survey, ask five or six of your colleagues about their daily sleeping routine. I have done it; the best among them sleep at midnight, the worst at about 3 in the morning.
Staying up late at night is a way of life for a lot of Saudis somehow has become a part of our culture. Be it a weekday or a weekend, it is always a rush hour at 10 p.m. People from all ages and walks of life are out and about, touring the city’s streets shopping and dining. One may experience long queues at drive-through restaurant after midnight.
Ladies and gentlemen, we have to admit, we have a problem with our sleeping patterns. A hidden yet paramount reason that could be the secret behind a lot of our social issues such as lousy driving, low productivity, bright students with terrible academic records, could be nothing but a series of sleepless nights.
According to a 2005 study carried out the United States, 30 percent of American adults have had disrupted sleep, and 10 percent have had symptoms of daytime functional impairments consistent with insomnia. In another 2008 survey, 32 percent of those studied reported having a good night sleep only a few times a month or less. Another study carried out in 2012 found that the longer someone stays awake, the slower their productivity becomes; the ability to find information quickly and accurately, the ability to think creatively and solve problem all take a downward spiral. Not only that, Dr. Charles Czeisler, a professor researching sleep deficiency at Harvard Medical School, claims that a week of four to five sleeping hours a night results in impairments equivalent to a blood alcohol level of 0.1 percent. In other words, after a few nights of not enough sleeping, your productivity level is no better than that of a drunk.
The lower productivity you have been experiencing recently, the difficulty concentrating, a lack of energy, stress and impatience, can all be linked to your sleeping patterns.
It is truly startling to track the way such a behavior, staying up late at night that is, had developed throughout the years to become a part of our social fabric. I could think of two reasons; the first is our unforgiving sun that postpone most of our daily errands till the night prevails bringing the temperatures down with it, the second is the time consumed in businesses’ closing hours and prayer times. That is why most of the Saudis prefer to go out at night, at least they would insure that no lazy salesman would keep them waiting till he finishes his cigarette and decides to open the store.
Although these two reasons, amongst many others, could help us understand this Saudi phenomenon, they do not justify it. Still, despite all these reasons, we could get our daily 8 hours of a good night sleep. And here comes the bigger problem, we do not see sleep deprivation as a problem to begin with! Many takes the symptoms — we mentioned above — very lightly, ignoring its serious repercussions. According to many researches, with time, lack of sleep symptoms could develop into depression, anxiety, hypertension, high blood pressure, diabetes, and obesity.
Unfortunately, even the Saudi health experts seem to be ignorant of the issue in the country. According to a 2005 study, in Saudi Arabia, there is only 0.06 bed per 100,000 people that cater for sleep deficiencies compared to 0.3 to 1.5 bed in the developed countries. The study states clearly that Saudi Arabia is in a desperate need to increase the number of its specialized clinics and qualified technicians in this field. That was in 2005, I wonder if the situation has witnessed any improvements since then.
The article began with you asking your friends about their sleeping patterns, and now, maybe it is time for you to ask yourself the same question.

@smaldosari