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gGoing to the bathroom in the middle of the night is already unbearable, in this terrible moment when you have to tear yourself away from the warm blankets. But according to a recent analysis, these nocturnal breaks could have an even greater impact on the economy.
A report released Monday by economists from the RAND Corporation, think tank and nonprofit political organization based in Santa Monica, California, suggests that two or three night breaks in bathrooms – a condition also called "nocturia" – cost about $ 44.4 to the US economy. billions of dollars a year for an important reason. Marco Hafner, Lead Writer and Senior Economist at RAND, explains that even these brief interruptions in the sleep cycle can have such serious consequences that they have an impact on worker productivity in the morning.
"Our hypothesis is that much of this will be driven by the fact that people have interrupted their sleep," he said. Reverse. "I know it from my own experience. I have young children and when they wake me up twice a night, I do not work normally the next morning. "
This research was conducted with partial funding from Ferring Pharmaceuticals, which produces the drug Nocdurna to treat nocturia caused by nocturnal polyuria – a common cause of the disease.
For Hafner's analysis, he built a model for estimating the costs of nocturia on the economies of several countries, including the United States, Germany, Spain, the United Kingdom and Australia. . To make his prediction, he needed two things, an estimate of the number of people who get up to pee twice or more per night. and data showing how these breaks make people feel the next day. Getting this data has been complicated.
He estimated the prevalence of nocturia in the United States from the results of several studies, including one published in July 2017 in the United States. European Journal of the Health Economics. The Hafner team also relied on the results of two surveys of insurance companies from other countries: Vitality UK's Healthiest Workplace Survey and AIA's Asian Healthiest Workplace survey in 2017 and 2018. On Based on these data sources, his team estimated that 27.5 million Americans wake up at least twice to pee at night. This represents about 12.5% of the population, which is in line with survey results and previously published studies.
The real heart of Hafner's analysis was to quantify the impact of waking at least twice on a bathroom break on people's feelings, especially at work. To estimate this, Hafner and his colleagues also examined the survey data collected in Britain and Asia. They found correlations between waking twice or more per night and poor sleep quality, total sleep time, and daytime fatigue.
"I think we specifically looked at the working-age population and found that nocturia was still statistically significantly associated with productivity in the workplace," says Hafner. "Getting up twice a night is where all these negative consequences come in."
These measures led them to conclude that nocturnal nocturnal breaks and the associated sleep loss represent a loss of productivity of 3% during the day. When Hafner incorporated these variables into his business model, he concluded that these losses would result in losses of billions of dollars each year in the United States.
Getting up twice a night is the starting point for all these negative consequences.
This analysis was not published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, but the loss of sleep itself has shown significant effects on health. judgment and mood. The question is whether nocturia itself occurs as often as these authors suggest. and if it presents a disruption as important as they think.
Hafner, for one, adds that he was surprised to see all correlation – not to mention a statistically significant relationship – between productivity at work and a night break, but is convinced that his analysis suggests that it is worthwhile to probe the link. "When we started this study, I thought we would probably not find any effect on productivity in the workplace," he says.
Even if the economic costs are not there, on a personal level, its results seem to have a positive impact on anyone who has to get out of bed at night to walk into the bathroom.
"The more I got into this research, the more I realized that I had friends and colleagues who said," What interest, I have the same problem, "he says. "The more I thought about this condition, I thought it might be a problem."
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