Sleep expert’s testimony in Jackson case should alarm call center workers

‘In the Philippines, call centers are not known to rotate their worker’s schedule because their operation is mostly at night. This takes a dangerous toll on their health.’

The testimony of a sleep expert in the Michael Jackson case about the importance of sleeping at night and the danger of altering that pattern should alarm call center workers and employers and the Department of Labor and Employment.

The hearing on Jackson’s death last week revealed that two months before he died, he was without sleep.

Sixty days without sleep! How can one do that?

The information on Jackson being sleepless for 60 days came out because Jackson’s mother and children sued AEG Live, the concert promoter, which hired Dr. Conrad Murray, who was convicted of involuntary manslaughter for administering Jackson’s Propofol treatments, which was blamed for the singer’s death on June 25, 2009.

The report said AEG “pressured Dr. Murray to get Jackson to rehearsals” for the scheduled “This is it Concert” that was to start on July 13, 2009 in London.

Sleep expert Dr. Charles Czeisler of the Harvard Medical School was on the witness stand to render his opinion on a number of medical issues on Jackson, among them that Murray administered Propofol to Jackson 60 consecutive nights before June 22, 2009 reportedly to treat the singer’s insomnia.

Czeisler said Propofol disrupts the normal sleep cycle and offers no REM (Rapid Eye Movement) – sleep, yet it leaves a patient feeling refreshed as if he had experienced genuine sleep.

REM sleep, Czeisler said, is vital to keep the brain and body alive and “drug induced coma .. would be like eating some sort of cellulose pellets instead of dinner.”

“Your stomach would be full and you would not be hungry, but it would be zero calories and not fulfill any of your nutrition needs,” he said.

Czeisler, who serves as a sleep consultant to NASA, the CIA and the Rolling Stones, said Jackson may be the only human being who lasted two months without sleep. He said “if the singer had not died on June 25, 2009, of an overdose of a surgical anesthetic, the lack of REM sleep may have soon taken his life anyway.”

The report said Czeisler’s testimony became a lecture on sleep as jurors listened intently as he talked on the research he has conducted including an explanation of circadian rhythm — the internal clock in the brain that controls the timing of when we sleep and wake and the timing of the release of hormones which is the reason human beings sleep at night and are awake in the day.

“Your brain needs sleep to repair and maintain its neurons every night,” he said adding that “blood cells cycle out every few weeks, but brain cells are for a lifetime.”

“Like a computer, the brain has to go offline to maintain cells that we keep for life, since we don’t make more,” he said. “Sleep is the repair and maintenance of the brain cells.”

An adult should get 7-8 hours of sleep each night to allow for enough sleep cycles, he said.

The call center industry which provides employment to thousands of young Filipinos requires workers to observe the office hours of other countries they service, which means they work in the evening and sleep during the day.

In other countries where work is a 24-hours shift, workers do the night shift for only two weeks. They are given one week off to allow their body to adjust to a day shift for the next two weeks. Then the pattern is repeated.

Here in the Philippines, call centers are not known to rotate their worker’s schedule because their operation is mostly at night. This takes a dangerous toll on the health of millions of Filipinos.

DOLE and DOH should do something about this. –ELLEN TORDESILLAS, Businessmirror