One Sleep Health Exposes a Silent Economic Epidemic: Biology Meets Systemic Failure

The Cell Reports Medicine perspective introduces 'One Sleep Health' by extending the One Health framework to link human sleep disruption with environmental stressors and animal ecosystems. This is not an RCT or large cohort study but a conceptual synthesis drawing on exposome research; its strength lies in integration rather than new data. Rising nighttime temperatures alone, per observational modeling in a 2022 One Earth analysis of global datasets, project annual sleep losses of 50-58 hours by 2100, disproportionately affecting lower-income populations without air conditioning. Economic modeling from a 2017 RAND Europe report across five countries estimated $680 billion annual losses from productivity declines and healthcare burdens—observational rather than causal, with no major conflicts disclosed but reliant on self-reported sleep metrics. Mainstream coverage often frames insomnia as lifestyle choice, yet these patterns reveal structural drivers: shift economies, light pollution, and climate forcing that erode circadian biology at population scale. The Jülich-led framework correctly identifies feedback loops where human-altered environments also desynchronize wildlife rhythms, amplifying zoonotic and ecosystem risks overlooked in prior One Health applications. Policy must target urban design and labor standards, not apps.