Some advice to take to heart -- take a nap

Wulfman wrote:Now.....if we could just convince our bosses......

Den


http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070212/hl_ ... t_nap_dc_2

Offerocker wrote: I listened to a neurologist in sleep study state that the body DOES REQUIRE and benefit from a mid-afternoon nap; the body goes through a cycle around 1:30-2:00.

I am happy that some societies have kept doing things that work!
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Here's a bit more on this idea. I posted it recently under It says here, throw away your alarm clock.

Now, I've got to get my pillow fluffed . . . zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Sleep Deprivation, Psychosis and Mental Efficiency

by Stanley Coren, Ph.D.

March 1998, Vol. XV, Issue 3



In 1910, before the electric lightbulb'', the average person slept nine hours each night. This means that today's population sleeps one to two hours less than people did early in the century.


Because of the advent of the light bulb'', people sleep 500 hours less each year than they used to. Unfortunately, our current "sleep diet" is significantly less than evolution intended. When the pressure of work, alarm clocks, social schedules and advanced technology is removed, people tend to sleep longer. In many less industrialized societies, the total daily sleep time is still around nine to 10 hours as it is for people when they are on unstructured holidays.


In one study, researchers spent a summer above the arctic circle where there is continuous light 24 hours a day. All watches, clocks and other timekeeping devices were removed, and only the station's computers tracked the times that the team went to sleep and awakened. Individual researchers did their work, and chose when to sleep or wake according to their "body time." At the end of the experiment, they found that their overall average sleep daily time was 10.3 hours. Every member of the team showed an increase in sleep time, with the shortest logging in at 8.8 hours a day, and the longest almost 12 hours a day.


Psychological researchers have tended to minimize the effects of sleep insufficiency, acknowledging that society may be getting too little sleep, but treating the effects of this sleep deprivation as nothing more significant than an inconvenience which makes people feel a bit tired now and then.


This view is incorrect. Studies show that each day with insufficient sleep increases our sleep debt. Among the common consequences of a large sleep debt are attentional lapses, reduced short-term memory capacity, impaired judgment and the occurrence of "microsleeps", a short period of time, usually between 10 seconds to a minute in length, in which the brain actually enters a sleep state, regardless of what the person is doing at the time; the affected individual often does not know that this momentary blackout has occurred. There is evidence that many major disasters have been due to sleep-debt related effects. The evidence shows that these may include the oil spill of the Exxon Valdez, the nuclear accidents at Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, and the loss of the space shuttle Challenger.


In fact, our societal sleep debt is so great that simply losing one additional hour of sleep due to the spring shift to daylight savings time can increase traffic accident rates by 7% and death rates due to all accidents by 6.5%.


When sleep deprivation becomes great enough, the effects mimic those of psychosis. ''This same pattern of mental deterioration that mimicks psychotic symptoms appears in several more systematic studies of sleep deprivation and extreme sleep debt. Thus, prolonged sleep deprivation does lead to the appearance of serious mental symptoms.


In addition, even moderate amounts of sleep deprivation can lead to losses in mental efficiency that can threaten public and personal safety. According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, 100,000 sleep-related traffic accidents claim some 1,500 American lives each year. The National Commission on Sleep Disorders Research has reported that sleep-related accidents, and sleep disorders which impact work productivity, cost the American economy between $100 and $150 billion each year.



Dr. Coren is professor and head of the Human Neuropsychology and Perception Laboratory of the psychology department of the University of British Columbia.
References

Coren S (1996a), Sleep Thieves. New York: Free Press.

Coren S (1996b), Daylight savings time and traffic accidents. New Eng J Med 334:924.

Coren S (1996c), Accidental death and the shift to daylight savings time. Percept Mot Skills 83:921-922.

Dement WC (1992), The Sleepwatchers. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford Alumni Association.

Palinkas LA, Suedfeld P, Steel GD (1995), Psychological functioning among members of a small polar expedition. Avia Space Environ Med 66:943-950.

Ross JJ (1965), Neurological findings after prolonged sleep deprivation. Arch Neurol 12:399-403.
Webb WB, Agnew HW (1975), Are we chronically sleep deprived? Bull the Psychonomic Soc 6:47-48.

Sleep-debt-related problems are most predictable at certain times of the day. This is because the efficiency of our physical and mental functions show cyclic increases and decreases in the form of circadian rhythms.

While our major sleep/wakefulness rhythm has a cycle length of roughly 24 hours, there are shorter cycles as well, with the most important of these being a secondary sleep/wakefulness cycle that is around 12 hours.

Because of these cycles, the pressure to fall asleep is greatest in the morning, between 1 and 4 a.m. In addition there is a less pronounced, but still noticeable, increase in sleepiness 12 hours later, between 1 and 4 p.m.

It is this afternoon low point that makes you feel sleepy after lunch, not the meal that you may have just eaten. It probably also was the original reason for the afternoon nap or siesta.