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>WORTH THINKING ABOUT: A GOOD NIGHT'S SLEEP > >Stanley Coren, sleep researcher and professor of psychology at the >University of British Columbia, writes: > >"Sleep is simply not dispensable, regardless of the attempts in >today's society to treat it as if it were simply unproductive 'downtime.' >The desire to get more sleep is not a sign of laziness, nor does it >represent a lack of ambition. The need for sleep is real... > >"When we try to sleep less than the 8-hour minimum, things start to >deteriorate. First of all, the effects of less than 8 hours of sleep a >night seem to accumulate as a sleep debt. If you lose 2 hours today and 2 >hours tomorrow, on the third day your efficiency is as low as if you had >lost 4 hours in one night. This is the way our sleep debt builds up. > >"Eventually, if the sleep debt becomes large enough, we become slow, clumsy, >stupid, and, possibly, dead. This is not an exaggeration. Remember, the >national death rate by accidents jumps 6 percent as a result of simply >losing 1 hour of sleep as we shift to daylight savings time in the spring... > >"Perhaps someday society will act to do something about sleepiness. >It may even come to pass that someday the person who drives or goes to work >while sleepy will be viewed as being as reprehensible, dangerous, or even >criminally negligent as the person who drives or goes to work while drunk. >If so, perhaps the rest of us can all sleep a little bit more soundly." > >NewsScan Daily >"http://www.newsscan.com/" janet paterson 53 now / 41 dx / 37 onset 613 256 8340 / PO Box 171 Almonte Ontario K0A 1A0 Canada visit my website "a new voice" at: "http://www.geocities.com/janet313/"