Lookout friends (in the N.Y Times ) :
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PERFORMANCE
Sleepy and Drunken Drivers: Equal Peril
Not sleeping enough can have the same results as
drinking too much.
That is the conclusion of a Stanford University study of
people with sleep
apnea, in which breathing stops several or even dozens of
times an hour,
interrupting sleep even though the sleeper may be unaware of
it. On three
out of seven tests of reaction time, people known to have
apnea did
worse than those whose blood alcohol measured eight-tenths
of 1
percent, making them too drunk to drive in 16 states.
The lead researcher, Dr. Nelson B. Powell of Stanford, who
presented
his study on Sunday at the annual convention of the American
Academy
of Otolaryngology, said he wanted to underscore the dangers
of driving
while sleepy, a common consequence of sleep apnea.
The study looked at 113 people with apnea and a control
group of 80
volunteers. All took a 10-minute test of reaction speed,
pushing a button
to turn off a randomly set light. After four tests to get
their base-line
reaction time, the comparison group started drinking
80-proof alcohol.
They were tested three more times as they kept drinking.
The sleep apnea patients did worse on all seven measurements
than the
drinkers did on their first retest, and worse on three of
them than those
who were legally drunk.
Dr. Regina Walker, an associate professor of otolaryngology
at Loyola
University in Chicago, said the findings were highly
significant.
"Many of my patients don't think being sleepy is a big
deal," she said.
"People think, 'I can just make myself stay awake.' They
can't."
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
--
Cheers ,
+----| Joao Paulo de Carvalho |------ +
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+--------| Salvador-Bahia-Brazil |------+
