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Study: Waking Up Like Being Drunk
Ant writes "CNN reports that "sleep inertia" leaves some people so groggy, after they wake up, they might as well be drunk, researchers said on Tuesday. "For a short period, at least, the effects of sleep inertia may be as bad as or worse than being legally drunk," said researcher Kenneth Wright of the University of Colorado at Boulder."
I think "legally drunk" would refer to being under the blood alcohol limit for driving a car. I'd imagine that "drunk" would refer to any amount over that limit.
Although I'm prepared to be wrong about this.
--
silas
hobbit
london
It's because there isn't a '-1, Whining'
"Physics is to math as sex is to masturbation." -R. Feynman
If your blood alcohol concentration is above certain limits set by law, typically 0.08% these days, then you are defined by law to be drunk, whatever your state of reflexes, ability to concentrate, et cetera. Otherwise, whether you are drunk or not is a matter of judgment -- not yours, of course, but typically that of the policeman who stops you and the judge who hears the case.
However, the limit used to be 0.10%, and that is actually fairly sloshed. You would be pretty happy, typically, although people vary. The point is that it used to be the case that you could be definitely drunk, and know it, but still be under the limit at which you would be defined to be drunk by the law. Naive people would imagine, therefore, that you could be drunk but not legally drunk (because you were under the 0.10% limit). This was never the case, of course, since even under the 0.10% limit you could still be determined to be drunk by a policeman and a judge. But it was a popular fiction.
From this beginning I think nowadays "legally drunk" has morphed into a colloquial expression meaning mostly just "pretty definitely drunk" versus just feelin' good -- you know, at that point where friends argue happily with each other -- hey, I'm not drunk, man, just...relaxed...g'wan, ask me anything...look! I can balance a beer bottle on my nose (crash)!
It has nothing to do with the legal drinking age.
This was also reported by New Scientist: http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn8564.
The sleeptracker watch is what your talking about, it monitors your body signals to wake you up at the best moment, you set an alarm window & it will wake you up at the best time, they sell on Amazon for 139.95.
Did you submit it to slashdot?
No, neither did I.
Drunk as defined by law.
With a blood alcohol content over a certain percentage.
He tried to kill me with a forklift!
Legally drunk simply means you are drunk as defined by law.
This may or may not imply that you are illegally drunk, since being drunk in and of itself may not be illegal, say, if you are home in bed. Being legally drunk in public where such is against the law would make you illegally drunk and subject to arrest simply for being drunk, illegally.
If you are driving a car while you are legally drunk it is the act of driving the car that is illegal, not the being drunk, per se and the charge would be Driving While Intoxicated. Driving illegally, not illegally drunk.
Ain't legal semantics fun?
KFG
Legally drunk would probably be closer to "drunk according to the local laws/regulations", I think. I Am Not A Native English Speaker though.
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
Is there anyone, anyone at all in the world who thought it would be a good idea to perform critical medical procedures just after waking up?
... well, pretty much ever ... that this kind of thing kills patients. That's why this subject needs investigation; it's not just a waste of your preciousss tax dollars.
I worked in emergency medicine for nine years, and I can tell you that unfortunately, the answer is "yes." In small, rural ER's, there's almost always only one doctor on duty, and on night shift he's napping until someone comes in. In bigger, urban teaching hospitals, most of the doctors are interns and residents, and they're so exhausted from working their absurdly long hours that they grab sleep whenever they possibly can. And it's been a dirty little not-so-secret in the medical community for
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
It can harm, in fact you can lose your arm definitly that way...
Megadeth's singer, whatever his name is, losed his right arm for six months after having to sleep in a hospital with his arm sticked in a wrong position because there was some medications being injected in it. Strangely his body didn't waked him up when it should have. (I suppose it does wake one up most of the time when it notices their is something wrong with the blood flow...). He only got his arm back because he could afford the best neurologists on earth and even then it seems it was a miracle.
I know it happened to me twice to wake up with an arm which seemed dead for two minuts or so because i had sticked it in a bad position, and i was frigging scared. Hopefully after a moment it started to hurt a lot as the blood flew though it again, and one minut after it was definitly back. I noticed it was linked to a position i take sometimes when trying to sleep so i try not to use it now...
Thankfully, it's starting to change. There are some caps on what residents can work now. Unfortunately, the caps themselves are still absurd by any realistic standard, but it just goes to show you how bad it really was. When residents (my fiancee is an ER resident) are thankful that the new rules keep things restricted to "just" 80 hours a week, something is wrong. She gets off a 30-hour ER shift today. Keep in mind that the 80 hour cap doesn't include things that aren't "work", like the conferences they have to attend. Even with the 80 hour cap, they can still work well over 80 hours without breaking the rules.
There are two big problems with the rules. (that I can see-- I suspect she knows more) Hospitals have become dependent on cheap 100-hours-a-week residents to do the work. Without additional funding, the hour restrictions mean that the staffing isn't going to cover what it used to.
Additionally, the only teeth the rules have is to take away a residency's accreditation. If you're a resident, and your residency loses that, you're screwed. It's like having your college shut down mid-degree. So if you're being abused under the rules and working 110 hours a week, your options are "report it and possibly lose your residency," or "suck it up."
But seriously-- does anyone really want brand new doctors running on no sleep for whole days treating them? Unfortunately, this is exactly what we have. The fact that we have as few incidents as we do is a testament to the residents.
Your error is that you only practice in the impaired state. You can't develop a good engram (roughly, "muscle memory") for the espresso-brewing task if you always practice it while sleep-stoned. What you should be doing is practicing making espresso at 3 in the afternoon, when your brain is actually functional. Brew ten batches of espresso, back to back. Soon the process will be committed to your unconscious memory and you'll be able to carry it out even in the impaired state.
You might want to try going to a sleep clinic, if you haven't already. I know they can diagnose things that impair sleep, such as sleep apnea.
Just a thought,
Kevin
--LeBleu
If you're reading this you're part of the mass hallucination that is Kevin the Blue.