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Is Lack of Sleep a Public Health Crisis? (washingtonpost.com)
According to The Washington Post, "a growing number of scientists, not normally known for being advocates, are bringing evangelical zeal to the message that lack of sleep is an escalating public health crisis that deserves as much attention as the obesity epidemic." "We're competing against moneyed interests, with technology and gaming and all that. It's so addictive and so hard to compete with," said Orfeu Buxton, a sleep researcher at Pennsylvania State University. "We've had this natural experiment with the Internet that swamped everything else." From the report: The sleep research community, formerly balkanized into separate sleep disorders such as insomnia and sleep apnea, has begun to coalesce around the concept of "sleep health" -- which for most adults means getting at least seven hours a night. But time in the sack has been steadily decreasing. In 1942, a Gallup poll found that adults slept an average of 7.9 hours per night. In 2013, the average adult had sheared more than an hour off that number. In 2016, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that a third of adults fail to get the recommended seven hours. In the blink of an eye, in evolutionary terms, humans have radically altered a fundamental biological necessity -- with repercussions we are still only beginning to understand.
For years, animal studies have shown that learning activities are reactivated during sleep, a critical part of how lasting memories are formed. More recently, Princeton postdoctoral researcher Monika Schonauer asked 32 people to sleep in the lab after they had been asked to memorize 100 pictures of houses or faces. By analyzing their patterns of electrical brain activity, she found she could effectively read their minds, predicting which images they had been studying while awake -- because they were replaying them. [...] Sleep problems have long been recognized as a symptom of psychiatric and neurological disorders, ranging from depression to Alzheimer's. But increasingly, researchers are exploring the two-way street between disrupted sleep and disease. And researchers who started out interested in cognitive functions such as memory or brain development are finding themselves focused on sleep because it is so fundamental.
For years, animal studies have shown that learning activities are reactivated during sleep, a critical part of how lasting memories are formed. More recently, Princeton postdoctoral researcher Monika Schonauer asked 32 people to sleep in the lab after they had been asked to memorize 100 pictures of houses or faces. By analyzing their patterns of electrical brain activity, she found she could effectively read their minds, predicting which images they had been studying while awake -- because they were replaying them. [...] Sleep problems have long been recognized as a symptom of psychiatric and neurological disorders, ranging from depression to Alzheimer's. But increasingly, researchers are exploring the two-way street between disrupted sleep and disease. And researchers who started out interested in cognitive functions such as memory or brain development are finding themselves focused on sleep because it is so fundamental.
"a growing number of scientists"..."are bringing evangelical zeal to the message"
I think the new church of science has become well established. Research that cannot be duplicated, constant misrepresentation of facts or evidence, outright deception and money pandering.
I am a big fan of science, but it has become more of a religion of late than the search for truth about our world.
Just another reason to get rid of daylight "saving" time. (and, no, that doesn't mean go on it year 'round)
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
The study is so boring banal you'll be asleep before the end. Truly, a magnificent public serv....zzzzzzzzz
Then what are things going to be such as an outbreak of polio? If you can fix a 'disease' by changing your habits and lifestyle, it's not really a 'disease', it's slow, assisted suicide.
A public health issue is something the CDC can fix with strategic quarantine, a vaccine or antibiotics/antivirals. Changing behaviors is not the job of the government.
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Not really. There were a lot of explosions keeping people up throughout Europe, Asia and the Pacific. Most factories were working three shifts.
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Working hours: 50+ hours a week in white-collar jobs is now the norm. No vacay time to catch up.
Electronic connectivity: workers are expected to respond to emails outside of working hours. Yeah, 50 years ago, people had home phones, but calling someone outside of work was seen as more intrusive, and there had to be a damned good reason.
Overscheduling: if you're running around with your sprogeny in the evening, taking them to extracurricular bullshit activities, you still need time for yourself and to make love to your spouse. Sleep suffers.
>"Smoke some pot, drink less, chill out, sleep for 9hrs easy. Stupid govt and people who thinks pot is bad, "just do it""
Smoking anything is "bad" if you define unhealthy as "bad". In which case it should be eaten or vaped.
It is also "bad" if you define endangering others as "bad". In which case it should be used on your own time and in a way not endangering others when in an altered state.