failing to get enough sleep or sleeping at odd hours heightens the risk for a variety of major illnesses, including cancer, heart disease, diabetes and obesity, recent studies indicate.
Well it is now official, everything can cause cancer.
While many aspects of sleep remain a mystery -- including exactly why we sleep -- the picture that appears to be emerging is that not sleeping enough or being awake in the wee hours runs counter to the body's internal clock, throwing a host of basic bodily functions out of sync.
"Lack of sleep disrupts every physiologic function in the body," said Eve Van Cauter of the University of Chicago. "We have nothing in our biology that allows us to adapt to this behavior."
The amount of necessary sleep varies from person to person, with some breezing through their days on just a few hours' slumber and others barely functioning without a full 10 hours, experts say. But most people apparently need between about seven and nine hours, with studies indicating that an increased risk for disease starts to kick in when people get less than six or seven, experts say.
And there I am, some where around 6 hours a night, some times a little more, sometimes a little less.
Thank god for Weekends and Tylenol PM, they give me the chance to get 8 or nine hours at least once or twice a week.
Hey,
Maybe it is the chronic need for Tylenol PM (or something else), and not the lack of sleep it self that leads to cancer.
1 comment:
Do you ever wonder how much of this stuff is concocted by business for their interest.
As a long time insomniac, I really question these findings.
There is one thing I'm sure they are correct on.
You will work harder, faster, and more competently in your 9-5 job if you get that 8 hours a night.
This is why I suspect that business is behind the new "must sleep regular 8 nightime hours stuff.
Also, the fact that for millions of years people did not sleep 8 straight hours a night. In fact the natural rythym seems to be to sleep a few hours wake up a few hours and then sleep some more hours up to 8 more or less.
This makes a big cramp on a person's life, certainly if they have to work 8 hours a day and then take care of a family, leading many of us to skip one of those sleeping sessions in order to do something we consider important while maintaining our 8 hour daily jobs.
Also, note that most science is supported by grants from some business or other or what has been for the last few decades a very pro business US gov't. (Yes, even our friend Bill ran a pretty pro-business administration.)
In eating and excercise they warn us to follow the things people did for millions of years--which fit better into the corporate lifestyle we are all supposed to have, but suddenly with sleeping they warn us to put it all into 8 hours unlike what the species has done for millions of years.
I'm just saying, seeing as this contradicts the historical model of human sleeping and fits so well into the corporate want list, I'd suspect the research.
Maybe like in France we need lower work hours, better pay, and national health to get the higher return per hour worked that French companies get from their people.
Another reason that coporate backed science would want to push Americans into sleeping all in one push is that if we started sleeping say at 7-8 pm so we could wake up in the middle as is normal, do housework or blog, and then returned to bed so we could get up and to work on time, do you see what would happen to the great advertisement that is TV?
So it's either cut work hours (including paying more in per hour wages to make up), find Americans cutting their TV ad watching time or convince them they must sleep in one long 8 hour session). When people can't they will go throw money at drug companies and doctors. Now that's not a problem to doctors studying "sleep problems" is it?
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