Archive for Health
January 11, 2006
Facts about Sleep and Fatigue
1:50 pm | Health | Sci/Tech | Comments: 20
This is taken from the website of the Roads and Traffic Authority.
Circadian Rhythm
Circadian rhythms are physiological cycles that follow a daily pattern. We are “programmed” by our circadian rhythms to sleep at night and to be awake during the day.
During nighttime hours and to a lesser extent during afternoon “siesta” hours, most types of human performance are significantly impaired, including our ability to drive.1
Problems occur if we disrupt our natural sleep cycles (eg by staying awake during the night), do not get enough sleep, or get poor quality sleep.
Circadian rhythms cannot be reversed. Even if you have been working nightshifts for many years, your body will still be programmed to sleep at night.
Sleep Debt
The human body requires a certain amount of sleep each night to function effectively. The average amount of sleep a person needs is 8 hours. When we reduce the number of hours we sleep at night we start to accumulate what is called a ’sleep debt’.
Sleep debt is defined as the difference between the hours of sleep a person needs and the hours of sleep a person actually gets.
For example, if a person needs 8 hours of sleep per night but only gets 6 hours of sleep one night, they have a sleep debt of two hours. These lost hours of sleep need to be replaced.
When we have sleep debt, our tendency to fall asleep the next day increases. The larger the sleep debt, the stronger the tendency to fall asleep. 2
Sleep debt does not go away by itself. Sleeping is the only way to reduce your sleep debt.
Sleep Inertia
Sleep inertia is the feeling of grogginess after awakening and temporarily reduces your ability to perform even simple tasks.
Sleep inertia can last from 1 minute to 4 hours, but typically lasts 15-30 minutes.
The severity of sleep inertia is dependent on how long you have been asleep and the stage of sleep at awakening.3 Effects can be severe if a person is very sleep deprived or has been woken from a deep sleep stage. However, sleep inertia can usually be reversed within 15 minutes by activity and noise.
Sleep inertia can cause impairment of motor and cognitive functions and can affect a person’s ability to drive safely. Sleep inertia can be very dangerous for people who drive in the early morning hours and shortly after waking up from a sleep.
Microsleeps
Microsleeps are brief, unintended episodes of loss of attention associated with events such as blank stare, head snapping, prolonged eye closure, etc., which may occur when a person is fatigued but trying to stay awake to perform a monotonous task like driving a car or watching a computer screen.4
Microsleep episodes last from a few seconds to several minutes, and often the person is not aware that a microsleep has occurred. In fact, microsleeps often occur when a person’s eyes are open.
While in a microsleep, a person fails to respond to outside information. A person will not see a red signal light or notice that the road has taken a curve.
Microsleeps are most likely to occur at certain times of the day, such as pre-dawn hours and mid-afternoon hours when the body is “programmed” to sleep.
Microsleeps increase with cumulative sleep debt. In other words, the more sleep deprived a person is, the greater the chance a microsleep episode will occur.
In one study of microsleep, participants were asked to press a button when a strobe light was flashed directly in their eyes every few seconds. During a microsleep they did not notice the light and were not even aware that they had been asleep.5
Below is a link to the television commercial from the latest driver fatigue public education campaign featuring Dr Karl Kruszelnicki discussing the dangers of having a microsleep while driving. This campaign was launched in December 2001.
1. Moore-Ede, Martin. ‘Circadian Rhythms and the Biological Clock’.
http://www.circadian.com/learning_center/biological_clock.htm
2. Loughborough Sleep Research Centre Dement, William C. ‘Sleep Debt’ 2000.
http://www.sleepquest.com/d_column_archive6.html.
3. Tassi, P., Muzet, A. ‘Sleep Inertia’. Sleep Medicine Reviews, Vol.4, No. 4, 341-353. August, 2000.
4. Moore-Ede, Martin. ‘Alertness and Fatigue: Microsleeps’.
http://www.circadian.com/learning_center/biological_clock.htm
5. Dement, W.C. ‘Some must watch while some must sleep’. San Francisco, CA: W.H. Freeman. 1974
October 7, 2005
Let Slip the Birds of Death
11:22 am | Health | Comments: 3
As the Kansas City Star reports, “Suddenly, everyone is talking about the flu.” Not so suddenly for readers of SIO, as such enlightened individuals have been getting updates on the H5N1 avian flu virus for months now. The global political community is now beginning to take action in preparation for a global flu pandemic, but only after the deaths of millions upon millions of innocent asian poultry.
The current World Health Organization’s mortality estimate for the Bird Flu is between 2 million and 7.4 million worldwide. Nationally, the United States could expect a large economic impact and soaring healthcare costs. Don’t think it could happen here? Neither did Louisiana last month. Nobody thinks it will happen to them. The only problem with this thinking is that “it” could quite likely happen. My prediction is that the Bird Flu will kill half the population of the United States alone and that we will descend back into a Dark Age. We might even be forced to stop using the Internet.
May 24, 2005
Random Announcements
9:52 pm | Culture | Health | SIO | Comments: 5
Great news, folks; SIO has a new address! Please adjust all your links, bookmarks, and other paraphernalia for SIO to http://sio.jameswlanning.com/. You can still reach us at the old address, but the sub-domain looks cooler and is more like the original SIO address (which as many will recall was sio.blogspot.com).
Not to scare anybody here, but the H5N1 Avian (Bird) Influenza (Flu) virus has now spread to China! The government of China has already begun detaining any chickens within a 40 mile radius of suspected outbreaks for interrogation and torture.
I need some opinions on this next bit. While chilling with my old buddy Ben the other night, we were talking about the music that we’ve been into lately. Ben starts playing the song “Mad World” by Tears for Fears, and I nearly mistook it for a cover of Offspring’s “Gone Away”. Listen to both those songs right now and tell me they don’t sound almost exactly the same. Although that may be an exaggeration, you have to admit that the similarities go beyond mere coincidence.
May 5, 2005
Yet Another SIO Health Awareness Notice
12:06 am | Health | Comments: 1
It’s been awhile since we’ve updated on the deadly march of Bird Flu across the globe. Today we actually have something resembling good news; apparently Thailand has been able to rid itself of the disease which has now been classified as the H5N1 Avian Influenza. Along the way, countless hundreds of millions of poultry met a grisly end. Bird Flu is still out there, and it’s coming our way. Already 4 Cambodians have died from Avian Influenza. According to that story, there have been approximately 90 cases of human contraction of H5N1 and of those, 53 have died. Developing…
March 28, 2005
SIO Health Awareness Notice
12:33 pm | Health | Comments: 0
The globally-aware staff of SIO would like once again to update everybody on the status of the dreaded Avian Flu, which is now threatening North Korea, a nation which has already been plagued by famine and other resource shortages. Futher bulletins as events warrant.
March 7, 2005
Insert Important Issue Here
7:25 pm | Health | My Life | Comments: 0
Spring break is upon us; and for the third year I am not going anywhere. I got up today around noon or so and bummed about the house. That’s probably how things are going to be going up until about Friday when my sister is getting married or somesuch, I’m not really sure. I think I’m a groomsman, too. I’ll have to check on that.
Are you convinced about Bird Flu yet? Are you impressed that it’s now called Avian Flu? Millions of southeast asian chickens are losing their lives as we speak in an effort to combat this deadly disease. I have completed the blueprints for a Bird Flu bunker beneath my house. I am also accepting donations to the building fund, and if you want safe haven when this horror hits the continent you’d better stay playing hardball with the Visa.
December 2, 2004
SIO Health Awareness Notice
4:53 pm | Health | Comments: 0
Today we have some shocking research to share with you. Apparently, smoking Marijuana (sometimes referred to as hemp, cannabis, weed, pot, dope, grass, or Mary Jane) is bad for your health. According to a recent study done in England, smoking Marijuana moderately increases your likelihood of developing psychosis later on in life. Here at SIO, we do not encourage substance abuse. Therefore, we recommend that all our readers abstain from smoking Marijuana and underage drinking, as both are equally illegal and unhealthy.
November 26, 2004
Be Afraid… or Not
7:45 pm | Health | Comments: 0
If you’ve been reading the news lately, it would seem that the world is crashing down around our heads. Or is it? Recently we heard that as much as 43% of the normal seaborne ice was unaccounted for. The cause? Global warming, of course! Or not… we now know the missing ice is due to cyclical arctic winds blowing ice in different places. Still there, doing its ice thing. Now we hear that there’s going to be a Bird Flu pandemic which could kill as many as 7 million people! We have options here, natually. We can panic, write angsty music, perform random acts of vandalism, or maybe even realize that this ‘news’ is nothing more than fear mongering.
Stay with me, people, everything’s going to be alright.
