Word: asleep
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Dates: during 1990-1990
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...sign of sleep deprivation is requiring an alarm clock to wake up. Another is falling asleep within five minutes after your head hits the pillow. Well-rested people drop off in 10 to 15 minutes. A third clue is napping at will. "People like to boast about their ability to catch 40 winks whenever they want," explains Dement, "but what it means is that they're excessively sleepy." On the other hand, when people get enough rest, they remain awake no matter what the provocation: droning teachers, boring books, endless roads, heavy meals, glasses of wine -- even articles about sleep...
...there are far grimmer effects. Harrowing tales are told by interns and residents, many of whom routinely work 120-hour weeks, including 36 hours at a stretch. Some admit that mistakes are frighteningly common. A California resident fell asleep while sewing up a woman's uterus -- and toppled onto the patient. In another California case, a sleepy resident forgot to order a * diabetic patient's nightly insulin shot and instead prescribed another medication. The man went into a coma. Compassion can also be a casualty. One young doctor admitted to abruptly cutting off the questions...
...times I've been so sleepy I was nodding off as we were taxiing to get into takeoff position." As the workplace becomes ever more technologically sophisticated, the price of disaster is higher. "So many more people can be hurt when a train engineer or a nuclear technician falls asleep in 1990 than when a stagecoach driver fell asleep in 1890," notes psychologist Merrill Mitler, director of sleep research at the Scripps Clinic in La Jolla, Calif...
...most common sleep complaint is insomnia. About a third of Americans have trouble falling asleep or staying asleep, problems that result in listlessness and loss of alertness during the day. Most of the time the distress is temporary, brought on by anxiety about a problem at work or a sudden family crisis. But sometimes sleep difficulties extend for months and years. Faced with a chronic situation, insomniacs frequently medicate themselves with alcohol or drugs. Doctors warn that in most cases sleeping pills should not be taken for longer than two or three weeks. Such drugs can lose their effectiveness with...
...kind of asleep at the wheel and wakes up when there's an alarm, and doesn't know which button to press, so he goes eeney-meeney-miney-mo and hits a button and does avert a meltdown," Simon said. "He becomes a hero and feels guilty about it. It's not a politically charged episode...