Word: evening
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Dates: during 1990-1990
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...maybe even 5, the blare of the alarm breaks the night, and another workday dawns. As an arm gropes to stop the noise and the whole body rebels against the harsh call of morning, the thought is almost always the same: I have to get more sleep. That night, after 17 or 18 hours of fighting traffic, facing deadlines and racing the clock, the weary soul collapses into bed once again for an all-too-brief respite. And just before the slide into slumber, the nagging thought returns: I have to get more sleep...
...Listen to Harvey Bass. Between a job as a computer-systems manager in New York City and free-lance consulting, he gets no more than five hours of sleep a night and sometimes only two. He admits that the schedule occasionally leaves him with a "tingling around my head." Even so, he says, "if I live a normal life span, I will have lived 20% more than the average person because I'm awake...
...typical adult needs about eight hours of shut-eye a night to function effectively. By that standard, millions of Americans are chronically sleep deprived, trying to get by on six hours or even less. In many households, cheating on sleep has become an unconscious and pernicious habit. "In its mild form, it's watching Ted Koppel and going to bed late and then getting up early to get to the gym," says Cornell's Pollak. In extreme cases people stay up most of the night, seeing how little sleep will keep them going. They try to compensate by snoozing late...
...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...
...Even one night of shortened sleep can produce adverse effects. People will briefly rise to an occasion, such as playing tennis or giving a speech, but mental concentration, flexibility and creativity suffer. Two nights of skimpy sleep, and rote functioning is affected. In laboratory tests, sleep-deprived subjects have trouble adding columns of figures or doing simple repetitive tasks like hitting buttons in a prescribed pattern. By the end of a week, people can be seriously impaired. "Driving home on Friday is a greater risk than on Monday, when you haven't been deprived of sleep all week," says Mary...