Eight hours of sleep may not be so great. (Biomedicine).Doctors may recommend it for good health, but researchers now find that sleeping 8 to 9 hours a night doesn't necessarily translate into a longer life. Scientists came to that conclusion after analyzing medical and lifestyle data, including sleep reports, of 1.1 million people between ages 30 and 102 who had filled out questionnaires in 1982. The researchers accounted for 32 factors, such as age, smoking, weight, economic status, exercise, and medications, that might influence death rate in the group. When they assessed the volunteers' status 6 years later, the scientists found a surprising trend. People reporting 7 hours of sleep each night were the least likely to have died in the 6 intervening years, the Years, The the seven decades of Eleanor Pargiter’s life. [Br. Lit.: Benét, 1109] See : Time researchers report in the February Archives of General Psychiatry Archives of General Psychiatry is a monthly professional medical journal published by the American Medical Association. Archives of General Psychiatry publishes original, peer-reviewed articles about psychiatry, mental health, behavioral science and related fields. . People sleeping 8 hours a night were 13 percent more likely to have died than the 7-hour sleepers. Volunteers getting 9 hours a night were 23 percent more likely to die than 7-hour sleepers were. On the other end of the sleep spectrum, people getting just 5 or 6 hours a night were 7 percent more likely than the 7-hours-a-night group to have died. The study also found that people reporting insomnia insomnia, abnormal wakefulness or inability to sleep. The condition may result from illness or physical discomfort, or it may be caused by stimulants such as coffee or drugs. However, frequently some psychological factor, such as worry or tension, is the cause. were no more likely to have died during the 6 years of the study than those who didn't, unless they were taking sleeping pills sleeping pill, a pill containing medication that induces sleep. Benzodiazepines such as temazepam (Restoril) and triazolam (Halcion) have for the most part replaced barbiturates as drugs of choice for insomnia. , says study coauthor Daniel S Daniel, book of the Bible Daniel, book of the Bible. It combines "court" tales, perhaps originating from the 6th cent. B.C., and a series of apocalyptic visions arising from the time of the Maccabean emergency (167–164 B.C. . Kripke, a psychiatrist at the University of California, San Diego UCSD is consistently ranked among the top ten public universities for undergraduate education in the United States by U.S. News & World Report.[3] It is a Public Ivy. [1] For graduate studies, most of UCSD's Ph.D. , in La Jolla La Jolla (lə hoi`yə), on the Pacific Ocean, S Calif., an uninc. district within the confines of San Diego; founded 1869. The beautiful ocean beaches, in particular La Jolla shores and Black's Beach, and sea-washed caves attract visitors and . The findings should change the advice physicians give patients, Kripke says. If a person feels rested and alert after 5 or 6 hours of sleep, he says, doctors should tell that person that such a schedule poses little health risk. The large number of people surveyed lends credibility to the findings, say Daniel J. Buysse and Mary Ganguli of the Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic in Pittsburgh in the same journal. However, they caution that the numbers don't explain why some people slept more than others. "And they certainly don't tell us that it was the extra hour of sleep that killed them," they say. --N.S. |
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