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What is the optimum amount of sleep?
In a study, conducted at Walter Reed and the University of Pennsylvania, Cynthia LaJambe, noted, among participants who slept from two to nine hours daily for eight days, those who slept nine hours performed the best on "psychomotor vigilance" tasks, which measures reaction time.
Those who slept three hours or less not only had progressively slower reaction times, but also did not recover from the effects of sleep deprivation even after several days of sleeping longer hours.
In another study, LaJambe's focus turned to long-haul truck drivers who sometimes get only four to five hours sleep per night, compared to the eight hours recommended for healthy adults by the National Sleep Foundation.
Tired drivers are at risk not only for falling asleep, LaJambe said, but for what she calls lapses.
A "lapse," as LaJambe described it, is a momentary shutdown of the prefrontal cortex causing a person to be temporarily unable to respond to stimuli. After a lapse, a person often feels as though they have been momentarily asleep, although technically they have not been.
LaJambe equates sleep deprivation with drunkenness in terms of its negative potential effects.
Eight hours of sleep and a daily diet of twenty minutes daily to quieten your mind should help jumpstart your personal performance.
Posted by Kevin Kelly at
September 20, 2006 10:11 AM