OVERSLEEP IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO

Now there’s a statement that could keep you awake at night. Impossible? Really?

The assertion was made by Harvard University professor of neurology Elizabeth Klerman in a recent discussion about sleep. It certainly has its logic. She said, “Unlike chocolate cake you can eat when you’re not hungry, there’s no evidence you can sleep when you’re not tired.”

When you put it that way...

If we had the chance to interview professor Klerman she might add a few caveats. She’s most likely talking about a healthy person who isn’t taking medications or ingesting any stupor-inducing substances. Those could be scenarios where a person sleeps all day and still wants more.

Despite the prevalence of sickness and drugs with a whole list of side effects, we are not as a rule people troubled by too much sleep.

The actual problem is exactly the opposite: too little. And in the same way that July 4 is peak season for people blowing their fingers off, March of every year is peak season for sleep problems.

Why March? Two words: spring, and forward. This year it happens on March 12, with an immediate loss of of a full hour of sleep for some 330 million Americans (or at least the adult segment of that number).

As Crash Course points out (see page 10), the National Institutes of Health says most adults aren’t even getting 7 hours of sleep per night. That means one hour represents 15%of our nightly slumbers. That is a significant loss for a population that, as a group, is already sleep deprived.

Medically speaking, a single night of inadequate sleep is all it takes to have an impact the next day (and perhaps the next few to follow), and for millions of people, the start of Daylight Saving is all the proof they need.

What are those impacts? It’s a surprisingly long list, and it underscores the tremendously important