Sleep and The Three Bears |
4 Comments |
Everyone knows the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Goldilocks stumbles upon the home of the three bears and riffles through their things (what are teaching our children anyway?!?!) sampling them all. The Papa Bear’s stuff is too hot or too hard while the Mama Bear’s stuff is just as unsatisfactory to Goldilocks in the opposite direction. The baby’s porridge, chair, and bed are “just right.”
What does this have to do with sleep? According to a study by University of Warwick’s Warwick Medical School, too much or too little sleep can be deadly. Most people already knew about the problems of too little sleep. It has been linked to increased risk of diabetes and obesity, among other things.
What isn’t obvious is that too much sleep can be a problem. How much of a problem can it be? There’s the rub in this research. It seems that the scientists don’t know. Francesco Cappuccio, an author of the study says:
“But in contrast to the short sleep-mortality association, it appears that no potential mechanisms by which long sleep could be associated with increased mortality have yet been investigated. Some candidate causes for this include depression, low socioeconomic status and cancer-related fatigue.”
This sounds to me that sleeping too much is not the cause, but just a symptom of an underlying circumstance. This is why you need to read the whole article instead of the headline of, “Too much sleep as dangerous as too little”.
This post deals with: ... and focuses on:Sleep
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PropellerNext: Unemployed. How will my health be effected?
September 26th, 2007 at 8:10 am
When you are young, you need a lot of sleep to help with all that growth.
When you get a bit older, you need less sleep but probably get too little.
When you are old, you need more sleep again.
Funny how that all works.
September 26th, 2007 at 9:37 pm
Yeh, kids need alot of sleep. Adults are okay with 6 to 8 hours of sleep. my grandma doesnt sleep alot, maybe 5 hours. weird. i need to sleep more too, especially since i am working out.
September 27th, 2007 at 5:20 am
I tend to be a night owl, but I need to leave for work at 5:30 every morning. The result is that I usually don’t get enough sleep during the week and overcompensate on the weekends. I’m working to break that cycle by setting an early alarm on the weekends and getting to bed a little earlier during the week.
September 29th, 2007 at 12:06 pm
[...] in a little bit of a departure, Lazy Man…and Health, not Money! has Sleep and The Three Bears. I was going to sleep at 10:30 with my wife and waking up at 7 with my son and felt [...]