THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, April 14, 1996 TAG: 9604160493
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J2 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY ROGER K. MILLER
LENGTH: Medium: 85 lines
SLEEP THIEVES
An Eye-opening Exploration Into the Science and Mysteries of Sleep
Stanley Coren
The Free Press. 304 pp. $24
An anecdote is lodged in my memory, I think, concerning Franklin D. Roosevelt, who is supposed to have praised sleep as being the only time we never waste. But if you look at the photos of FDR, he doesn't seem to have followed his own beliefs: The sleep-deprivation bags under his eyes would be excess luggage at any airport in the country.
If this is so, then Roosevelt was in step with the culture, which treats time asleep as time wasted. In this country, and most others, when the tough get going, they do it on about four hours' sleep.
Or so they say. They're probably lying, or at best fooling themselves and us, which is one of dozens of revelations in Stanley Coren's Sleep Thieves: An Eye-opening Exploration Into the Science and Mysteries of Sleep. The central thrust of his book, however, is that we don't get nearly enough sleep.
Coren, a neuropsychologist at the University of British Columbia and author of The Left-Hander Syndrome and The Intelligence of Dogs, argues that ``human beings today are making demands on their bodies and their minds that are in conflict with their biological nature.'' We have been designed by eons of evolution to get more sleep, but technology has outstripped biology. We live in the 24-hour computer age, when we can stay up all night, but physiologically we remain creatures of the hunter-gatherer stage, when we hid in the caves in the dark.
Coren quotes Allan Rechtschaffen, a leading sleep researcher: ``If sleep does not serve an absolutely vital function, then it is the biggest mistake the evolutionary process has ever made.''
But we don't believe that. If something needs doing, where do we steal time from? Not from some other activity, but from sleep time. In this respect, we're growing dumber instead of smarter. In 1910, our grandparents and great-grandparents, who as a society certainly could not be considered lazy, typically got nine hours' sleep. Nowadays we average seven and a half - and falling.
We believe instead that we will get more done by expanding the time available. What happens is that, not only do we not get more done, but we screw up what we do accomplish by being less alert and less able to function. This is demonstrated clearly in study after study, including an experiment the author did on himself. Eager for ``more time,'' he cut back to five hours' sleep a night. He halted it when he saw his life and work suffering.
Depriving ourselves of sleep can be harmful, even fatal. For one thing, it results in a weakened immune system, making us more vulnerable to illness. It can and does kill people on the road, in the skies and in the hospital, when drivers, pilots and doctors are too groggy to know what they are doing. Then there are the uncountable monetary losses caused by people making financial or other business and workplace errors.
Coren discusses many other fascinating things, such as the deadly effects of going onto daylight saving time; why we don't sleep well sitting up; how birds seem to take micro-naps while on the wing; whether fish sleep (apparently they do); and why the Grim Reaper so often arrives between 1 and 4 a.m. One thing he doesn't reveal is why we yawn, because no one knows.
How much sleep do we need? Probably around nine or 10 hours in every 24. Studies (particularly one in a polar environment) have shown that, when societal and other factors are controlled for, this is what people will gravitate to, no matter what their sleep habits were before. In this we resemble in yet another way our close relatives, the apes, who sleep between 10 and 12 hours.
But what about all these people who call sleep unproductive and claim that they get by on very little, people like Thomas Edison and Napoleon? They're into image management, another means of elevating themselves above the slugabed common herd. When their lives are examined, Coren says, it turns out they slept far more than they let on, even to themselves.
Leonardo da Vinci probably did not exist on his reputed 15 minutes' sleep every four hours, or if he did, it was for only a short period of his life. He may actually have been a long sleeper. In fact, long hours abed may have contributed to his genius. No one should ever snicker at Calvin Coolidge or Ronald Reagan again. MEMO: Roger K. Miller, former book editor of The Milwaukee Journal, is a
free-lance writer in Grafton, Wis.
by CNB