Sleep mask
Who knows? He rarely gives himself much more.Chances are, neither do you? Experts report a near-epidemic these days of people who short themselves on sleep.The top reason they don't get enough shut-eye: Sleep seems expendable when you are swamped. Give a person a 10-hour workday, a load of clothes caught in a broken down washing machine, a friend who reserved a dinner table for 9:30 p.m., that new video-tape he absolutely must put on, and bedtime sort of slides back until... whenever.See for yourself; ask five colleagues at work how religiously they keep to a sleep schedule. You are likely to hear variations of a single theme: "I go to bed when I finish what I have to do."Trouble is, experts find that self-inflicted sleep restriction cheats you not only out of creative, brain-sharp hours at work, but out of sense of well-being and pleasure you may not know you are missing. The good news: If you realize you are sleep-starved, you can stop depriving yourself without cutting out what you like most about your life.First off, check your attitude. Are you cavalier about your sleep or even downright proud of under-sleeping? "Sleep loss is seen as macho," says Thomas Roth, Ph.D. (recipient of numerous awards, a leading expert of sleep medicine & disorders and co-author of Principles and Practice of Sleep Medicine), founder of the Sleep Disorders Center at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit. "Nobody says, 'Boy, do I need nine hours of sleep.' They'll say, 'I get by on four'."Most people who short themselves follow a pattern: They skimp on time in the sack during the week and try to make up for it Saturdays and Sundays.
"In the long run, you probably get the amount of sleep you are biologically programmed to get," says Charles P. Pollak, M.D., at the Sleep-Wake Disorders Center at New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center. "Still," he adds, "you are not getting it at the times you need it. And as a result, you are sleepy in the daytime during the work-week, when you ought to be alert."Unfortunately, sluggishness builds up, so that by week's end you are hypersensitive to the soporific effects of drugs and drink. One whiskey on Monday might not affect you at all, "but on Saturday it can turn you into the equivalent of a drunk driver."Most at risk is the man who short-changes himself night after night - even if only by 20 minutes. Typical profile: thirtyish, professional, verging on Type A. He's up early in the morning to commute to the city, home very late at night - that kind of frenetic, workaholic lifestyle. the really treacherous thing about this condition is that, once it becomes chronic, a night or two of good sleep doesn't reverse it.HIDDEN PROBLEMAnd, as in our hyper-type executive case, the true problem can remain hidden from view. Try to be safely under the covers when that time comes, rather than speeding along the Western Express highway. earplugs