The Perils of Political Naps Do we really know how to sleep? The perils of political napping demonstrate that sleepy ideas about sleeping remain steadfastly secure. Recently Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York excoriated one organ of the press, in this case the New York Post, for reporting that he naps during the day. […]
New Ways to Sports Success
You might think attending the national sleep (APSS) meetings would not provide secrets to winning at sports. No. Recognize the importance of biological intelligence—how your body uses and acquires information—and you might be proven wrong. For survival, sleep is like food. For performance, activity requires rest, a fundamental biological yin-yang. Knowhow to optimize and modify human rest […]
Secrets of Jet Lag (9/23/13)
Aging in Flight You fly business class from LA to Beijing, sacrificing a college tuition payment for sixteen inches of leg room. Whisked to your hotel room you fall into bed and repeat attempted slumber. When you wake you feel thirty years older. Then you open the blinds, look out on the smog, and drop […]
Does your sports team need a sleep doc? (11/2/11)
Hockey and Basketball and… The Vancouver Canucks have one. So now do the Calgary Flames. Dr. Charles Czeisler, head of sleep medicine at Harvard, is now a consultant to the NBA. He’s on record as recommending players get more than 8 hours of sleep a night in order to perform their best. Some teams are […]
Confessions of an air traffic controller (10/28/11)
Asleep in the Tower What caused a senior air traffic controller to fall asleep at Reagen Airport in Washington, D.C. this April, causing two planes to land unassisted and provoking a national transport scandal? Travel – his own. In a report by Rebecca Ruiz at MSNBC, the unnamed supervisor last remembered thinking he should splash […]