So Who Is Using Sleeping Pills? Lots of people – especially people not prescribed them. According to the Royal Pharmaceutical Society (reported in the BBC), a full third of adult Britons complain of insomnia. Fully half of these insomniacs take prescription sleeping pills their doctors don’t know about. Thirty percent take them for at least […]
Your pilot is falling asleep on the plane. Should you be worried? (3/21/12)
Sleepy, Sleep Pilots A recent Sleep In America poll found that a quarter of pilots feel sleepy on the job. Another 60% nap on the job, and 20% feel they have made serious errors as a result of sleepiness. Why Is This Happening? Shift work. Similar problems occur with train drivers. Only about half of […]
Is there an epidemic of sleep apnea in our police? (1/6/12)
Sleepy Police Especially when you’re young, sleep apnea can kill you. When old, it can really muck up your life. And American and Canadian police appear to suffer sleep apnea in epidemic numbers. That’s not the public conclusion reached on an important Harvard study on 5000 American and Canadian police. Media reports declared a third […]
After Iraq and Afghanistan – veterans’ health, PTSD, and sleep apnea (12/5/11)
The Wars Are Not Over US veterans are in trouble. Veterans returning to the work place are finding it difficult to find jobs with their unemployment rate north of 12%, versus the (falsely low) figure of 9% for the country. One reason is many have come back ill. What sort of ailments is the question. […]
Snore no more! (7/27/11)
Are You Snoring? Guess Who’s Watching! Snoring is not normal. It’s associated with increased heart attack and stroke risk. Prolonged snoring eventually leads to sleep apnea, stopped breathing episodes that increasingly risk survival. And snoring is often loud. It wakes up other people – particularly spouses, where it sometimes becomes grounds for divorce. It […]