Timing Your Health As the Romans wrote, time rules life – especially our biological inner life. Body clocks influence or directly control large segments of human physiology and performance. So recent work by researchers at Cambridge’s MRC Research Unit, demonstrating that viruses as varied as herpes and influenza A infect at ten times the rate […]
The First Night
Many folks find they don’t sleep well their first night in a new bed, or anywhere that’s new. Sleep is more fitful and difficult, rest less lasting. In the sleep lab this is known as the “first night effect.” The expectation is strong that sleep the first time in a new, or even a different environment, […]
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 […]
Is business travel unhealthy? (5/20/11)
Business Travel May Be Hazardous to Your Health Worried about airplane safety? Thinking of air traffic controllers and pilots who fall asleep, birds flying into engine intakes, intrusive and radioactive TSA body scanners, suicide bombers with explosives knitted into their underwear? Relax. Heavy personal business travel is far more likely to lead to your early […]
Getting the perfect nap Part I (5/13/11)
The Purpose of Your Nap Naps are back in the news. Air traffic controllers, pilots, truck drivers, and your average citizen are falling asleep in droves – with sometimes fatal results. For a chronically sleep deprived population, can naps restore and rebuild? Yes. Naps can return function to many sleepy people. But rest’s capacity to […]