On sleep duration issues
As the Rust’s editorial team ‘pound their daily beat’ by touring the world’s news websites in search of interesting, diverting or bizarre developments with which to amuse and/or entertain our adherents around the globe, occasionally we come across items which seem to fly in the face of received opinion and/ contradict widely-held beliefs.
Today I bring Rusters one such example – actually in fact more than one – that I spotted overnight.
According to researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston USA who have looked at data supplied by 2,812 adults aged 65 and over, anyone who gets just five hours sleep or less per day has double the risk of one day suffering from dementia compared to those who rack up the seven to eight hours per day recommended for “oldies” in that age group.
Apparently, this finding backs up previous research that tool little sleep effectively “sets the stage” for Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia – this on the theory that lack of proper rest stops the human brain from clearing out the toxins which trigger an ongoing decline in brain function.
For further reading please see here for a link to a piece by Jonathan Chadwick that appears today upon the website of the – DAILY MAIL
Separately, elsewhere I read that the richest man in the world Elon Musk – the somewhat eccentric CEO of Tesla, space exploration and boring tunnels for those who wish to travel by train at supersonic speeds fame – has told podcaster Joe Rogan that he never sleeps more than six hours per night and habitually works in excess of 120 hours per week.
I understand that one of Musk’s other ventures, via a neurotechnology company called Neuralink, is a quest develop microchips that can be implanted into the human brain and may oner day cure paralysis, blindness and other disabilities.
All I can say is good luck to him.
As someone who never sleeps more than five (maximum six) hours at a time – and then “comes to” in an instant, fully awake and able to apply myself to task to full extent of my abilities (or what is left of them), I’m not sure that I necessarily agree with this new research demonstrating that five hours’ sleep is not enough for Over-65s and/or doubles the risk of us becoming ga-ga.
Okay, when my (what I shall call here “batteries”) – recharged to the extent that five hours’ sleep allows – eventually run down so that I begin feeling drowsy, most days somewhere between 10.00am and 11.00am, I then retire to bed for a snooze.
Normally this “re-charge” kip lasts between 20 and 100 minutes and gives me new battery life that can comfortably carry me through a couple of hours’ worth of rubbish daytime television programming, at which point – after a cup of de-caff tea and a slice of Dundee fruit cake – I then retire for another 2 hour stint in the Land of Nod.
Up once more, bright and bushy-tailed again, I’m then ready to be served my double gin & tonic with ice, a squirt of Angostura bitters and two cubes of ice with Fever Tree tonic water, to provide me enough fortitude to watch the ever-depressing BBC One News At Six.
In short, I therefore reckon I get at least eight hours sleep per day (when you add all my various naps together) and so am not at increased risk of getting dementia at all.
