Part 3: Sleep IQ

What Is.....

Come, Sleep, O Sleep! the certain knot of peace, The baiting place of wit, the balm of woe, The poor man's wealth, the prisoner's release, Th' indifferent judge between the high and low -SIR PHILIP SIDNEY, "Astrophel and Stella"

eries of diverse, complex, multifaceted stages that contribute to our functioning

evels of neural activity drops only by 10 percent during sleep

nergizer for the brain and body

verybody needs adequate sleep to be fully alert all day long

rovider of the right stuff for daytime peak performance

Remarkable, we knew very little about sleep until fairly recently in the history of medicine. In 1929, Hans Berger, a German psychiatrist, used small electrodes attached to the scalp to record the continuous electrical activity of the human brain. The brain wave recordings, electroencephalogram, or EEGs, indicated distinctive changes in the brain's neural activity between sleep and wakefulness. This would help future researchers at Harvard University to discover that sleep is divided into several distinct EEG stages, that unfold within an hour from drowsiness to shallow sleep to deep sleep.

So, how are these EEG stages related to your life? Click on the ship to take a journey through a night's sleep... Rather than being a vast wasteland of monotonous inertness, sleep is a diverse, complex, multifaceted series of stages that make important contributions to our daytime functioning. Come learn about the mysteries of the night...

Flip Through Scary Statistics Maybe you're already familiar with how these EEG stages affect your everyday activity...but are you aware that the next time you fly that there good chance that your entire cockpit will be sleeping?...

Time for a Power Nap "You must sleep sometime between lunch and dinner, and no halfway measures. Take off your clothes and get into bed. That's what I always do. Don't think you will be doing less work because you sleep during the day. That's a foolish notion held by people who have no imagination. You will be able to accomplish more. You get two days in one." - Winston Churchill

Sleeping Pills/ Over-the-Counter Remedies... Most sleep experts agree that sleeping pills should be used only in the smallest effective dose, for the shortest clinically necessary period of time, in specific situations, and with extreme caution. Many sleep specialists advise "never taking pills for sleep, period."