Kat Duff's Blog, page 2
June 26, 2012
Short and Long Sleepers
There’s an old Irish proverb that answers this question: “By nature 5 hours, by custom 7, by laziness 9 and by wickedness 11.” By that standard, I am somewhere between lazy and wicked. My preference is for at least 9 hours a night. My mother was the same way, and so is my oldest sister, […]
April 24, 2012
Sleeping and Eating
Sleeping and eating are my dog’s two favorite activities, and they’re pretty high on my list of pleasures as well. Since it’s hard to do both at once (though some people manage, which I will discuss later), it never occurred to me that there might be a connection between the two. However, evidence is mounting […]
April 1, 2012
To Sleep: Alone or Together
Every afternoon, when the sun sinks in the west, our chickens amble back into their coop, jump up onto their roost, squish in together and go to sleep. They may fuss and fight by day (and even steal worms from each other’s beaks); but at night, they cuddle and coo together in a single mass […]
March 10, 2012
Saving Daylight and Losing Sleep
Rats. It’s that time again. Time to move the clock ahead and lose an hour of sleep. Every spring people living in approximately 70 countries around the world move their clocks ahead an hour, and force their bodies to adjust. Many of us – especially the night owls and chronically sleep-deprived among us – be […]
March 2, 2012
Sleeping Pills: To Take or Not Take?
A study recently published in the British Medical Journal found that people who take prescription sleeping pills – even once in a while – are more likely to die early and develop cancer than those who don’t. The study leader, Daniel F Kripke, MD told WebMD: “We are not certain. But it looks like sleeping […]
February 12, 2012
The Intelligence of Not Knowing
There’s an old Taoist saying that “sleep is the intelligence of not knowing anything.” It implies that sleep erases what we know – and that it’s a good thing. Neuroscientists have recently discovered that during deep sleep, also known as slow-wave or delta sleep, connections between different parts of the brain break down. (1) While […]
