Y
ou’ve probably never fallen asleep while giving a presen-
tation to a large group of people—a horror brought on by
a disorder known as narcolepsy.
But I’ll bet you’ve nodded off while listening to one, yes? And
I’ll bet you’ve snoozed your way through more than one television
program, school band concert, or movie.
You may have been reacting to an especially long, hard day.
You may have been bored. But you may also be chronically sleep
deprived. Should you be concerned? It depends on what else you’ve
been sleeping through.
If you fall asleep every time you sit in one place longer than ten
minutes, you may have a problem.
How Much Sleep Is Enough, Anyway?
Your mother probably told you that you should get your eight hours
every night, and Mom’s wisdom stood up for decades. But in the
1950s doctors began suggesting that we could and should get by
on less sleep. One prominent article in the Saturday Evening Post,
then a dominant synthesizer of American folk wisdom, suggested
that only sluggards and dummies waste their time sleeping eight
hours a night.
About that time the scientific study of sleep began (which
makes it an extremely young science). We didn’t even learn about
a phenomenon known as REM (for rapid eye movement), the stage
of sleep during which dreaming occurs, until about thirty years
ago (a discovery that derived, by the way, from the observation