2B
LIFE/ Hit Cljatlotte $o«t
Thursday, March 4, 2004
Shakur biography
Afeni Shakur and Jasmine
Guy.
Continued from page 4B
ter.
Guy includes the story and
words of Sekyiwa Shakur,
Afeni’s daughter who was
forced to live alone in the
eighth grade when her mom
was living with her crack
addict boyfriend.
She talks about how she
wasn’t there for her children.
Yet she says it was the love of
family and truth that eventu
ally led to her recovery
The only drawback of this
book is Guy shares too many
of her thoughts and story
instead of Afeni.
Although this piece isn’t
flawless its a great story of
woman’s road to redemption.
I believe it is a must read.
Methods to get around sleep
Continued from page 4B
you could get at it at a funda
mental level ... I think once
we leam how the system
operates well be able to suc
cessfully manipulate it.”
Of course, in an economy
with such potentially perilous
round-the-clock workplaces
as trucks, airplanes, nuclear
power plants and super
tankers, even helping people
sleep and function well one
day at a time would be a ben
efit.
An estimated 70 million
people in the United States
suffer from sleep problems,
either because of disorders
such as apnea and insomnia
or just a lack of time devoted
to slumber, the federal gov
ernment says. At least
100,000 auto crashes and
1,550 traffic deaths a year are
caused by falling asleep at
the wheel.
And sleep deprivation leads
to reduced productivity, poor
performance in school or the
workplace, and possibly med
ical problems like high blood
pressure, heart disease,
depression and reduced resis
tance to viruses.
“Sleep is as important to
our overall health as exercise
and a healthy diet,” says Dr.
Carl Hunt, director of the
government’s National
Center on Sleep Disorders
Research.
So how much sleep is
enough? The typical recom
mendation is at least eight
hours a night for adults. But
in the Februaiy issue of the
journal Sleep, an expert
called on doctors to abandon
chat blanket prescription.
“It appears seven hours or
even five or six is safe for peo
ple who aren’t sleepy during
the day,” said Dr. Daniel
Kripke of the School of
Medicine of the University of
California, San Diego.
Kripke cited large studies
that tracked death rates in
people who habitually slept
different lengths of time. But
"if someone is sleepy during
the day with less than eight
hours, as I am myself, then I
think it might be vdse to get
eight hours sleep,” he said.
Hunt said sleep studies
overall indicate that adults
generally need seven to eight
hours a night to be well-rest
ed. “As you ratchet down
from seven hours to six or five
or four, there’s a progressively
greater price” in illness, acci-
Walk for
cancer
cure
Continued from page 4B
high as the rate for white
Americans.
The causes of higher rates
of prostate cancer among
black men are unknown. A
National Cancer Institute
study found that even when
income and education are
controlled African Americans
have much higher rates than
whites.
Hickey says he has made a
lot of sacrifices to increase
cancer awareness. But he has
met a lot of good people who
have helped him along the
way.
“We all have the ability to
make a difference in someone
else’s hfe,” Hickey said.
Ib donate to funds to
Joshua Polk call (704) 289-
3851 or to make donations to
Hickey’s favorite cancer
research organizations in his
name hit www.bigjohn-
steam.org or wv^w.city-
ofhope.org
dents and mental malfunc
tioning, Hunt said.
Studies show people can
sleep too little and stiU feel
fine during the day, but that’s
because people stop realizing
they’re impaired if they sleep
too little night after night,
Hunt said. So while there
probably are some people
who truly function well on six
hours a night, they can’t just
rely on how they feel, he said.
Tbenagers need around 8.5
hours of sleep a night, and
younger children should aim
for about nine hours, he said.
When the brain runs on too
little sleep, it malfunctions in
a wide variety of areas:
• Your reaction time slows
and you have trouble paying
sustained attention. Driving
is “the worst kind of thing,”
especially in bumper-to-
bumper situations or lonely
roads, said Edward
Stepanski of the Rush
University Medical Center in
Chicago. ‘You’re forced to sit
still, so you can’t move
ai'ound and do things people
ordinarily do to keep awake,
and you’re staring at the
road.”
• You have trouble keeping
tabs on multiple sources of
information. So you ignore
some of them to focus on a
few, and "you fail to notice
that you’re running out of
gas,” said David Dinges at the
University of Pennsylvania
School of Medicine.
• Creativity suffers. You get
stuck on bad solutions and
can’t think of better ones.
• You can’t remember as
much, and “a sleepy brain is
just not very good at learning
new information,” Stepanski
said.
• Your brain just can’t do
some critical things in a
hurry.
If given the luxury of time,
it actually does pretty well
with tasks like making deci
sions and solvir^ complicated
problems, says Hans Van
Dongen at the University of
Pennsylvania. That’s because
the brain has “an almost
sturming ability to find
tricks” to get around some
hurdles imposed by sleep
loss, he said.
So if you work late in your
office answering e-mails
without any reason to hurry
you’ll probably do aU right,
though you might have to
read some sentences a couple
times, he said. But then, as
you drive home, you have to
react and make decisions —
right away.
“And you find that, oops,
you’re still impaired, after all,
even though you didn’t notice
it,” Van Dongen said. “And
now you’ve got a problem.”
Much of the overall problem
in the sleepy brain is what
scientists call microsleeps,
repeated periods of a second
or two, or maybe 10, when
you just zone out and don’t
process information.
Microsleeps reflect “a kind
of stru^le inside the brain at
the most fundamental biolog
ical level” between sleep and
wakefulness, producing a
sort of in-between state of
reverie or inattentiveness,
Dinges said. A person might
look awake to a casual
observer during microsleeps
of a couple seconds, or the
episodes can be more obvious.
Think of trying to stay
awake at a meeting after
partying all night. As Dinges
observes in lab experiments,
the eyeballs try to roll, the
eyelids move unusually
slowly and neck muscles
start to go limp, which sug
gests that even muscle-con
trol parts of the brain partic
ipate in sleepiness.
Work in Dinges’ lab has
shown that after a few nights
of too little sleep, people stop
realizing their daytime per
formance is suffering. So
researchers are studying
whether machines can do a
better job of spotting sleep-
deprived people.
Dinges said federal investi
gators are now seeing
whether specialized monitors
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'
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PUBLIC MEETING
The Charlotte Area Transit System (CATS) will hold a public meeting
to receive comments on the ADA Certification Process and service
expansion for CATS Special Transportation Service. A meeting is
planned for:
March 11,2004
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Government Center, Room 267
4:00 PM - 6:00 PM
600 E. Fourth Street, Charlotte, NC
Current STS customers requesting transportation to this meeting may
contact STS at 704-336-2637. For more information about this meeting,
contact CATS at 704-336-RIDE or visit us online at www.ridetransit.org.
Make 8:05 on Tuesday night
feel like 8:05 on Saturday morning.
G
PLAY
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PAUSE
(•44 REW }
F. FWD }
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