COG Webcast

Sleep and Health: Sweet Dreams or Nightmare

They drag their bodies into class, eyes glazed and shoulders drooping, and plop themselves down as if burdened by a great weight. It’s 9:00 am, but for many of my students the day has begun while they are still half asleep. As a teacher I know that their ability to think, concentrate, perform on a test, or remember information are all hampered by a lack of one of our basic needs – sleep. And it is not just my imagination that my students, more and more of them, are arriving to class sleep-deprived and unprepared to learn. Research shows that on average this generation is sleeping much less nightly than their grandparents.
Overall, sleep duration thus appears to have decreased by 1.5-2 hours during the second half of the 20th century. Today, many people are in bed only 5-6 hours per night on a regular basis. http://www.medscape.org/viewarticle/502825

While teaching lessons on healthy living, I’ve often asked my students about their sleep habits and I have been amazed with the results of our informal surveys. More