I watched this documentary by www.sbs.com.au last week and it was a study by Harvard medical on sleep deprivation.
Even though everyone responds differently to varying amounts of sleep, an experiment was carried out to investigate the short term effects of extreme cases.
They came to the conclusion that a person who has roughly 12 hours of sleep over 3 nights is prone to hallucinations, mental and physical deterioration, as well as lowered insulin production. The guy's insulin levels went down by half! That was pretty close to that of a diabetic.
It was also found that after eating, individuals who did not have enough sleep stayed hungry for longer after meals and did not feel satisfied even though they were full. Hence, they are more susceptible to weight gain.
They put the same guy through a driving test and he drove well for the first part, eyes open and all. But the electrodes attached to him detected that he fell asleep multiple time over the duration of the test. His body was functioning on automatic behavior where the body is awake but the mind is asleep. Simply put, sleeping without knowing it.
Okay, enough of that, I must be boring you. I just thought it was very enlightening because I almost always need 8 or more hours of sleep while most others can function completely normally the next day with just a little over 5 hours, and I've been wondering what's wrong with me. And to think this just happened to be on the day I decided to go to sleep early!
I just got back from the gym and today marks the first day of 4 weeks of training. For what? Well, I'm going run for charity! The Age is hosting a charity run on June 28th at Federation Square for people to take part in either a 5km, 10km or half-marathon race. I figured 5kms would serve its purpose well, so I decided that because winter's here (yes, the race is in the middle of winter, outdoors) I should not only watch what I'm eating, but also keep fit.
Here's my first log!
Tiffany's 5km log book.Start: 33m 22sGoal: 31m 00sEntry 1)
2/6/09, Tue, 1550h
33m 22s
9:24 PM
