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1、Getting Enough Sleep Dream onGetting Enough Sleep? Dream on Is eight hours sleep enough to everyone? Have you ever heard of sleep debt? The following article warns us of the consequences of sleep deprivation and suggests ways to work off sleep debt. 八小时的睡眠是不是对每个人都充裕？你听说过“睡眠债”吗？下面这篇文章提醒我们睡眠不足的后果，建议我们
2、如何偿还睡眠债。 I once had a patient who was so sleep-deprived that she loaded her dirty dishes into the clothes dryer instead of the dishwasher. She turned on the machine, smashing china and glasses. 我曾经有过一位病人，她由于睡眠严重不足，竟把脏碟子放进了干衣机，而不是放进洗碗机里面。她扭开干衣机的开关，哗啦啦，瓷器和玻璃器皿撞成了碎片。 Another patient went to great lengt
3、hs to obtain a 50-yard-line ticket to a crucial San Francisco 49ers play-off game, but was so sleepy that he dozed off in his seat in the first quarter and stayed asleep until the game was over. 还有一位病人费了九牛二虎之力才弄到一张五十码线门票，观看旧金山49淘金人协会举行的一场至为关键的加时赛，但他实在太疲倦了，头一段比赛就在座位上睡着了，一直睡到比赛结束才醒。 On an everyday lev
4、el, sleepy people make math errors, break things and become cross with their families, friends and co-workers. Less commonly, they make mistakes with tragic consequences. It is hard to prove how many fatal car accidents are caused by the drivers falling asleep, but my conviction is that the number i
5、s high. Laboratory experiments have confirmed that the sleep-deprived mind is prone to microsleeps lapses of consciousness so brief that the subject may not even be aware of them. 几乎每天，打瞌睡的人会犯数学错误，打坏东西，或向家人、朋友和同事发火。瞌睡者因犯错而导致可悲后果的情况并不常见。很难证实，有多少起致命的车祸是由于驾驶员瞌睡引起的，但是，我相信，这个数目一定不小。实验室的试验已经证实，缺少睡眠的大脑很容易进
6、入“短暂的昏睡”阵发性的意识丧失，这种意识丧失的时间短得甚至连当事人都可能意识不到。 In one experiment in our laboratory at Stanford University, a volunteer who had only been allowed four hours sleep the night before had his eyelids taped open (uncomfortable, but it doesnt hurt). He was asked to press a button every time an irregular strobe
7、 light flashed. For a few minutes he tapped the switch after each flash, on average every six seconds. Then a bright flash surged into his pupils but he did nothing. 在斯坦福大学实验室进行的一项实验中，只让一名自愿者前一天晚上睡四个小时，然后把他的眼睑固定，让他睁着眼睛，。按照要求，每当频闪闪光灯无规律地闪光之时，他必须揿下一个按钮。最初几分钟，每闪一次他揿一下按钮，平均每六秒钟一次。而后，一道强光照入他的眼球但是，他一动没动。
8、Why didnt you press the switch just now? we asked. Because there was no flash, the young man replied. The machines we used to monitor brain activity showed that at the very moment the light had flashed, the young man had unwittingly fallen asleep, with his eyes wide open, for two seconds. If he had
9、been behind the wheel of a car, those two seconds could have meant disaster. “刚才你为什么不揿按钮？”我们问他。“没有闪光啊?”年轻人回答说。监控大脑活动的机器表明，就在灯光闪烁的那一刻，这位年轻人已经睁着双眼不知不觉地睡着了，睡了两秒钟。倘若他当时是在开车，这两秒钟可能就意味着灾难。 Societal pressures to work more and at odd hours have reduced our sleep time over the past century by about 20 percen
10、t. Add to the mix our own eras drive to have and do it all work, family, sports, hobbies and there is very little time left for rest. I consider sleep deprivation a national emergency. 上个世纪，迫于社会压力，我们不得不加班加点，睡眠时间减少了约20。我们这个时代充满着各种欲望：工作，家庭，运动，业余爱好等等，使这种忙乱有增无减。因此，休息时间便所剩无几了。我认为睡眠缺失是国家的紧急情况。 Sleep Debt
11、and the Mortgaged Mind 睡眠债与抵押的大脑 Generally, adults need to sleep one hour for every two hours awake, which means that most need about eight hours of sleep a night. Of course, some people need more and some less. Children and teenagers need an average of about ten hours. The brain keeps an exact acco
12、unting of how much sleep it is allowed. My colleagues and I coined the term sleep debt because accumulated lost sleep is like a monetary debt: it must be paid back. If you get an hour less than a full nights sleep, you carry an hour of sleep debt into the next day and your tendency to fall asleep du
13、ring the daytime becomes stronger. 一般说来，成人每清醒两小时就需要一小时的睡眠，这就意味着大多数人每晚需要八个小时的睡眠。当然，有人需要的多些，有人需要的少些。儿童和青少年平均需要十个小时的睡眠时间。大脑对应有的睡眠量做出准确的计算。我和同事们杜撰了“睡眠债”这个词 - 睡眠缺失积累下来，就像债务一样：必须得到偿还。倘若某个晚上少睡一小时，一小时的睡眠债就被带到第二天，白天越来越想睡觉。 During a five-day workweek, if you got six hours of sleep each night instead of the ei
14、ght you needed, you would build up a sleep debt of ten hours (five days times two hours). Because sleep debt accumulates in additive fashion, by day five your brain would tend toward sleep as strongly as if youd stayed up all night. From this perspective, sleeping until noon on Saturday is not enoug
15、h to pay back the ten lost hours as well as meet your nightly requirement of eight; you would have to sleep until 5 p.m. to balance the sleep ledger. But for most people it is difficult to sleep that long because of the alerting mechanism of our biological clock. 在每周五天的工作日里，倘若每晚只睡六小时，而不是所需的八小时，你就欠下了
16、十个小时的睡眠债。由于睡眠债是以累积的方式攒下的，到了第五天，你的大脑会非常想睡觉，就好像你整夜未眠似的。从这个角度说，周六睡到中午并不能满足每晚八小时的睡眠需要，也不够偿还缺失的十小时睡眠；只有睡到下午5点才能保持这本睡眠帐的平衡。然而，对大多数人来说，由于我们生物钟的警醒机制，我们很难睡那么长的时间。 Wide Awake but Not Rested 睡意全无却没有得到休息 An amazingly precise biological clock within us regulates sleeping and waking, and also synchronizes a vast
17、array of biochemical events in our bodies. It is a timepiece of such astonishing precision that people often wake up a few minutes before their alarm clocks go off. 我们体内的生物钟准确得简直令人叹服，我们何时睡眠，何时苏醒全由它调节，它还与我们体内的一系列生化活动保持同步。这种时钟准确得惊人，我们往往就在闹铃响前几分钟醒来。 Most people have two peak times of alertness daily, a
18、t about 9 a.m. and 9 p.m. Alertness wanes to its lowest point at around 3 p.m.; after that it begins to build again. This explains why people who have worked hard all day will often start to feel more alert at the same time every evening despite a large accumulation of sleep debt during the day. I b
19、elieve this clock-dependent alerting can often deceive people into thinking they are sufficiently meeting their sleep needs. 大多数人每天有两次警醒高峰，上午9点和晚上9点左右。警醒度在下午3点衰减至最低点，随后又开始攀高。这就是为什么那些整天努力工作，白天欠下一屁股睡眠债的人们，却常常在每晚的同一时间开始感到更加警醒。我认为，这种“依赖时钟型警醒”的情况常会使人产生错觉，以为自己的睡眠已经满足了需求。 Some years ago I had the chance to
20、 observe a striking example of clock-dependent alerting in action. It was during a visit with my daughter, Cathy, who was then a college student. At first , she was almost alarmingly apathetic and seemed to be totally uninterested in my visit. I suggested we take a walk. It was about four oclock on
21、a sunny late-spring afternoon. In the course of perhaps 20 to 30 minutes, Cathy changed into a talkative, informative, smiling, even vivacious person. 几年前，我曾有机会观察到一个显著的“依赖时钟型警醒”发挥效力的例子。那是我去看望女儿凯西时的事情，那时她还是个大学生。起初，她冷淡得几乎令人吃惊，似乎对我的到来一点也提不起兴致。我提议和她一起散散步。那是晚春的一个明媚的下午，4点钟左右。就在这大约2030分钟的时间里，凯西成了一个健谈、见多识广、
22、笑意盈盈、甚至活力四射的女孩。 The explanation for this marvelous a transformation: heavily clock-dependent alerting. Even typically sleep-deprived college student like Cathy will have a late afternoon/evening period of mental arousal. In her case it was able to abolish her fatigue. Nevertheless, my daughter was s
23、till carrying around a heavy load of sleep debt. 对这次奇妙转变的解释是：依赖时钟型警醒。即使像凯西这样睡眠严重不足的大学生，也会在傍晚或深夜的一段时间内精神特别兴奋。就她来说，这样可以消除疲劳。不过，我女儿依然背负着沉重的睡眠债。 Sleep and Well-Being 睡眠与安康 People sometimes ask me if the exact accounting of sleep debt could mean that they are still deprived from those all-nighters years
24、earlier in college. We dont know what happens to sleep debt in the long term, because research has only been able to measure two-week-long periods. You may have paid off those sleep-deprived stretches when you got sick shortly afterward and slept 18 hours at a stretch. Or the brain may lose track of
25、 sleep debt accumulated months or years earlier. 人们有时会问我，准确计算睡眠债是否意味着，数年前在大学期间常常要通宵达旦、加班加点的人至今仍被剥夺了睡眠机会呢？我们不知道，从长远的角度看，睡眠债会怎么样，因为目前的研究还只能测量为期两周的状况。或许你不久后病倒了，一睡就是十八个小时。这样的话，那些因剥夺了睡眠机会而造成的种种紧张感就被一扫而光。或者，数月或数年前，你欠下了多少睡眠债，大脑也算不清了。 Or, accumulated sleep debt may do long-term damage to your health. In 195
26、9 the American Cancer Society started a massive study, surveying over one million Americans about their exercise, nutrition, smoking, sleep and other habits. After tracking the group for six years, researchers found that short sleep time had a high correlation with mortality: if people had originall
27、y reported sleeping less than seven hours a night, they were far more likely to be dead within six years than those who slept an average of seven hours per night. 或者可以说，积累的睡眠债可能会对健康造成长期损害。XX年，美国癌症协会发起了一次大规模的研究，对一百多万美国人的锻炼、营养、吸烟、睡眠以及其它方面的习惯进行调查。在对这组人进行了六年的跟踪调查后，研究者们发现，睡眠时间短缺与寿命长短有密切关系：如果人们起初称自己每晚睡眠时间
28、不足七小时，他们就比那些睡眠时间平均每晚达七小时的人更有可能在六年内去世。 After years of further research, the original results still stand: although sleep needs vary, people who sleep about eight hours, on average, tend to live longer. 经过多年的进一步研究，最初的结论依然成立：尽管睡眠需要因人而异，但一般说来，每晚睡眠达八小时的人，寿命往往会更长些。 Another interesting finding from this su
29、rvey was the fact that adults who said they slept ten hours or more per night also tended to have shorter lives. We speculate that these self-described long sleepers are more prone to die because they have undiagnosed sleep disorders, like sleep apnea, in which breathing stops for more than ten seco
30、nds, possibly hundreds of times a night. This causes sleep to be disrupted repeatedly by short, unremembered awakenings that may create life-threatening health problems. 此次调查的另一个有趣的发现是：那些称自己每晚睡眠达十小时，甚至更多时间的成人，寿命也往往会短些。我们推测，这些自称睡眠时间较长的人更容易死亡，是因为他们患有原因不明的睡眠紊乱，如睡眠呼吸暂停，在这种情况下，呼吸会暂停10多秒钟，每晚大概会发生上百次。这使得睡眠
31、不断受到短暂觉醒的干扰，可能产生一些危及生命的健康问题。 Other, more immediate effects of sleep deprivation on health and well-being have been documented by research. Studies have shown that cognitive skills and physical performance are impaired by sleep debt, but mood is affected even more. People who get less than a full nig
32、hts sleep are prone to feel less happy, more stressed, more physically frail and more mentally and physically exhausted as a result. Lowering sleep debt can make us feel better, happier, more vigorous and vital. 研究也记载了睡眠被剥夺会对健康造成其他更直接的影响。研究表明，睡眠债会损害感知能力和身体的活动能力，但是，情绪更会受影响。晚上睡眠不足的人更易感到沮丧、压力、体力不支，身心疲惫
33、。减少睡眠债可以使我们感觉更好，更加开心，更有活力和生机。 Toward a Sleep-Smart Lifestyle 通向巧妙睡眠的生活方式 We are generally very bad judges of our sleepiness. In 1988 my friend and colleague Tom Roth and his team at the Henry Ford Hospitals Sleep Disorders Center and Research Lab in Detroit studied a group of people who specially cl
34、aimed that day-time sleepiness a sure symptom of sleep debt was not a problem. He first sent them to bed for eight hours a good nights sleep, most people would agree. Upon awakening, the subjects said they felt fine. 一般说来，我们对自己的睡眠情况不能做出很好的判断。XX年，我的朋友及同事汤姆罗斯与他在底特律的亨利福特医院的睡眠紊乱中心与实验室小组成员们对一组人进行研究，这些人特别
35、声明，白天想打瞌睡。这无疑是睡眠债的一种症状，并非什么大不了的问题。他首先让他们上床睡了八个小时睡一夜好觉，大多数人都会同意。醒来时，被调查者们都说感觉良好。 Yet when their daytime alertness was tested later on, more than 80 percent were not optimally alert. Of those, about 25 percent who said they felt fine were actually so in need of sleep that they posed a danger to themse
36、lves or others. Only about two in ten were optimally alert. 不过，在随后对他们进行的白天警醒度测试中，80%以上的人达不到最佳的警醒状态。这些人中，说自己感觉良好的人约有25%其实非常需要睡眠，以致他们对自己或他人构成了威胁。十个人中大约只有两个人处于最佳警觉状态。 You cant work off a large sleep debt by getting a good nights sleep. You have to make up as much sleep as possible and avoid amassing an
37、other large sleep debt by adopting a sleep-smart lifestyle. Heres how: 一夜好觉无法抵消大笔的睡眠债。你必须尽可能补充睡眠，采取一种巧妙睡眠的生活方式，避免积累下另一大笔睡眠债。做法如下： First, establish your average personal sleep requirement in each 24-hour period to maintain a consistent level of alertness. Start with the number of hours of sleep you t
38、hink you require eight for most people. Make a point of getting that amount of sleep for several nights and pay close attention to how you feel during the day, especially during lulls on the job, after lunch or while driving. 首先，确定自己每24小时期间个人平均所需睡眠量，维持一个稳定的警觉水平。按照自己认为所需的睡眠时间开始大多数人需要八小时。连续几晚都要睡那么长时间，
39、密切注意自己白天的感受，尤其注意上班时短暂的想睡觉，午饭后或驾驶时等不活跃期的感受。 If you are getting drowsier on successive days, then you are getting less than your daily requirement and should add 15 to 30 minutes to your sleep time. If drowsiness continues, you can increase sleep time even more, but if you are feeling sleepy only arou
40、nd bedtime, you are probably close to your optimal sleep time. 如果接连几天都感到瞌睡，那么，你就没有达到每天所需的睡眠量，应该再增加15到30分钟的睡眠时间。如果依然瞌睡，你甚至可以再增加睡眠时间。不过，如果只是在就寝时间感到睡意的话，你可能已经接近自己的最佳睡眠量了。 Bear in mind that youll have to take your biological clock into account. If, like me, you are a lark, or morning person, your strong
41、est period of clock-dependent alerting occurs at this time. I always deal with a need for extra sleep by going to bed early rather than trying to sleep late. An owl, or night person, however, might not be able to fall asleep early, and would be better off making up sleep debt by rising as late as po
42、ssible. 记住，必须考虑到自己的生物钟。如果你也像我一样，是只“云雀”，或者说是个惯于早上活动的人，那么你很可能就会在这段时间最需要靠生物钟叫醒自己。我总是通过早睡的方式来对付额外睡眠的需要，而不会 熬夜。不过，一只“夜猫子”，或者说一个惯于晚上活动的人，可能无法很早就入眠，因此最好还是尽量晚些起床，以抵消所欠下的睡眠债。 Finally, if you think you have a sleep disorder, do not hesitate to seek professional help. You can find a list of specialists on the
43、Internet. I recommend SleepNet (www. sleepnet. com) and the American Sleep Disorders Association (www. asda. org). The National Sleep Foundation site (www. sleepfoundation. org) also contains useful information on helping you to knit up the ravelld sleeve of care, as Shakespeare once aptly described a good nights sleep. 最后，如果你认为自己睡眠紊乱，那么在寻求专家帮助时切莫犹豫。网上可以查到专家的名单。我推荐睡眠网站与美国睡眠紊乱协会网站。国家睡眠基金会网站也有一些有用的信息，帮助你编织“那散了线的忧虑之袖” 莎士比亚在描绘美美地睡上一夜好觉时，曾有过这种贴切的比喻。
