Do you get too little sleep?

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A British study of 10,000 people over 17 years found that their heart disease death rates doubled when they went from seven hours of a sleep a night to less than five.

The researchers dialed out all kinds of other factors that could have affected the outcome. Still, here are some observations beyond what I said about this on the air Tuesday:

The 10,000 were all government workers. Maybe government workers are different from other people. I mean, apart from having more job security.
The 10,000 were all Brits. Maybe they have some “pre-existing condition” that predisposes them to having a heart attack from fatigue (upper lip rigidity, maybe.)

Since my profession has required me to wake up between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m. for 30 of the past 37 years, it won’t surprise you that I am keenly interested in sleep research.

An Army study in the 1980s was particularly intriguing. It found that soldiers tested after two nights of limited sleep actually did better than usual. But after three nights of only a few hours of sleep, they started to make a lot of mistakes.

It’s also interesting that one study after another has concluded that you can’t “catch up” on sleep. What makes this so fascinating is that we all have known the pleasure of sleeping in on a day off after a sleep-deprived week. If it doesn’t help, why does it feel so good?

The answer might be one of the following:

The researchers are wrong and should get more rest.
It has something to do with how they define benefit. Maybe you benefit psychologically by having more dreams, but not physically from the extra sleep hours.

I’m the only on-air “cast member” of Sunrise who has routinely worked earlybird shifts before. My advise to the others is to schedule a two hour to three hour nap every afternoon and then get four to five hours at night. The human body can and does get used to sleeping in two increments.

And you benefit psychologically from being up and about between 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. when your loved ones are home from work or school.

I don’t know how much credence my colleagues give advice from someone with deep bags under his eyes. But I’ve had them since my twenties, when a doctor actually accused me of lying about my drinking. (I told him I sometimes went weeks without drinking because I didn’t care for it as much as most people do. It was, and is, the truth, but he didn’t believe me, and cited the bags under my eyes.)

Anyway, that’s my advice. Sleep on it.

Sep

24

U.S. tourism slows

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Tourism pumps trillions of dollars a year into the U.S. economy. But the nationwide visitor industry is growing at less than a quarter of the overall pace of U.S. economic expansion, according to a Monday report from Washington, D.C.

The U.S. Commerce Department, using figures from the second quarter, reckons that the U.S. economy is growing at an annual pace of 4% but the tourism sector is growing only 0.9%, despite more tourism hiring in the previous quarter.

Airline business overall has actually been shrinking, especially international business. There are several reasons for this:

Americans have been losing the fear of overseas travel that erupted after 9/11, so more of us have been vacationing outside the United States.
Some Europeans who disapprove of the Iraq intervention are disinclined to visit America just now.
Discount carriers in Europe have made it cheap for Europeans to take European vacations.
With the yen strong, the Japanese have been taking more European vacations. But lately the yen has also strengthened against the dollar, making Hawaii vacations cheaper. Sure enough, Japanese arrivals bottomed out in July.

Hawaii tourism remains at or near historic highs, despite massive increases in hotel room rates. But those rate increases appear to be squeezing restaurateurs and tour companies, since Hawaii visitor spending is up much less than the increase in hotel room charges.

In other news…

A magazine for new mothers has an article called, “Pimp Your Stroller.” I am not making this up.

Marcel Marceau died and we said nothing about it.

Your assignment: Figure out how a mime would think outside the box.

Malcolm Forbes once wrote a book collecting famous alleged last words. The book’s title: “They Went Thataway.”

The best entry in the book: “Either that wallpaper goes or I do.”

Sep

21

Look out below!

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No, that’s not as classy a slogan as “E Pluribus Unum,” but the dollar has weakened so much this week that it might as well be “Vidi plungibus.”

The yen also weakened Friday but the trend for the summer as a whole has been one of appreciation, and the yen now stands at 115 to the dollar. Economists think it will strengthen more, but even if it stabilizes here it means Japanese visitors will find their money travels 10% further in Hawaii than it did in the spring.

The euro bought $1.40 Friday, the most ever, so this might not be the optimal year to see Venice, but it’s a good year for Germans and Britons to visit Waikiki, and we might also see a bottoming out of the declining Canadian arrivals now that the Canadian dollar has finally achieved parity with the U.S. dollar.

By the way, gold has blown way past $700 to a 28-year high. Gold prices rise when investors get nervous about other investments like stocks — and bundles of mortgage notes, which once were considered a safe investment until all those subprime borrowers began defaulting.

“Sunrise” has now been on one week. What a wild ride it’s been — remember, most of my previous television work has been done from an otherwise empty newspaper office. Your in-person, email and phone comments — I reckon I’ve spoken to more than 100 people about the new show — have been very kind. Steve and Grace and Jeff and Ramsay and I hope to polish this show into a service that helps you get your morning started, sending you to work or school informed, in a good mood, and generally ready for the day.

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