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Mountain States Health Alliance Update. The National Sleep Foundation is an organization
that helps educate people about their sleep disorders, and every year, they put out a
poll at the beginning of the week before daylight savings time comes in order to educate people
about one particular topic in sleep medicine. This year, the National Sleep Foundation polled
more than one thousand transportation workers, including pilots, train operators, truck,
bus, taxi and limo drivers. Well, they work long hours. They don't have opportunities
to nap when they need to. They have this long commute that reduces their sleep time. Their
schedules may be very irregular, like pilots for example, most of their schedules are very
irregular about when they sleep so it interferes with your normal sleep cycle. And most people
just aren't getting enough sleep each night. Well, ideally, would be eight to nine hour,
and one National Sleep Foundation poll showed that the average American gets about seven
hours of sleep, so we're a sleep-deprived society. Sleep deprivation in transportation
workers also increases their chances of causing an accident. There have been many accidents
associated with sleep deprivation or insufficient sleep. Automobile accidents are much more
common in transportation workers who don't get sufficient sleep. Pilots -- there have
been airplane accidents and deaths related to that and there have been many near-misses,
especially in train operators. But all of this can be avoided if you know how to get
the right amount of good sleep. Some good tips are: Go to bed at the same hour every
night if you can or at about the same time and get up at the same time, even on the weekends,
when you might just want to sleep in and recover that "sleep debt", sleeping in a dark, quiet,
cool room, somewhere between 65 and 68 degrees. And also, one of the most important things
is if you have snoring, pauses of breathing during sleep, excessive sleepiness during
the daytime that you can't explain, then you should see your health care provider and perhaps
be referred to a sleep center and see a sleep expert. If you would like to have a sleep
study done, call the Mountain States Health Alliance Center for Sleep Disorders 423-431-6816,
www.msha.com/sleep. The MSHA Difference -- Bringing Loving Care to Health Care.