Today@Dal

From Friday's Chronicle Herald:

Margaret Rajda, associate psychiatry professor at Dalhousie University, said the end of daylight time brings a chance to shed light on a serious but often overlooked issue.

“In this society, sleep deprivation is rampant,” said Rajda, a psychiatrist with the Queen Elizabeth II Health Sciences Centre’s sleep disorders clinic and laboratory in Halifax.

She said the average adult requires seven to nine hours of sleep each night to feel rested, although this can vary.

“The bottom line is that each of us requires as much sleep as we need to feel well-rested in the morning,” Rajda said. “And that varies from person to person.”

Rajda said people who go to work or school deprived of sleep are less alert and productive.

“People who haven’t had enough sleep are tired and sleepy and tend to fall asleep in situations where they should be awake,” the psychiatrist said. “This becomes a real issue if the individual has to drive to work or operate machinery.”

Rajda added that sleep-deprived individuals don’t tolerate stress as well, are crankier and don’t work well with others.

“When we lack sleep, we have difficulty with our mood regulation and problems with concentration and paying attention,” she said.

Whether getting an extra hour of sleep this Sunday morning would improve someone’s sleep depends on their behaviour, Rajda said.

For example, spending an extra hour surfing the web rather than catching up on sleep won’t help.

But she did note that it’s easier to “fall back” than “spring ahead.”

Read the rest of the article at the Chronicle Herald's website.