Posts Tagged sleep
Swedish sleep researchers torture subjects with math problems
This is alarming news, literally: Researchers from Stockholm University discovered via studies involving over 1700 subjects* that over two-thirds of them, especially younger individuals, habitually hit the snooze button.
I am appalled at this lack of discipline and ambition! However, I must confess that in my younger days, I got in the habit of putting my alarm on temporary pause repeatedly, which often caused me to run late for class. That would not do! Therefore, I purchased a cleverly built clock called the Clocky that rolls away when ringing, thus forcing you to jump out of bad to hunt it down. Highly recommended!
Putting aside my negative attitude about snoozers, I do feel bad for those subjected to the sleep study because as reported by the New York Times: “Immediately after the participants woke up, the researchers flipped on the lights and presented them with math problems and other cognitive tests — a challenge even more grating than a shrieking alarm, and one the participants had to complete before having a cup of coffee.”** Oof!
The good news for you slackers who do not leap out bed like I do is that this new study provides a pass for delaying the inevitable: “Snoozing [for 30 minutes] does not lead to cognitive impairments upon waking.” Just do not sleep through your final exam on math. That would be a nightmare!
*Is snoozing losing? Why intermittent morning alarms are used and how they affect sleep, cognition, cortisol, and mood , Journal of Sleep Research, October 17, 2023.
**“You Snooze, You … Win?”, Dani Blum, Oct. 18, 2023.
Colder States report sleeping more—65 degrees F evidently the ideal
Check out the Center for Disease Control (CDC) figures on sleep in the USA map in this Stat report. Note how dark it gets up in our neck of the woods of Minnesota, i.e., us being able to sleep better.
Dark is good but even better is the cold according to this new YouTube video posted by the Wall Street Journal.
There being a sweet spot on temperature makes perfect sense to me, this being based on many sleepless nights camping in the cold or hot. However the worst night I can remember was an overnight ice-fishing outing with a bunch of boy scouts. They could not stop fiddling with the space heater, which cycled us from freezing to boiling for some hours before finally stabilizing at a reasonable temperature. That is when the farting began and the giggling commenced. The whole troop deserved a merit badge for flatulence. But I digress…
Small sample sizes produce yawning results from sleep studies
Posted by mark in Basic stats & math, design of experiments on July 15, 2009
“Too little attention has been paid to the statistical challenges in estimating small effects.”
— Andrew Gelman and David Weakliem, “Of Beauty, Sex and Power,” American Scientist, Volume 97, July-August 2009 .
In last week’s “In the Lab” column of the Wall Street Journal (WSJ)*, Sarah Rubinstein reported an intriguing study by the “light and health” program of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI). The director, Mariana Figueiro, is trying to establish a lighting scheme for older people that will facilitate their natural rhythms of wakefulness and sleep. In one 2002 experiment (according to WSJ), Dr. Figueiro subjected four Alzheimer patients to two hours of blue, red or no light-emitting diodes (LEDs). After then putting the individuals to bed, their nurses made observations every two hours and found that the “blue-light special” out-did the red by 66% versus 54% on how often they caught patients napping.
Over the years we’ve accumulated many electrical devices in our bedroom – television, cable box, clocks, smoke and carbon monoxide monitors, etc., which all feature red lights. They don’t bother me, but they keep my wife awake. So it would be interesting, I think, if blues would promote snooze. Unfortunately the WSJ report does not provide confidence intervals on the two percentages – nor do they detail the sample size so one could determine statistical significance on the difference of 0.12 (0.66 minus 0.54). (I assume that each of the 4 subjects were repeatedly tested some number of times.) According to this simple calculator posted by the Southwest Oncology Group (a national clinical research group), it would take a sample size of 554 to provide 80% power for achieving statistical significance at 0.05 for this difference!
So, although whether blue light really does facilitate sleep remains questionable, I am comforted by the testimonial of one of the study participants (a 100 years old!) – “It’s a beautiful light,” she says.
PS. Fyi, for more sophisticated multifactor experimentation (such as for screening studies), Stat-Ease posted a power calculator for binomial responses and provided explanation in its June 2009 Stat-Teaser newsletter .
* “Seeking a Light Approach to Elderly Sleep Troubles,” p. D2, 7/7/09