If you are a baseball fan, an in particular a Boston Red Sox fan, you are likely a wee bit sleep deprived! I was personally grateful for the 2 day lull of game action between the ALCS and Game 1 of the World Series tonight – I was pooped!
Being a doctor, my body does fairly ok on lack of sleep but it is not a feeling I love. But, I can’t say I function as well on little sleep as I used to. Java and I become quite the pair on those days. I do fairly well until the buzz wears off and then, according to my family, I become a different person…and apparently I’m not alone, notes a study published in the journal Current Biology.
According to the study’s researches, we basically become very cave-person like or “primative” in how we think and act. So, it is no wonder we have trouble thinking clearly and controlling our emotions! And, we shouldn’t be surprised that there is no worse combination than lack of sleep and dealing with anything major in our lives – we just don’t have enough control over our faculties to comprehend all the nuances to allow us to interpret and react appropriately.
Although not surprising to predict, the results of the study even surprised the researchers who were quoted as saying:
“While we predicted that the emotional centers of the brain would overreact after sleep deprivation, we didn’t predict they’d overreact as much as they did,” (Matthew Walker, a neuroscientist at the University of California, Berkeley said. “They became more than 60 percent more reactive to negative emotional stimuli. That’s a whopping increase—the emotional parts of the brain just seem to run amok.”
While we all know we need more sleep, hard to deny we often put ourselves in situations where we knowingly become sleep deprived. The baseball playoffs is a great example. Add to that kids waking us up and jobs not letting us sleep in and it is no wonder the java joints are making a killing and we are all walking around like zombies! What’s the cure? One local anchor in Boston suggested that MLB and Fox start the games an hour earlier…and since we know that won’t happen our only recourse is to catch up where we can, take power naps and get back on a normal schedule asap once that final out is played.
Until then, Go Sox!!
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