It is a frightening but true fact and especially disconcerting when you consider that most Americans are sleep deprived.

The study, under the direction of Dr. Nicholas Moore at the Centre Hospitalo-Universitaire de Bordeaux in France published as a letter in the Archives of Internal Medicine, found that drivers who were either drunk or sleepy were at least twice as likely to be responsible for a vehicle accident compared to their well-rested or sober counterparts.

Researchers analyzed information from 679 drivers who were admitted to a hospital in southwest France who were admitted to the hospital for more than 24 hours because of a serious accident between 2007 and 2009.

Christopher Drake, an associate scientist at the Henry Ford Hospital Sleep Disorders and Research Center in Detroit, said the findings do not change what was already known, but the study is still “interesting.”
“We know from experimental studies that just four hours of sleep loss will produce as much impairment as a six pack. If you have a whole night of sleep loss, that’s equivalent to having a blood alcohol content of 0.19,” Drake, who was not involved with the new research, told Reuters Health.

Turning the clocks ahead can have an effect on you health.

Chronic sleep deprivation causes a myriad of health problems so missing an hour may or may not impact you too much.

However, it is a bit like jet lag which can throw you off and may take a bit of time to catch up.

Check out a few of the ways that you can maximize your sleep time to maximize your health.

Should employers allow their employees to nap on the job?

Some say, yes!

There is a great deal of evidence to suggest that napping, that’s 20-30 minute cat naps, can increase overall productivity.

What would have been considered outrageous a decade ago is now a cutting edge workplace practice.

Office naptime is zonking workplaces across the country. OnSwipe, a software shop in Manhattan facilitates napping at an office “den,” as does Pontiflex, a mobile app ad start-up in Brooklyn; Jawa, a mobile app maker in Scottsdale, AZ; and 42 Inc., an information technology consultant in Berkeley, CA. Big-name players like Google and Ben & Jerry’s endorse napping. NASA has teamed up with the National Space Biomedical Research Institute and 91 volunteers from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine to teach astronauts how to nap better during long missions. For some, it’s a company perk akin to gym membership, or free lunch.

We all know those people who brag about not sleeping; not needing sleep or who consider sleep a waste of time and can function perfectly well on little sleep.

Well, with all the studies to the contrary it appears that there may in fact be a small percentage of people for whom these claims are true.

It seems that a genetic variation explains why some people can be considered the “Sleepless Elite“.