14
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Friday, March 15, 1968
Six hours of sleep might be enough
By Cynthia Smith Kansan Staff Reporter How much sleep do you need?
Photo by Moe Behravesh
GOING . . .
A drowsy Jalil Zaraby,
Tehran, Iran, senior, nods
over his books . . .
A healthy college student needs six hours' sleep as a minimum, according to Sydney Schroeder, neuropsychiatrist at Watkins Hospital.
Most doctors say eight hours is needed by the average adult. This figure was calculated by doctors during the nineteenth century.
"It isn't how much sleep you get, but how you sleep," Dr. Schroeder said. "Some people can sleep for a relatively short time and awake refreshed and ready to go. Others need the full eight hours before feeling much like doing anything. The younger a person is the more likely he can get by with less sleep," he said.
A person has to find his own "clock," Schroeder said. Some people can sleep for a short time and be awake for a short time and go back to sleep for a short time again. One person can get all the sleep he needs at one time, while others may have to take short naps.
Donn Pearlman, Chicago, Ill., junior, stayed awake for 101 hours during semester break. For 95 hours, he was part of a publicity stunt in Topeka. The night before the stunt began he had about nine hours sleep and when it was over slept for seven hours. He was awake for about three hours and then again went back to sleep at his regular time. He said he felt fine the next day.
After being without sleep for five days, his pulse had slowed down and his blood pressure had decreased. He said he didn't notice the lack of sleep until the early hours of the fifth day when he suffered from "a very heavy head, nausea, sheer exhaustion, and a kind of numb stupor."
"It was kind of like being drunk," he said, "The noise seemed very loud when actually
... AND GONE
David C. Anderson, Wichita freshman, succombs to the quiet confines of the Governmental Research Center library in Blake Hall.
Photo by Bruce Patterson
it wasn't. My eyes looked—like roadmaps."
He also experienced optical illusions and loss of depth perception for awhile, he said.
Kleitman, 43, found he could not adjust, but his 28 year old assistant was able to make the necessary body adjustments with nine hours of sleep and 19 hours awake.
College students with only two days to get 48 hours of work done often resort to no-sleep pills. But these cause the person to be even more tired after they wear off, Dr. Schroeder said.
In the same article, Gaines told of Nathaniel Kleitman, a pioneer in sleep research, who tried to live by a 28 hour cycle.
"Everyone has to sleep sometime," he said.
Bob Gaines, in an article in Ladies Home Journal, February, 1967, said Ian Oswald, an Englishman, conducted experiments recently to see if people could adjust to a 48 hour day. Oswald found that some people could sleep 12 hours and stay awake for 36.
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