Feeling Drowsy This Holiday Season? Time to Get Your Rest

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Jan 5, 2004

Byline: John Elvin, INSIGHT

Feeling Drowsy This Holiday Season? Time to Get Your Rest

It seems from a review of a few recent polls and studies that the condition we call "normal" includes being stressed out and tired at this time of year. A new poll by the Gallup organization shows that 76 percent of American adults say they lose a significant amount of sleep between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day due to a range of factors. For some there's just too much going on to get the right amount of sleep. Others can't sleep because they are worried about having spent too much money. Among other reasons for loss of needed rest is a tendency for some to lie awake brooding over the loss of loved ones who won't be around for the holidays. The National Sleep Foundation (www.SleepFoundation.org) says we need seven to nine hours of sleep per night.

Suggestions for achieving that slumber include things we all know but may not be so good about adhering to, beginning with keeping a regular sleep schedule that means going to bed and getting up at a regular time and sticking to it, regardless of whether weekday or weekend, ordinary day or holiday. Then, of course, there are the warnings about avoiding stimulants and getting exercise at the right times. Really, doesn't it come down to a matter of the tried-and-true "moderation in all things"?

Well, there are a few suggestions on the Website that might not have occurred to you, such as avoiding arousing activities near bedtime solving family problems, paying bills or engaging in competitive games. Another idea that comes as close as might be expected to "say your prayers" is that you should "think about your day, appreciating what you have accomplished and whom you have touched." And to all a good night!

More To Worry About: Feds Issue Their Recall Roundup

As if we didn't have enough to worry about during this hectic holiday season, the federal government has put together a new Website devoted to all the things in our lives that might be unsafe. Recalls.gov (www.recalls.gov) is the Internet site set up by six government agencies that spend time looking into matters that we used to have to handle using our own common sense. You can find out about consumer products, food and even things such as boats that have been declared unfit for our use for one reason or another.

Plus, if your paranoia level tends to sag now and then, you can sign up for an occasional booster shot in the form of a newsletter on recalls as they are issued. If you think that's a joke, you obviously haven't checked out the Website yet. It is almost a sure bet that soon after a visit you'll be rummaging through the pantry looking for stuff that might be on the list, and a trip to the department store or your local grocer will never be the same.

In the food section there are a number of unnerving entries. Certain types of party cookies and a brand of chocolate-almond ice cream are mentioned; there's even a recall for one of the mainstays of those who eat like gerbils alfalfa sprouts. That's just one brand of sprouts, by the way, not all of them. But there are general warnings too, such as one for green onions that relates to our recent item here on the hepatitis outbreak in suburban Pittsburgh [see nation in brief, Dec. 9-22, 2003].

All right, let's say you made it through the food section. Move on over to the consumer-products area and check it out. Here you'll find toys that can choke kids, candleholders that might go up in flames, snowmobiles that might go out of control, comfy clothing that could catch fire and turn you into toast and the list goes on.

There are many other areas to explore: furniture, electronics, cosmetics, motor vehicles. And for your added enjoyment there's a method provided for reporting your own suspicions: an e-mail device that lets you tell the feds about the potentially injurious aspects of particular products that may not yet have come to their attention.

Tracking the Big Predators: They're Closer Than You Think

Over the years we here in the Briefs Bunker have tried to pass on news of big wild animals heading toward the cities, as seems to be the trend of the last dozen or so years. The government has given the trend a big boost with its policies of reintroducing predatory varmints that grandpappy would have shot on sight. And there's also the fact that cities are expanding farther into the wilds; areas that used to be open to hunting are closed now due to development, so predator prey such as deer hang around unmolested.

It does seem kind of ironic how humans kill thousands upon thousands of fairly inedible "trophy" creatures and then get all worked up when one of those creatures turns around and kills a human. But so it goes. For example, writers are still getting scare-story mileage out of an incident way back in the early 1990s where a cougar got the best of a Colorado jogger.

Perhaps such reports will become a little more routine. A recent article in the Denver Post discusses "increasingly common encounters between people and mountain lions." In the community of Genessee, the big cats "use sandboxes as litter boxes and noisily dine on the neighborhood deer, with the occasional dog or cat as an hors d'oeuvre," the story notes.