‘A CDC report finds that sleep deprivation has gotten so bad, it’s now a public health problem. The report states that nearly 30% of adults get six hours sleep or less sleep per night, on average. Most adults require 7-8 hours nightly.

Another finding, around 30-40% of adults (depending on age) fall asleep inadvertently at least once over the course of a day. Imagine if this person is a bus driver or simply falls asleep at the wheel? A book out last year by Arianna Huffington also argues we’re engrossed in a sleep-deprivation crisis on a societal and perhaps global scale.

While this latest report by a sleep and dreaming expert heralds a similar message, it’s in some ways stranger and more worrisome. We don’t think of dreams as something associated with health. But they are. And a lack of them is concerning.

“We are at least as dream-deprived as we are sleep-deprived.” said Rubin Naiman, PhD author of the report. He’s a clinical assistant professor of medicine at the University of Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine. Dr. Naiman writes that REM sleep is crucial to proper health. In the report, he called our current situation a “silent epidemic of REM sleep deprivation.”

His findings, published in the journal, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, was a comprehensive review of all available data. In it, he talks about what causes REM sleep and dream loss and the reasons for it. “Many of our health concerns attributed to sleep loss actually result from REM sleep deprivation,” he said…’

Source:  Big Think

‘…[C]hildren with the potential to develop psychopathy tend not to laugh along with others. They are naturally inoculated from social laughter.’

Source:  Big Think

Chemists are surprised to find that berkelium electrons seem to live outside of quantum mechanics.

Source: Big Think