Recently there have been a number of articles in the MSM about sleep. They all basically take the general point of view that Americans are ’sleep deprived’, that we all need 8 hours of sleep but aren’t getting it and that this sleep deprivation takes its’ toll across all aspects of society.

Many of these articles have suggested reasons for this growing sleep deprivation. They mention that in this age of ever increasing connectedness we always have another call to make, another email to write, another web site to visit, that we are addicted to our connectedness. They usually profile some poor soul who is addicted to his Blackberry with numbed thumbs, or some road warrior who crosses time zones so often she falls asleep at strange times.

The prevailing wisdom about sleep is that we all need 8 hours of sleep. We heard this from our mothers. We read about getting a ‘good eight hours of sleep’ and that we spend a ‘third of our time sleeping’. It is a rare night that I get 8 hours of sleep. When I ask people how much sleep they get a night, I rarely hear “8 hours”. More often than not I get the answer “six hours, maybe six and a half” or the “I only need four or five hours sleep” usually said with chest thumping braggadocio. So, few of us are getting what we are supposed to get in terms of sleep at night. No wonder Starbucks is thriving and Red …