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| Trouble Insomnia | Study Subjects Discouraged From Physical Activity
They were encouraged to eat and sleep whenever they wanted and told specifically not to try to overcome bouts of sleepiness.
- To boost compliance, the researchers gave them only a deck of cards, a jigsaw puzzle and limited reading material.
- They could stretch but not engage in any other exercise, and they were discouraged from doing any physical activity that might keep them awake.
- They also were not allowed to tak e showers and wore comfortable, pajama-like clothing throughout the 72-hour study period.
- The lights were kept low. Consequently, the participants spent most of the time lounging on the couch or in bed.
In the end of the study, the researchers examined each subject's 72-hour stint in the laboratory, looking for sleep bouts that began between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. and lasted at least 4 hours.
Some 65 sleep occurrences met these criteria. Then the researchers identified the time at which the subjects' body temperature fall most precipitously. This point almost always happened in the 2 hours before sleep began.
Study Subjects Encouraged to Sleep When Sleepy
In everyday life, Drs. Murphy and Campbell point out, it is easy to disregard the body's readiness for sleep: watching the last innings of a baseball game or reading a good book can serve as a potent distraction.
- On the night before the subjects began their stay in the time isolation laboratory, the interval between the fall in body temperature and the onset of sleep was about 60 minutes.
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