Saturday, February 20, 2010

Bill Clinton: The Importance of Sleep

Former President Bill Clinton again emphasized the importance of sleep at a Clinton Foundation event earlier this week.

Clinton was
speaking about being admitted to the hospital to have a clogged artery opened. He placed part of the blame on his lack of sleep after responding to the recent earthquake in Haiti.



“I didn’t sleep much for a month,” he said. “And that probably accelerated what was already going on with this failing vein.”

Research does show that sleep can improve your heart health. Last year a study reported that men who went to bed before midnight had more relaxed arteries. Another study found that longer sleep duration was associated with a lower rate of coronary artery calcification. This is a predictor of coronary heart disease.

This wasn’t the first time that Clinton has discussed the benefits of sleep. In December 2008 he appeared on “
The Situation Room” on CNN. Anchor Anjali Rao asked if he had any advice for President-Elect Obama.

“In my long political career, most of the mistakes I made, I made when I was too tired, because I tried too hard and worked too hard,” he
told Rao. “You make better decisions when you're not too tired. So that would be my only advice.”

And in September 2007 he appeared on “The Daily Show” to discuss his book Giving. He told Jon Stewart that sleep deprivation is part of the problem in Washington politics today.

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“You have no idea how many Republican and Democratic members of the House and Senate are chronically sleep deprived because of this system,” he told Stewart. “I know that this is an unusual theory, but I do believe sleep deprivation has a lot to do with some of the edginess of Washington today.”

Are you sleep deprived? Find out by reading the
seven signs you need sleep on SleepEducation.com. Get help for an ongoing sleep problem at an AASM-accredited sleep center near you.

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