Boo Daylight Savings Time

In Ontario Canada, we just changed our clocks for “daylight savings time” and everyone everywhere is groaning and flopping and hitting the snooze and drinking extra coffee and generally grumbling while they try to remember that thing from the other day that was supposed to get done at some point in the very near future... and try not to crash their car. The news was nearly flooded the last two weeks with articles and news stories about the ill-effects of the lost hour during the spring, possibly in an effort to prompt the government to drop the irritating habit of changing our clocks around twice a year.

Which prompted me to wonder about sleep. Why is it so important? What are we doing when we sleep and why do we suffer so much when we don't? To be honest, I feel rather like the answer is obvious. Yet few of us really seem able to articulate it beyond the awful realities of being sleep deprived. You just feel like crap.

So, what are we doing when we sleep? The answer is a lot more complicated than one might think and the scientists are still working to understand this phenomenon. Interestingly, in order to learn more about what happens when we sleep, scientists have had to study the effects of it's lack.

Over the next month I'll be posting a few articles about sleep... until then, here's to day light savings time. * groan *