Reviews for CDC Health Information for International Travel 2010

The average rating for CDC Health Information for International Travel 2010 based on 2 reviews is 5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2017-09-12 00:00:00 Joaquin Dorfman A decent book by a longtime sleep researcher. There was a lot of content about sleep in general, maybe a bit too much, which made me skim some of it and wish I had picked up the abridged version. I had a few takeaways: * If your eyes ever feel heavy or you seem fatigued while driving, pull over immediately and rest... you're possibly minutes or seconds away from killing yourself from falling asleep. Do not drive if you don't feel quite alert. * You can "sleep" for seconds at a time, even with your eyes open. * Your brain doesn't "relax" during sleep, but rather is extremely active in processing the day among many other things. The most important is Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep, that typically takes 15 minutes to get to. * It is extremely obvious to tell if you're sleeping using an EEG monitor (sort of like an EKG for your brain waves) and there are very characteristic stages of sleep (about 4) * The author chided the practice of "sleep snob"-ery where people brag about how little sleep they get. In his opinion, these people are doing damage to their body and robbing themselves of quality of life, alertness, creativity, and even duration of life. * You need about 7-9 hours of sleep each night. Being fully rested on less than 7 is quite rare. Most people who say that do really are just piling up sleep debt. * Each person is carrying around a "sleep debt" that is very real and usually takes awhile to pay down. If you fall asleep easily in less than 10 minutes in a dark, quiet room, you probably have a high sleep debt. You don't want to "pay off" the debt per-se, because that would mean it'd take over 20 minutes to fall asleep. However, it's a good idea to reduce it. It's not uncommon to have well over 25-50 hours of debt in normal people that aren't aware of their debt. The last chapter shows a 3 week plan to assess your debt and pay down the debt. * Naps are a good thing. * Our bodies have biological-clock type alerting mechanisms that help us wake up at a certain time. It's sort of like an adrenaline rush. It dies down after a few hours. This is the typical reason why you feel tired after lunch (you're feeling your real sleep debt minus extra alerting you had in the morning). * Insomnia is very often a byproduct of something else rather than the thing itself. * "Restless Leg Syndrome" is a very debilitating, but treatable condition where you get a sensation of "creepy-crawly" feelings in your legs. * If you're constantly tired, even after getting a full night's sleep, you could have sleep apnea that is causing you to go without oxygen for brief intervals and constantly waking you up even though you don't remember it. * Sleep affects the moving of short-term memories to long-term. This is often the reason why you can't remember actually falling asleep. If nothing else, the book made me quite aware of the value of sleep and to not at all feel ashamed for striving to get at least 8 hours a night.

Review # 2 was written on 2017-09-02 00:00:00 Robert Gurley To put it mildly, this book will forever change the way I feel about sleep. I cannot recommend it highly enough. You may think that sleep is boring, but it is quite the opposite. If you think you might not want to read this book, all I ask is that you pick it up at your local library and read the introduction. If your not hooked just from the introduction, check your pulse. Here is my stump speech on this book: "We've all heard that to be healthy one must eat well, exercise, and get a good night's sleep every day. Well most of us have a good idea about good eating, and about eating disorders. We know about exercise, and we know about illnesses associated with not exercising or exercising too much. But what do you know about sleep? What is 'a good night's sleep'? What are some sleep disorders beyond the popular insomnia? How does sleep affect your health and how can you use sleep to optimize your entire life? Read this book and I swear your life WILL improve."