Monday, September 27, 1999
Study: Lack of Z's slows reactions
Effects rival too much booze
BY JANET The Associated Press
McCONNAUGHEY The Associated Press
NEW ORLEANS — Too little sleep can slow you down as much as too many drinks.
That's the conclusion of a Stanford University study of people with mild to moderate sleep apnea — people whose breathing stops several or even dozens of times an hour, interrupting their sleep without their knowledge.
People known to have apnea did as poorly on a test of reaction time as people who were too drunk to drive a bus or truck in California, said Dr. Nelson B. Powell of Stanford's Sleep Disorders Clinic and Research Center.
On three of seven measurements, they did worse than people too drunk to drive at all in California and other states where the legal limit is a blood alcohol content of 0.08.
Dr. Powell said he wanted to underscore the dangers of driving while sleepy, whether or not it's because of apnea.
“How many times have you or anybody you've known been nodding off at the wheel, or said, "Gee, I've got to roll the window down or turn the music louder'?” he said. “I'd bet every driver at one time or another has driven too tired. We know it's wrong but we still do it.”
Dr. Powell presented his study Sunday at the annual convention of the American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery Foundation Inc.
The study looked at 80 volunteers and 113 people with apnea.
All of the people took a 10-minute test of reaction speed, pushing a button to turn off a randomly set light. After four tests to get their baseline reaction time, the comparison group started drinking 80-proof alcohol.
They were tested three more times as they kept drinking. Their blood alcohol count averaged 0.05 at the first retest, 0.08 at the second and 0.083 at the third.
In addition to simple reaction times, analysts looked at six mathematical permutations, such as the means of the 10 fastest and of the 10 slowest times.
The apnea patients did worse on all seven measurements than the drinkers did on their first retest, and worse on three of them than those who were legally drunk.
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