HEALTH & SCIENCE

THE CASE FOR A NAP

KURT KLEINER, TORONTO STAR - To be an enthusiastic napper in
21st-century North America is to be out of step with your time and
place. In most of the industrialized world, a nap is seen as a sign of
weakness, either physical or moral. The very young and the very old nap.
Sick people nap. Bums nap. Healthy, productive adults do not nap.

We are a culture that celebrates action, doing, achieving, an attitude
that leads to a disdain for sleep in general. We stay up late and get up
early. We pull all-nighters. We'll sleep when we're dead, and in the
meantime there's always a Starbucks on the corner. . .

A nap distils the sweetness of a whole night's sleep down to a few
minutes. . . There's no shortage of important historical nappers, many
of them men of industry and action. Napoleon Bonaparte, John D.
Rockefeller, Thomas Edison, and Winston Churchill were nappers in the
heroic vein. On the literary side, Samuel Pepys, the 17th-century
diarist, would sometimes have a nap in his office after a boozy lunch.
The world's most famous insomniac, Marcel Proust's alter-ego in In
Search of Lost Time, slept poorly at night but always managed to have a
little nap before dinner. . .

This daytime siesta became institutionalized in Spain and Latin American
countries, with workers closing up shop and going home for a big meal
and a nap before heading back to work for a few more hours. However,
modern pressures seem to be gradually eliminating the siesta, at least
in cities. . .

This year, researchers at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia,
reported that they took test subjects who had had only five hours of
sleep the night before and let them have naps of varying durations. They
found that even a 10-minute nap made the subjects feel less sleepy and
more vigorous, and led to improved cognitive performance.

Nevertheless, mainstream sleep researchers are only grudging boosters of
the nap. They tend to see it as second-best, necessary only for people
who haven't gotten enough sleep the night before. . .

In fact, the emphasis on productivity threatens to rob the nap of one of
its pleasurable qualities — its illicitness. In an anti-sleep culture,
taking a nap lets you feel that you've stolen a little piece of the day
just for yourself.

Whether you're in your bed, on the couch, or under your desk, a nap is a
chance to forget about the clock and tune into your own internal
rhythms. When I nap, I accept my own nature, and the nature of the
universe that made me. I become a Zen master of sleep.

Unless my wife is right. It could be that I'm just lazy.

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SOCIAL BIGOTS AND HEAVY PEOPLE

REBECCA M. PUHL AND KELLY BROWNELL IN WASHINGTON POST - With colleagues,
we recently completed a study of more than 2,000 people enrolled in a
weight loss program. . . . Participants told us that when they are
stigmatized because of their weight they respond with such strategies as
eating more food and just giving up on dieting. Eating more in response
to discriminatory treatment was reported by 79 percent of the
participants, and 75 percent refused to diet. A smaller number, 63
percent, said that they had at one time or another used dieting to cope
with such discrimination, but dieting doesn't work very often.

Other studies have shown that overweight girls and boys who are teased
because of their weight are more likely to engage in unhealthy weight
control and binge eating than are overweight youth who are not teased.
It has also been shown that overweight young people avoid physical
activities in which peer victimization frequently occurs.

The data are quite clear: Stigmatizing overweight people contributes to
unhealthy behavior that only adds to the problem of obesity. With
two-thirds of American adults now overweight or obese, obesity is
recognized as a pressing public health issue. Schools, health
professionals and communities across the country are beginning to talk
about what must be done to improve eating habits and encourage more
physical activity. But these efforts, which are urgently needed, must
expand to include the topic of weight stigma.

Weight stigma is more than indirect experiences -- for example, feeling
inadequate compared with the size-zero celebrities who are everywhere in
our culture. Derogatory comments, job discrimination and even physical
aggression were all reported by study participants. . .

These stories reflect a viciousness long ago shunned in matters of race
or gender. In the case of obesity, though, there is a perverse twist:
The people inflicting the stigma are often convinced that they are
actually helping the victim. Indelible harm is the more likely result.

The sources of weight stigmatization reported in the study were
surprising, with family members being the most frequent perpetrators at
72 percent and physicians following closely at 69 percent. . . 46
percent of respondents reported being stigmatized by nurses, 37 percent
by dietitians or nutritionists, and 21 percent by mental health
professionals. The obvious question is: If even the health-care system
is unwelcoming, where can an obese person turn for help?

[Rebecca M. Puhl is coordinator of community and weight stigma
initiatives at the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale
University. Kelly Brownell is director of the center and a psychology
professor at Yale]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/01/
AR2006110102969.html?
nav=rss_opinion/columns


THE PARIAH ECONOMY & SOCIAL BIGOTRY
http://prorev.com/bigotry.htm

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IMPORTANT FACT BURIED IN THE RED WINE & LONGEVITY STORY

NY TIMES - The mice were fed a hefty dose of resveratrol, 24 milligrams
per kilogram of body weight. Red wine has about 1.5 to 3 milligrams of
resveratrol per liter, so a 150-lb person would need to drink 750 to
1,500 bottles of red wine a day to get such a dose.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/02/science/02drug.html?ex=1320123600&en=
6015be14e0a47430&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss


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