submission - Independent Pilots Association

The second thing is that all sleep researchers now accept the concept of "sleep
debt." Each individual needs a certain amount of sleep each day on the average
to avoid accumulating a sleep debt. That sleep debt can accumulate over a long
period of time. lt can accumulate in relatively small amounts so it's kind of
insidious, or of course it can accumulate very rapidly. You find frequently that
many people have been partially sleep deprived for long periods of time. They
aren't aware of this as fully as they ought to be you would think.
There's lots of evidence showing that you can get rid of that debt and how much
extra sleep you have to have to get rid of it. The best type of research that
demonstrates that is to show the increase in the tendency to fall asleep -- the
power of the tendency to fall asleep - as you add hours to the sleep debt.
Eventually, the person will finally fall asleep, no matter what. They can be
walking and fall asleep. But if you put someone in an ad-lib situation, just take
any one of you, and say, "Now you're in a situation where you have to sleep."
You're going to be in a bedroom with no lights. All you can do is sleep. Then
you will see all this extra sleep will take place. That's the debt....the amount of
sleep that you should have received on a daily basis. That's usually astoundingly
large.
ln studies of this sort, you can show that a person thinks they're pedectly normal
in terms of the way they feel. However, if they reduce the sleep debt, their
pedormance will improve. The question is how much debt is anyone carrying at
any parlicular time. The main thing is don't do anything that might increase it.
That's my fundamental principle.
Finally, the circadian rn¡n ñîfit that everyone has known that there is a
biological clock. Since 1971, the location has been known in the brain, there
have been a lot of electrodes and genetic studies, etc. Exactly how the clock
functions to create a circadian rhythm of sleep and wakefulness has been
understood relatively recently. This has been learned through the study of
experimental animals. The best results are obtained with primates. So if you
eliminate the primate biological clock, what's the result? They fall asleep all the
time. They'll falt asleep, stay asleep, wake up, fall asleep, wake up, etc. The
circadian rhythm of sleep is completely eliminated and you lose periods of
sustained wakefulness. So that the concept today is that the clock participates in
the daily regulation of sleep and wakefulness by alefting the brain at certain
times. And you know those as, in other words, the forbidden zone for sleep,...
the second wind that a lot of people get at the end of the day. But the clock does
not put you to sleep. When the clock turns off in effect, when this aleñing
influence ends, a person is left with this gigantic sleep debt. That's what I've
heard you refer to as 'WOCL." That's the period where you find the least alerling
of the activity clock, the most unopposed manifestation to the effects of
accumulated sleep debt. and the greatest likelihood of falling asleep.