[Graeme]

Sleep Deprivation: The Great American Myth

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'P')eople who get only 6 to 7 hours a night have a lower death rate than those who get 8 hours of sleep. —From a six-year study of more than a million adults.

Many Americans are sleep-deprived zombies, and a quarter of us now use some form of sleeping pill or aid at night.

Wake up, says psychiatry professor Daniel Kripke of the University of California, San Diego. The pill-taking is real but the refrain that Americans are sleep deprived originates largely from people funded by the drug industry or with financial interests in sleep research clinics.

Those who took sleeping pills nightly had a greater risk of death than those who took them occasionally, but the latter risk was still 10 to 15 percent higher than it was among people who never took sleeping pills. Sleeping pills appear unsafe in any amount, Kripke writes in his online book, "The Dark Side of Sleeping Pills."

[The_Virginian]

Interesting.

A six year study may not be long enough...

Even so, sleeping pills are not healthy, and question on the kind of sleep they induce (less deep sleep) has been a controversy since their inception.

If they took pout those who took pills, and then put 8 hour sleepers vs. Six hour or less sleepers...THAT wh=ould be more interesting.