Lack of sleep may be deadly, says study

26 Sep 2007, ST

People who sleep less than five hours are twice as likely to die of heart disease

LONDON - People who do not get enough sleep face more than double the risk of dying of heart disease, according to a British study released on Monday.

Although the reasons are unclear, researchers said lack of sleep appeared to be linked to increased blood pressure, which is known to raise the risk of heart attacks and stroke.

A 17-year analysis of 10,000 government workers showed those who cut their sleep from seven hours a night to five or less faced a 1.7-fold increased risk of death from all causes and more than double the risk of cardiovascular death.

The findings highlight a danger in busy modern lifestyles, according to professor of cardiovascular medicine at the University of Warwick's medical school Francesco Cappuccio.

Speaking to the annual conference of the British Sleep Society in Cambridge, he said: 'A third of the population of the United Kingdom and over 40 per cent in the United States regularly sleep less than five hours a night, so it is not a trivial problem.

'The current pressures in society to cut out sleep, in order to squeeze in more, may not be a good idea - particularly if you go below five hours.'

Previous research has highlighted the potential health risks of shift work and disrupted sleep.

But the study by Prof Cappuccio and colleagues, which was supported by British government and US funding, is the first to link duration of sleep and mortality rates.

The study looked at sleep patterns of participants aged 35 to 55 at two points in their lives - 1985 to 1988 and 1992 to 1993 - and then tracked their mortality rates until 2004.

The results were adjusted to take account of other possible risk factors such as initial age, sex, smoking and alcohol consumption, body mass index, blood pressure and cholesterol.

The correlation with cardiovascular risk in those who slept less in the 1990s than in the 1980s was clear but, curiously, there was also a higher mortality rate in people who increased their sleep to more than nine hours.

In this case, however, there was no cardiovascular link.

Prof Cappuccio said it was possible that longer sleeping could be related to other health problems such as depression or cancer-related fatigue.

'In terms of prevention, our findings indicate that consistently sleeping around seven hours per night is optimal for health,' he said.

Reuters

6 in 10 S'poreans bored with their sex lives: Survey

26 Sep 2007, ST

Findings of the latest Durex Sexual Wellbeing survey put couples here behind their counterparts in China, Malaysia and Thailand

MORE than half of Singaporeans yawn between the sheets - not because they are sleepy but because they are bored with their bedroom romps.

This is the finding of the latest Durex Sexual Wellbeing survey, which indicated that only 42 per cent of 1,000 Singaporean respondents - either single or married and aged between 20 and 65 - consider their sex lives exciting.

This puts them behind their counterparts in China, Malaysia and Thailand where, respectively, 64 per cent, 62 per cent and 43 per cent of the respondents report satisfactory sex lives.

The annual survey was conducted in August and September last year in 26 countries from France to Japan.

More than 26,000 people were questioned on health, general well-being, education, beliefs, sex and relationships and social circumstances.

Durex, owned by healthcare company SSL International, is the world's leading condom maker, accounting for 26 per cent of the global US$416 million (S$624 million) market.

The results, released yesterday, did reveal one area in which Singaporeans scored highest in the world.

Almost nine out of 10 Singaporeans, compared to eight out of 10 globally, have masturbated at some time. Four in 10 do it once a week.

Two-thirds of Singaporeans have sex at least once a week, but 63 per cent of those think that is not often enough.

But less-than-thrilled Singaporeans are not taking things lying down.

Asked to list things that would improve their sex lives, they mentioned more romance and better communication with partners.

For the record, the folks in Greece are the most eager to jump into bed - 87 per cent of them have sex at least once weekly.

Nigerians are happiest with their sex lives, with 78 per cent of them reporting that it is exciting.

The Japanese are the most miserable with just 10 per cent reporting the same.

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Durex findings

Sexually active Singaporeans aged 20 to 65, either single or married, who:

# Feel their sex lives lack excitement: 58 per cent

# Have sex at least once a week: 67 per cent

# Would like to have sex more than once a week: 63 per cent

# Think oral sex boosts libido: 60 per cent

# Masturbate once a week: 39 per cent

# Wish for more romance in their sex lives: 54 per cent

# Wish for better communication with their partners: 50 per cent

# Use vibrators: 16 per cent

# The average Singaporean male has had eight partners compared to the global average of 13. Austrian men are the most amorous with 29 partners.

# The average Singaporean female has had three partners compared to the global average of seven. New Zealand women take the cake with 20.

Twists and twirls of an individual mind

15 Sep 2007, ST

By David Brooks

A NICE phenomenon of the past few years is the diminishing influence of IQ. For a time, IQ was the most reliable method we had to capture mental aptitude.

People had the impression that we are all born with these clever little information-processing engines in our heads, and that smart people have a lot more horsepower than dumb people.

And in fact, there is something to that. There is such a thing as general intelligence; people who are good at one mental skill tend to be good at others. This intelligence is partly hereditary.

An analysis by Mr Bernie Devlin of the University of Pittsburgh finds that genes account for about 48 per cent of the differences in IQ scores. And there is evidence that people with bigger brains tend to have higher intelligence.

But there has always been something opaque about IQ. There is no consensus about what intelligence is. Some people think it is the ability to adapt to an environment, others that capacity to think abstractly, and so on.

Then there are weird patterns. For example, over the past century, average IQ scores have risen at a rate of about three to six points per decade. This phenomenon, known as the Flynn Effect, has been measured in many countries and across all age groups. Nobody seems to understand why this happens, or why it seems to be petering out in some places, like Scandinavia.

IQ can be powerfully affected by the environment. As Mr Eric Turkheimer of the University of Virginia and others have shown, growing up in poverty can affect your intelligence for the worse.

Growing up in an emotionally strangled household also affects IQ. One of the classic findings of this was made by H.M. Skeels in the 1930s. He studied mentally-retarded orphans who were put in foster homes. After four years, their IQs diverged by an amazing 50 points from orphans who were not moved.

And the remarkable thing is, the mothers who adopted the orphans were also mentally retarded and living in different institutions. It was not tutoring that produced the IQ spike; it was love.

Then, finally, there are the various theories of multiple intelligence. We do not just have one thing called intelligence. We have a lot of distinct mental capacities. These theories thrive, despite resistance from the statisticians, because they explain everyday experience. I am decent at processing words, but when it comes to calculating the caroms on a pool table, I have the aptitude of a sea slug.

IQ, in other words, is a black box. It measures something, but it is not clear what it is, or whether it is good at predicting how people will do in life. Over the past few years, scientists have opened the black box to investigate the brain itself, not a statistical artefact.

There are now books on mental capacities where IQ and intelligence barely crop up. They are concerned instead with, say, the parallel processes that compete for attention in the brain, and how they integrate. The authors are finding that neural connections are shaped by emotion.

The University of Southern California had a patient rendered emotionless by damage to his frontal lobes. When asked what day he could come back for an appointment, he stood there for nearly half an hour describing the pros and cons of different dates, but was incapable of making a decision. This is not the Spock-like brain engine suggested by the IQ.

Today, the research that dominates public conversation is not about raw brain power but about the strengths and consequences of specific processes.

The cultural consequence is that judging intelligence is less like measuring horsepower in an engine and more like watching ballet. Speed and strength are part of intelligence, and these things can be measured numerically, but the essence of the activity is found in the rhythm and grace and personality - traits that are the products of an idiosyncratic blend of emotions, experiences, motivations and inheritances.

Recent brain research, rather than reducing everything to electrical impulses and quantifiable pulses, actually enhances our appreciation of human complexity and richness.

While psychometrics offered the false allure of objective fact, the new science brings us back into contact with literature, history, the humanities and, ultimately, to the uniqueness of the individual.

NEW YORK TIMES

Don't worry, be happy

25 Aug 2007, ST

New studies on happiness are focusing on more objective questions like freedom from fear and having choices

AMSTERDAM - The tiny Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan long ago dispensed with the notion of Gross National Product as a gauge of well-being. The king decreed that his people would aspire to Gross National Happiness instead.

That kernel of Buddhist wisdom is increasingly finding an echo in international policy and development models, which seek to establish scientific methods for finding out what makes us happy and why.

New research institutes are being created at venerable universities like Oxford and Cambridge to establish methods of judging individual and national well-being. Governments are putting ever greater emphasis on promoting mental well-being - not just treating mental illness.

'In much the same way that research of consumer unions helps you to make the best buy, happiness research can help you make the best choices,' said Dr Ruut Veenhoven, who created the World Database of Happiness in 1999.

When he started studying happiness in the 1960s, he used data from social researchers who simply asked people how satisfied they were with their lives, on a scale of zero to 10. But as the discipline has matured and gained popularity in the past decade, self-reporting has been found lacking.

By their own estimate, 'drug addicts would measure happy all the time', said Dr Sabina Alkire of the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Institute, which began work on May 30.

New studies add more objective questions into a mix of feel-good factors: education, nutrition, freedom from fear and violence, gender equality and perhaps most importantly, having choices.

'People's ability to be an agent, to act on behalf of what matters to them, is fundamental,' said Dr Alkire.

But if people say money can't buy happiness, they're only partially right.

Dr Veenhoven's database, which lists 95 countries, is headed by Denmark with a rating of 8.2, followed by Switzerland, Austria, Iceland and Finland, all countries with high per capita income. At the other end of the scale are much poorer countries: Tanzania rated 3.2, behind Zimbabwe, Moldova, Ukraine and Armenia.

The United States just makes it into the top 15 with a 7.4 index rating. While choice is abundant in America, nutrition and violence issues helped drag its rating down.

Wealth counts, but most studies of individuals show that income disparities count more. Surprisingly, however, citizens are no happier in welfare states, which strive to mitigate the distortions of capitalism than in purer free-market economies.

'In the beginning, I didn't believe my eyes,' said Dr Veenhoven of his data.

'Icelanders are just as happy as Swedes, yet their country spends half what Sweden does (per capita) on social welfare.'

In emphasising personal freedom as a root of happiness, Dr Alkire cited her study of women in the southern Indian state of Kerala, which showed that poor women who make their own choices score highly compared with women with strict fathers or husbands.

Adrian G. White, of the University of Leicester, included twice as many countries as Dr Veenhoven in his Global Projection of Subjective Well-being, which also measures the correlation of happiness and wealth. He, too, led his list with Denmark, Switzerland and Austria.

Bhutan, where less than half the people can read or write and 90 per cent are subsistence farmers, ranks No. 8 in his list of happy nations. Its notion of GNH is based on equitable development, environmental conservation, cultural heritage and good governance.

US researchers have found other underlying factors: Married people are more content than singles, but having children does not raise happiness levels; education and IQ seem to have little impact; attractive people are only slightly happier than the unattractive; the elderly - over 65 - are more satisfied with their lives than the young; friendships are crucial.

But the research also shows that many people are simply disposed to being either happy or disgruntled, and as much as 50 per cent of the happiness factor is genetic. Like body weight, moods can swing only so much from their natural 'set point'. So can you do anything about it? Some educators say you can.

People 'can be taught emotional resilience, self control, the habits of optimism, handling negative thoughts and much else', Anthony Seldon, Tony Blair's biographer and the headmaster of Wellington College in Britain, wrote recently in the Financial Times.

Seldon is developing happiness courses, working with the Institute of Well-being at Cambridge which was founded last November.

One recent book seeking to cash in on the well-being craze bears the English title Dutch Women Don't Get Depressed, though it's written in Dutch.

Dr Veenhoven says the title is off base: Statistically, women get depressed more often than men, and Dutch women aren't happier than others in the wealthy West.

He says that with the right combination of individual choices and government policy, nations can raise their happiness quotient by as much as 5 per cent.

In an influential 2004 academic paper, Martin Seligman, the University of Pennsylvania psychologist credited with launching the positive psychology movement in 1998, and Ed Diener of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign encouraged policymakers to consider more than economic development in their planning.

'Although economic output has risen steeply over the past decades, there has been no rise in life satisfaction during this period, and there has been a substantial increase in depression and distrust,' they wrote.

British opposition leader David Cameron recently established a Quality of Life Policy Group to examine ways governments can legislate to boost national contentment levels. 'It's time we admitted that there's more to life than money, and it's time we focused not just on GDP, but on GWB - general well-being,' he said in a speech last year.

Even experts acknowledge the difficulty of assigning numerical scales to feelings, and they are still grappling with how best to refine definitions.

At Cambridge's Institute of Well-being, another group has expanded the standard happiness questionnaire to 50 items, and is incorporating it into a European Social Survey of 50,000 people.

It aims to weigh not only personal feelings ('I'm always optimistic about my future'), but how people function ('I feel I am free to decide for myself how to live my life') and their relationships with others ('To what extent do you feel that people in your local area help one another?').

'Happiness is more complicated than we originally thought,' said Dr Alkire.

AP

Happiness is...

25 Aug 2007, ST

RESEARCHERS have found some underlying factors for happiness.

# Married people are more content than singles, but having children does not raise happiness level.

# Education and IQ seem to have little impact on happiness.

# Attractive people are only slightly happier than the unattractive.

# The elderly - over 65 - are more satisfied with their lives than the young.

# Friendships are crucial if you want to be happy.

# As much as 50 per cent of the happiness factor is genetic. Like body weight, moods can swing only so much from their natural 'set point'. But educators say people can be taught the habits of optimism and how to handle negative thoughts.

AP

Are men lying about number of sex partners?

15 Aug 2007, New Paper

Sex survey figures illogical:

IF you believe surveys done by sex researchers, men have more sex partners than women.

In fact, one recent British survey reported that men had 12.7 female sex partners in their lifetimes and women had 6.5.

But mathematicians are now challenging those figures, saying that it is mathematically impossible, reported the New York Times.

Prof David Gale, an emeritus professor of mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley, illustrated how the findings are illogical with an example of a school dance.

'We suppose that on the day after the prom, each girl is asked to give the number of boys she danced with,' he said.

'These numbers are then added up giving a number G. The same information is then obtained from the boys, giving a number B.'

Logically, both G and B will be equal to C - the number of couples who danced together.

Sex researchers agree with him, saying that men and women in the population must have roughly equal numbers of partners.

One explanation as to why the survey data is off is that men are going outside the population to find partners. For example, they look for prostitutes, who are not part of the survey, or have sex outside of the country.

Another, of course, is that men exaggerate the number of partners they have while women underestimate.

Dr Gale added that he is not nitpicking when he raises the question of logical impossibility.

He explained that when such data is published without any caveats, they just 'reinforce the stereotypes of promiscuous males and chaste females.'