A Stanford University professor who is considered one of the world's leading authorities on sleep, Dement said he wants to alert the world about the power of sleep. He feels frustrated that so many people sacrifice sleep to meet the demands of endless days, that unnoticed sleep disorders shorten lives with heart attacks and strokes, that people fall asleep while driving and cause fatal crashes. A healthy person needs about seven to eight hours of sleep to feel wide awake and energetic for the entire day, Dement says. If you brag that you can get by on just a few hours a night or if you feel you need nine to 10 hours of slumber every night to feel good, you may need a sleep checkup. In his book, Dement reports that every night more than 50 million Americans stop breathing and that apnea annually causes an estimated 38,000 fatal heart attacks and strokes in the United States.
Apnea also causes extreme fatigue.
When you sleep right, you feel great. Dement uses a fellow professor as an example. Each August, the professor lives in his cabin in the mountains. Because the cabin has no electrical power, the professor marks his day by the rising and setting sun. At the beginning of his vacation, he sleeps 10 to 11 hours a night, sometimes taking a nap during the day.