Sleep Deprivation: The Great American Myth
`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.
“They think that scaring people about sleep increases their income,” Kripke told LiveScience.
Thanks to the marketing of less addictive drugs directly to consumers, sleeping pills have become a hot commodity, especially in the past five years.’
