According to the book Cause of Death, 3 people died from insomnia in 2001. Having recently experienced a bout of insomnia myself, which resulted in my canceling an event I was looking forward to, I did a little more research on this silent killer. According to the National Institute of Health (NIH), there are two types of insomnia. But there's an even scarier type called Fatal Familial Insomnia which is caused by a prion similar to that which is responsible for mad cow disease. In the case of insomnia, however, as with many other afflictions, the cure is often worse than the disease. Many more people die accidentally from drug overdoses trying to "cure" their insomnia (and other disorders) to the point that accidental drug overdoses are now the second cause of unintentional injury, second only to motor-vehicle crashes. There's an interesting podcast from the Center for Disease Control (CDC) here on that. So, having thrown away my sleeping pills, I may need to give up eating beef as well!
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Sunday, June 21, 2009
Did you know insomnia can kill you?
According to the book Cause of Death, 3 people died from insomnia in 2001. Having recently experienced a bout of insomnia myself, which resulted in my canceling an event I was looking forward to, I did a little more research on this silent killer. According to the National Institute of Health (NIH), there are two types of insomnia. But there's an even scarier type called Fatal Familial Insomnia which is caused by a prion similar to that which is responsible for mad cow disease. In the case of insomnia, however, as with many other afflictions, the cure is often worse than the disease. Many more people die accidentally from drug overdoses trying to "cure" their insomnia (and other disorders) to the point that accidental drug overdoses are now the second cause of unintentional injury, second only to motor-vehicle crashes. There's an interesting podcast from the Center for Disease Control (CDC) here on that. So, having thrown away my sleeping pills, I may need to give up eating beef as well!
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Tuesday, June 9, 2009
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