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Sleep Loss and Its Effects Mental fatigue can be as threatening as a heart attack. Recent evidence indicates that sleepiness is a leading cause of traffic and industrial accidents. Human error causes between 60% and 90% of all workplace accidents, depending on the type of job, observes biological psychologist David Dinges of the University of Pennsylvania. And inadequate sleep is a major factor in human error , other research suggests that sleep loss contributes to everything from drug abuse to poor grades in school. A typical adult needs about eight hours of shut-eye a night to function effectively. By that standard, million of Americans are for a long time sleep deprived, trying to get by on six hours or even less. In many household cheating on sleep has become an unconscious and harmful habit. In its mid form, its watching Ted Koppel and going to bed late and then getting up early to get to the gym, says Cornells Pollak. In extreme cases people stay up most of the night, seeing how little sleep will keep them going. They try to compensate by sleeping late on weekends, but that makes up for only part of the shortfall. Over the months and years, some researchers believe, the imbalance builds up and the effects accumulate. Most Americans no longer know what it feels like to the fully alert, contends Dr. William Dement, director of Stanford Universitys Sleep Center. They go through the day in a sort of twilight zone; the eyes may be wade open, but the brain is partly shut down. | 
