Dream Team
Drs. Hunter and Traci Downs head up the award-winning local company Archinoetics and have designed the Readiband, and inexpensive sleep monitor for those suffering from chronic fatigue and other sleep-related problems
By Chad Pata
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yourself of a good night’s rest is tantamount to the choice to imbibe.
“Why is drinking bad? Because they are not in good shape to do their job, and they deliberately did something that would compromise their ability to do their job,” says Caldwell. “It is the same thing with sleep deprivation.”
This brings to mind all sorts of positions in society where one would be concerned with the mental fatigue of someone providing you a service. From airline pilots to heart surgeons, you would never want them working for you after a few cocktails. Why have them do it on just a couple hours of sleep? To the people at Fatigue Science, it amounts to the same thing. And by creating a device that is accessible to the public at large, they can help stem the tide of the fatigue that currently is tolerated as acceptable by society as a whole.
In Caldwell’s work he has found that most highranking executives forgo a good night’s sleep in order to work more. This leads to dangerous situations where one’s normal logic can be severely impaired.
“It is amazing how many high-powered executives we do reports on and we see they are sleep-deprived, and they are not surprised,” says Caldwell, citing reports of being unable to stay awake in meetings and passing out on the couch as soon as they return home. “I’m thinking, how are they making multimillion-dollar decisions for their company while they are basically drunk?”
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Public safety and fiscal responsibility aren’t the only concerns surrounding sleep deprivation. Last season a professional hockey team, the Vancouver Canucks, contacted Fatigue Science to voice concerns over how the rigorous NHL travel schedule may be affecting their team’s performance. We have all heard the stories about the hotels and the late nights, but did this actually factor in to how the team was performing on the ice?
What Fatigue Science discovered is that a fatigued athlete actually reacts 2.5 times slower than a well-rested athlete, so they outfitted the team with Readibands, studied their flight patterns prior to games and made suggestions on how to get the team their best sleep. Then the team changed its habits and travel arrangements according to Fatigue Science’s recommendation.
The next thing the Canucks knew they had emerged out of nowhere to come within a game of winning the Stanley Cup, thanks to a good night’s sleep (and the glove of all-world goalie Roberto Luongo).
As it turns out, sleep and the quality of it that we get affects so many aspects of our lives, and if things turn out how the Downses hope, the Readiband will revolutionize sleep studies here in America, helping untold numbers understand why they have spent so many years counting ceiling tiles and wooly creatures and allow them to go get the help they need.
Or at the very least, we will all finally have the same information as the man in the big, red suit.
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