Interesting Article on Sleep

It seems that people who get 6-7 hours of sleep have a lower death rate then those sleeping 8 hours or more. Even though this article is basically a screed against sleeping pills but I found this pretty interesting.

Sleep problems could be increasing, Kripke says, but there is no evidence for this. If they are increasing, it could be a result of less exposure to daylight (due to cable TV, the Internet, indoor gyms) and increasing obesity, which causes apnea. But he still recommends against taking sleeping pills in nearly all cases and in favor of improved sleep habits.

This point is worthy of serious study. I wonder if the lack of daylight we get actually hurts our ability to sleep. This isn't a lack of sunlight or people in Nordic countries would be walking zombies. Since people are cooped up inside so much nowadays maybe it is affecting our sleep patterns. I think that apnea thing is a big deal too.