Hello all,

While staying up too late, I've been reading:

Lights Out: Sleep, Sugar, And Survival
By T. S. Wiley, Bent Formby
Pocket Books 2000 ( 368 pages, $24.95 )
Hardcover, ISBN: 0-671-03867-2
MEDICAL/Research

The authors explore the metabolic effects of light exposure (day length), sleep
(or lack), and their consequences for our paleolithic ancestors and us.

Regards, Mike

Chapter 1 excerpt is here:

http://www.simonsays.com/excerpt.cfm?isbn=0671038672

Some quotes from the excerpt:

 "What if all those low-fat promises of a
 long, cancer-free, diabetes-free life in a
 beautiful, thin body, run by a strong, clear,
 non-hypertensive heart, were bogus from
 the start? What if carbohydrates, not fat,
 were the cause of obesity, diabetes, and
 cancer?"

 "If you sleep at night for the number of
 hours it would normally be dark outside,
 you will only crave sugar in the summer,
 when the hours of light are long. It is the
 "perennial adaptation," or the chronic,
 constant intent to hibernate, that causes
 overconsumption of carbohydrates and
 obesity and its attendant high blood
 pressure, high cholesterol, and inevitable
 heart failure."

 "To understand why carbohydrates are the
 instrument of death, we need just a little
 science. Only recently have science and
 medicine begun to acknowledge a
 condition called chronic hyperinsulinemia.
 That's the term for chronic high insulin
 made in your own body. This can only
 occur when you chronically consume
 carbohydrates. You could never
 chronically consume carbohydrates in
 nature. Trees and plants fruit only in one
 season and flower in the other."

 "Your appetite is but one symptom of this
 deathly dysfunction, just as obesity is
 correlative with heart disease but is not the
 cause. The real truth is that the urgent
 need to sleep is also the cause of Type II
 diabetes. All diseases that are not caused
 by contagion and injury are born of
 immune dysfunction by way of
 metabolism. Your immune system is
 governed by two substances: prolactin and
 melatonin, and both of them are
 controlled by light-and-dark cycles. It's
 these major biological controls that are
 deranged. Seasonal variation in daylight,
 and intensity of daylight, control budding,
 growth, and dormancy in plants and in
 animals; seasonal changes in ambient
 lighting control hibernation, migration,
 and breeding. To expose ourselves to the
 unremitting glare of artificial lighting for
 more hours than it is actually daylight is
 asking for trouble. Until seventy-five years
 ago, we spent up to fourteen hours a night,
 depending on the season, in the dark."

 "It was a ridiculously bad piece of luck in an
  otherwise pretty fair century that, at
  exactly the same time that sugar started to
  be used to process and preserve packaged
  "food," we had the opportunity to stay up
  all night and eat it."