Exhausted Audiences

"For years, sleep researchers have been preaching the dangers of lost sleep: People who are fatigued can't pay attention to routine tasks, have trouble learning and are prone to a laundry list of health problems, from depression to high blood pressure," says Kathleen Facklemann in USA Today

"New research suggests an added risk to losing sleep day after day: Humans and animals that have chronic sleep deprivation might reach a point at which the very ability to catch up on lost sleep is damaged, according to Fred Turek, a sleep researcher at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois."

"His research on sleep patterns in rats appeared this summer in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. That, together with findings from a human study, suggests people who lose sleep night after night might not recover the alertness they need to perform well during the day. So far the studies don't tell researchers whether the damage is permanent. But they do suggest that people who go to work fatigued day after day might perform consistently at a subpar level."

The upshot for speakers and meeting planners: more than half of what your audiences require from a presentation is high energy.

Exercise While You Speak

"Scientists have found intriguing evidence that one major reason so many people are overweight these days may be as close as the seat of their pants. Literally," reports Lee Dye for ABC News. "According to the researchers, most of us sit too much."

"In most cases, exercise alone, according to a team of scientists at the University of Missouri, isn't enough to take off those added pounds. The problem, they say, is that all the stuff we've heard the last few years about weight control left one key factor out of the equation. When we sit, the researchers found, the enzymes that are responsible for burning fat just shut down."


Jeff's take: I knew it! I've always felt energetic standing in front of audience. I even I switched to a stand up desk in January 2006. Anthropologically speaking how could it be any other way?