Tips and Tricks

Try these tips for keeping the sandman at bay when you just have to be awake.

Staying up late can be tough on the body, but sometimes it’s unavoidable. Maybe you’re working late, or you might need to stay up for a one-time event like a family trip or a kid’s sleepover or even adjust your sleep schedule to accommodate a new night shift assignment. Either way, there are tricks you can use to successfully become a night owl.

Keep in mind ...

A good night’s sleep can seem impossible in our fast-paced lives. Try these tricks to reclaim your slumber.

With increasingly-troublesome side effects of skimping on sleep coming to light more and more often, it seems we’re starting to catch on to how important solid, regular rest is for our health.

But we’re not necessarily doing anything with this new knowledge. According to a recent survey, 25 percent of people get six hours of sleep a night, 22 percent get seven hours and ...

People with delayed sleep phase syndrome have trouble getting up in the morning and going to bed at the right time. The body’s internal clock can be reset, however, with the help of a few sleep strategies.

Who doesn’t know at least one night owl who stays up until 1 or 2 a.m. every night, only to struggle to get out of bed the next morning to make it to school or work on time? To those on the outside, these ...

If a complex issue is weighing you down, nabbing some solid Zzzs might help you solve it, new research confirms.

Some adages about sleep and your emotional health — think “don’t go to bed angry” — don’t necessarily ring true, experts say.

But the famous saying “sleep on it” recently got a boost from researchers at Lancaster University in the United Kingdom. They tested whether sleep or time spent awake helped people solve problems and found that sleeping works as a problem ...

Alcohol may help you get to sleep faster and sleep better at first, but it disrupts your sleep later in the night, according to British researchers who reviewed all known scientific studies on alcohol’s impact on sleep.

The authors said they hope their findings will help people understand that drinking alcohol only gives the impression of improving sleep, and that it should not be used as a sleep aid.

The review found that alcohol consumption shortens the time it takes to get ...

Exercise and sexual activity are just two ways to help you catch some more z’s.

Instead of bragging about how little sleep we need, what if we rewarded star sleepers for their healthy habits?

First, we’d have to identify those key qualities that make someone good at sleep. A recent survey from Consumer Reports may offer some clues.

The publication asked more than 26,000 subscribers about their sleep habits. Nearly 60 percent reported feeling tired or having trouble falling or staying asleep at ...

Taking melatonin resulted in small increases in total sleep time, sleep onset latency, and sleep efficiency in adults with insomnia over age 55.

Over-the-counter melatonin appears to provide a measure of sleep for older individuals who have insomnia, a meta-analysis showed.

Among individuals 55 and older, treatment with melatonin significantly improved sleep onset (by 6.36 minutes) and total sleep time (by 18.29 minutes), according to Jennifer Brault, MD, a resident in psychiatry at the University of Ottawa.

Sleep efficiency was improved by 3.54 ...

Losing an hour of sleep this weekend may be more difficult for some than others. Find out why — and what you can do to make the transition to daylight saving time a little easier.

If you’re like some of us here at Everyday Health, you don’t sleep nearly as much as you should. We get it — with work, school, family, friends, and other obligations, who has time for eight hours of shut-eye every night? That’s what weekends are for, ...

Thinking about bringing naptime back? Read up on the where, when, and how to getting the most out of your midday snooze without feeling groggy.

Ah, naps. Some swear by them, others think they’re overrated. Whichever way you stand, the health benefits of napping are real. Just like toddlers get cranky without a nap, sleep-deprived grown-ups can get irritable, too.

Despite the upsides touted by famous nap-takers (Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, John F. Kennedy, just to name a few) and other devoted ...

When the clocks go back an hour this weekend, some people may have trouble adjusting to the time change.

Many welcome the switch from daylight savings time to standard time because it means an extra hour of sleep on Sunday, but some will find it difficult to adapt, according to Girardin Jean-Louis, a sleep specialist and professor of medicine at the State University of New York Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn.

Exposure to light at an earlier time in the morning may ...