Seriously Amazing Reasons to Snag a Good Night’s Sleep
Chances are, someone in your life — a parent, a partner, a doctor — has told you to “get some sleep.” From cutting your heart attack risk to improving your complexion to boosting your memory, here’s why you should heed their advice tonight.
You know you feel great after a good night’s sleep. But do you know just how important good sleep is for your health? It may even save your life, according ...
Continue Reading →Many drugs are available to treat insomnia, but their side effects can be risky. Find out about the dangers of sleeping pills.
On the surface, prescription sleep aids can seem like the perfect cure for insomnia: Take a pill, and a few minutes later you slip into a restful sleep. Though they do have legitimate uses, sleeping pills also come with significant risks and side effects, which many people don’t realize, says Marc Leavey, MD, a doctor of internal medicine at ...
Continue Reading →Nodding off during the day can be embarrassing. Discover why this happens and how to prevent it.
It happens all the time and it happens to everyone, at least now and then: falling asleep in inappropriate places or at inopportune times. If you’re with friends, it can be funny. But sleeping in a meeting or in the middle of an important lecture can be mortifying.
The problem is more widespread than you might imagine. A 2009 survey conducted by state health departments ...
Continue Reading →Should you trust the tracker data? Could it clue you in to underlying health conditions? Here’s what experts say about sleep-tracking devices.
Technology allows us to track more specific measurements of our health than ever before. Wearables can monitor daily steps, blood pressure, and now sleep. But experts warn that what you can learn from your sleep stats, at least currently, has its limits.
“The reality is that we live in an era in which we are obsessed with the notion ...
Continue Reading →We’re only getting 6.8 hours of sleep a night. Here’s why.
Feeling sleepy? You’re not alone. Americans get less and less sleep every year, a recent Gallup poll found. Today, we average just 6.8 hours a night, less than the doctor-recommended 7-9, and down by over an hour from 1942, when Americans got closer to 8 hours per night.
Reasons why we’re not getting enough sleep abound, but one of the biggest changes behind the sleep decline ...
Continue Reading →You would never boast about having donuts for breakfast or skipping the gym. So why is it OK to brag about not getting enough sleep?
What do Bill Clinton, Martha Stewart and Thomas Edison all have in common? They accomplished a lot on very little sleep. Edison reportedly only slept three to four hours a night, while Stewart sneaks in four before going back to running her home decor empire. Clinton’s restricted sleep started way before his presidential term demanded it ...
Continue Reading →Did you know that cherries can help you drift off into dreamland? Here, five tips to help you catch more zzzs this evening.
We’ve all been there. You snuggle down under the covers and wait for sleep — and wait and wait and wait. Up to 70 million American adults struggle with sleep disorders, which can reduce your productivity and raise your risk of illness. If counting sheep just isn’t cutting it, use our five simple steps to get more rest.
Have you ever wondered what an especially weird dream meant? The meaning of dreams is debatable, but the science behind dreams is more clearly defined.
William Shakespeare’s Prospero knew that “we are such stuff as dreams are made on,” but scientists are still figuring out the meaning of dreams themselves. People have inferred the meaning of dreams since ancient times. In more recent years, Sigmund Freud believed that a dream provided a window to our unconscious thoughts, while Alfred Adler argued ...
Continue Reading →Worries over the global COVID-19 pandemic were wrecking my sleep. These bedtime stories really helped.
For most of my life, falling asleep hasn’t been much of an issue for me. For a while, it wasn’t necessarily for the right reasons — I was so exhausted from work stress and not getting enough sleep in general, I would drift to sleep as soon as my head hit the pillow. But eventually, I made the effort to establish a bedtime routine and stick ...
Continue Reading →Some parents have resorted to turning off the Wi-Fi to help their kids get better rest.
It’s no secret that teenagers like to stay up late and then rush around like mad in the morning to get ready for school. Then, they probably spend a chunk of the weekend catching up on sleep. But what drives these teen sleep habits?
One common explanation is that in our hunter-gatherer days, teenagers took over the night-owl watch period of keeping the group safe, ...
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