See if this sounds familiar to you: You’re away from home, whether for business or pleasure, and you’re staying in a hotel room that’s beautifully decorated. The room’s appointments are lovely in every way, but it’s the bed that is clearly the centerpiece. It is inviting to look at, and once you settle in for the night you are astounded by the sense of comfort and luxury that envelops you once you crawl under the covers. This is true in almost every luxury level hotel room. Is it magic? Is the answer all about an incredibly expensive mattress? Or is there some kind of formula that can be replicated in your own home to provide the same kind of experience? Continue reading →

You know that feeling you get when you haven’t had enough sleep, and especially when you’ve gone more than a couple days in a row without enough sleep? Well, for every person who wishes they could get more sleep there are people who claim that it makes absolutely no difference. They say “I’ll sleep when I’m dead,” or even go so far as to hold those who focus on adequate sleep as being somehow weak, or lazy.

If you’re one who scoffs at the notion that sleep (or a lack of sleep) can make a significant difference in performance, whether mental or physical, you might want to take a quick glance at some of the information gathered here about the world’s most elite athletes. These are men and women who have made their fortune based on their physical abilities. In some cases they appear to be nearly superhuman in their talent and skill. Talking to them about the role that sleep plays in their daily schedule is both eye-opening and enlightening. Continue reading →

Not being able to sleep is its own special kind of Hell. Though if the problem only lasts for a day or two, we can usually muddle through it until exhaustion finally takes over and we get back into our normal routine. But when insomnia becomes a regular issue, people quickly become focused on taking care of the problem, and that generally means a visit to the doctor looking for a quick fix in the form of prescription sleeping pills.

The problem with these pills is that taking them can come with a boatload of side effects, and it isn’t even clear that they work that well. Some studies show that though they may help cut down on the amount of time that it takes for a patient to fall asleep, they actually only add about fifteen minutes worth of sleep per night – hardly worth the problems of becoming dependent upon them or being bleary-eyed and dopey the next morning. Continue reading →

Have you ever gone to work and found yourself lagging somewhere in the middle of the day? Do you know the feeling of wishing that you could just put your head down on your desk for fifteen minutes? As it turns out, not only is that a very common experience, but a lot of big name companies are starting to signal that that’s just fine with them because it makes their employees much more productive.

Where taking a nap at work was once something that nobody in their right mind could ever have suggested at work, today it’s something that companies are encouraging their workers to do. Why? Because studies have shown that a twenty-minute nap is the most powerful tool available to counter the high level of sleep deprivation that is prevalent in the United States and which has been blamed for $63 billion worth of lost productivity. Continue reading →

Remember when you were a kid and you’d watch cartoons featuring characters walking in their sleep, arms outstretched in front of them and eyes closed as they would raid the refrigerator or narrowly avert falling off of cliffs? They all seemed pretty funny. They also did a serious disservice to our general understanding of what sleepwalking, or somnambulism, is.  According to Dr. Rafael Pelayo, a pediatric neurologist and sleep specialist at the Stanford Sleep Disorders Clinic, the person who suffers from somnambulism is not actually asleep – instead they are in a dissociated arousal state. Dr. Pelayo says that it’s estimated that one out of ten people in the United States has sleepwalked at some point in their life, with most of the experiences coming during the pre-teen and teenaged years. Continue reading →