Going mattress shopping can be an intimidating experience. Part of that may be due to the way that you’ve been treated in mattress stores before – mattress sales people have earned an unfortunate reputation for being overly enthusiastic and aggressive, and have often been compared to used car salesmen. There are a number of reasons that people find mattress shopping so confusing. Right off the bat there is the problem with product names that sound so similar to one another that it becomes nearly impossible to make a distinction from brand to brand. Another problem is that there is so much technical information about the materials that the mattresses are made of and the number of coils that are available per inch that you feel like you need a PhD to understand what you’re looking at. Finally, the prices are so wide-ranging and the decorations on the beds themselves are so distracting that it seems impossible to tell a good bed from a bad one or a good buy from a ripoff.  Continue reading →

There are so many fitness trackers on the market today that provide consumers with data on their sleep activity, but not many of them go the extra step of providing an interpretation of the data or a direction in which to go in order to improve upon the sleep that you’re getting. Though it may be interesting to see how many minutes you slept without turning over or what the temperature was in your bedroom while you slept, what is most important is to know what to do with the information that has been gathered. Sleep experts say that in the cases of almost all of the trackers and apps that are out there, the information that’s provided is generic at best, but there are steps you can take and outside information about yourself that you can combine with the data in order to give yourself a good sense of your sleep health and what you need to do to improve it. Continue reading →

A newly-released study out of the Sleep and Human Health Institute and Maimonides Sleep Arts & Sciences, Ltd has determined that among a group of 1,210 patients suffering from chronic insomnia, ninety percent were discovered to be suffering from undiagnosed sleep apnea.  It is likely that despite the fact that the patients had been attempting to cure themselves through both over-the-counter and prescription sleep aids for many years, the source of their problem had been the sleep disorder all along. Continue reading →

If you struggle with relaxing and falling asleep at night, you are certainly not alone. Insomnia and sleep deprivation are reaching epidemic proportions in the United States and around the world. There are a number of sleep devices and medications that can be used to assist you in getting a good night’s sleep, but if you are one of those who are searching for a natural method then you might want to try one or more of these deep breathing techniques. Continue reading →

It seems as though every day we are reading another story about a high-powered executive man or woman who sings their own praises and powers regarding how little sleep they need or get. The idea of the successful entrepreneur grabbing a couple of hours of sleep under their desk or the tales of Margaret Thatcher and Thomas Edison requiring fewer than four hours of rest per night have traditionally been held up as examples of how hard work equates to success.

Science has been telling us that this type of sleep deprivation is incredibly unhealthy, and the message has been getting across. More and more companies are trying to send the message that sleep is as critical as nutrition and exercise, and corporations are starting to install nap rooms and encourage employees to take breaks and get outside into the fresh air in order to keep them healthy and focused.  Continue reading →