Sleep Science

If you’ve been finding yourself inexplicably waking up in the middle of the night and unable to easily fall back to sleep — and especially if this is happening in the second half of the night — then you might want to check and see if your night time drinking habits might be the cause. Though many people think that having a glass of wine or a nightcap before bed is a good way to send themselves off to sleep, it turns out that doing so may actually be what is responsible for your late night awakenings or that sense of not being well-rested that you’re experiencing in the morning. Continue reading →

It is well known that those who are required to work the late shift, as well as those who have to cross time zones, often face difficulties with sleep. The shift in light exposure wreaks havoc with their internal body clock and circadian rhythm, making sleep a fleeting memory. But now a Florida inventor has created a special LED bio-bulb that uses what science knows about the way that the eye receives wavelengths of light. It eliminates a small segment of blue wavelength of light, offering enough illumination to allow people to see without throwing off their body’s production of melatonin. Continue reading →

Though there is a substantial body of evidence supporting the idea that getting adequate sleep will boost the body’s ability to heal, and particularly to fight cancer, a new study published in the journal Nature Communications has introduced a variable that makes sleep into less of a hero and more of a villain in the fight against cancer. According to research conducted at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, cancer may grow more rapidly while we are sleeping then while we are awake. Continue reading →

There has been ample research and medical studies pointing to the importance of getting between seven and nine hours of sleep, but there are some people who are always looking for another way. Disregarding the extensive documentation and reports, the Polyphasic Society is a group dedicated to sleeping less and doing more by virtue of optimizing short bursts of sleep. To that end, they have been advancing the idea of Uberman Sleep, a sleep schedule that is made up of twenty minute naps that are spaced out equally throughout the day. The goal of those who are interested in perfect Uberman sleep is to train the body to take six twenty minute naps per day, totaling just 120 minutes of sleep and breaking up the remaining 22 hours into periods of four hours of wakefulness, or as an alternative, an eight nap schedule that totals two hours and forty minutes of sleep with three hours of wakefulness in between. The group acknowledges that there are no studies that have been done into the long term health effects of this program, and also stress the fact that shifting the body into an Uberman schedule is something that requires assistance from others. Here is how the group suggests that those interested in pursuing this life style acclimate themselves. Continue reading →

It’s a frightening scientific fact that people who are truly sleep deprived are largely unaware of their precarious condition. It is this lack of ability to assess the degree to which their alertness is compromised that has led to the increase in serious accidents attributed to drowsy driving. But somewhere under the level of exhaustion seen in these tragic incidents is where the majority of us fall – in need of more sleep and aware of it, but not sure how to go about getting it. Sleep experts have indicated that there are three basic tenets of sleep, and that making changes to any or all of the three will make a dramatic difference in the way that you perform and feel. These three areas are: Continue reading →

With all of the conversation revolving around sleep, you’d think that it was a new discovery rather than something we have been doing naturally, and which we share with every other living creature. The truth is that though man has slept for as long as we can remember, the topic has only become a scientific interest in the last few decades. Prior to that, sleep was thought of as some kind of magical state of being in which the body simply shut down and then reawakened. Continue reading →