Many folks find they don’t sleep well their first night in a new bed, or anywhere that’s new. Sleep is more fitful and difficult, rest less lasting. In the sleep lab this is known as the “first night effect.” The expectation is strong that sleep the first time in a new, or even a different environment, […]
Are Americans Getting Enough Sleep?
Seven In 24 How much sleep is enough for American adults? After a long and difficult debate, the American Sleep Disorders Association finally agreed on a number last year. Their answer – seven hours or more in 24, including naps, will make the cut. So how do Americans stack up? Not too well. In a report […]
Returning to Sleep
People complain to me ceaselessly – they can’t get back to sleep. Yet returning to sleep engages the same tools that help you fall asleep. If sleep is as necessary to life as food, why is returning to sleep so difficult? It seems many of us have forgotten how to rest. To fall asleep most […]
Why Don’t People Sleep?
“Can’t I just treat my insomnia with a book?” My interlocutor was sure there was a book out there (including one of my mine) that “could get me to sleep just fine.” Certainly many could do with a brief bout of Sleep School – understanding how sleep affects their health, performance, pleasure, pain, income and mortality […]
Saving Sleep Medicine
Sleep medicine appears in decline. Sleep centers and laboratories are closing at record rates. Yet how can sleep medicine be dying when the population suffers so much from insomnia and sleep apnea, while the public increasingly recognizes sleep as critical to happiness, performance, and preventing most major medical illnesses? The answer: insurance reimbursement. After Colin Sullivan […]