Mental Health and Well-Being: Sleep Hygiene

In recent years, neuroscientists have uncovered the countless ways our brain trips us up in day-to-day life, from its propensity toward irrational thought to how our intuitions deceive us. The latest research on sleep, however, points in the opposite direction. Where old wives tales have long advised to "sleep on a problem," today scientists are discovering the truth behind these folk sayings, and how the busy brain radically improves our minds through sleep and dreams. In The Secret World of Sleep , neuroscientist Penny Lewis explores the latest research into the nighttime brain to understand the real benefits of sleep. She shows how, while our body rests, the brain practices tasks it learned during the day, replays traumatic events to mollify them, and forges connections between distant concepts. By understanding the roles that the nocturnal brain plays in our waking life, we can improve the relationship between the two, and even boost creativity and become smarter. This is a fascinating exploration of one of the most surprising corners of neuroscience that shows how science may be able to harness the power of sleep to improve learning, health, and more.

Why do we need sleep? How much sleep is enough? What is sleep? What happens when we don't get enough? We spend about a third of our lives asleep - it plays a crucial role in our health and wellbeing. References to sleep abound in literature and art, and sleep has been recognized as fundamental to the human condition for thousands of years. Over the past century, our knowledge of how sleep occurs, what it does, and what happens to our health if we do not have enough has developed hugely. The impact of poor sleep on our quality of life is also gaining recognition and the prevalence of sleep disorders in the population appears to be increasing as we live ever stressful lives.This Very Short Introduction addresses the biological and psychological aspects of sleep, providing a basic understanding of what sleep is and how it is measured, looking at sleep through the human lifespan and the causes and consequences of major sleep disorders. Russell G. Foster and Steven W. Lockley go on to consider the impact of modern society, examining the relationship between sleep and work hours, and the impact of our 24/7 society.

The way humans sleep across history has changed dramatically, most disastrously in our own modern era. For the last two centuries sleep, the industrialized West has reduced sleep to one narrow definition: hours of unbroken slumber, in a private chamber, alone or with at most one additional partner. And this artificial cultural definition is now spreading around the world. We've gained much from this sleeping revolution--privacy and security and independence--but along the way added a whole new host of problems: the explosion of sleep disorders, sleep anxieties, and life-style diseases connected to exhaustion and sleeplessness; the devastating rise in addiction to both sleeping pills and caffeine; the nightmarish nightly-battles faced by parents enforcing artificial 'bed times' for children. Our modern world may be founded on taming sleep, yet our collective exhaustion reveals the extraordinary costs we've all paid.

Say goodbye to lousy sleep with this six-week, step-by-step programme to help you kick insomnia to the curb forever. Bad sleep sucks. Sleep deficiency defies our biology and sabotages our days. Yet more than a third of us struggle to get to sleep or stay asleep at night. We can shake off the odd sleepless night, but when sleep difficulties persist, things start to unravel. Sleep debt takes its toll on our mood, energy, and productivity. It affects our behaviour around food and exercise as well as eroding our immunity, even our mental and physical health. As our best efforts to help ourselves fail, or perpetuate the problem, we can feel disillusioned, disempowered and frustratingly stuck. You're not alone, and there is a way through. This six-week, step-by-step guide will help you sleep easy.

Sleep is food for the brain—especially for teens. Based on the most current sleep science and evidence-based cognitive and behavioral interventions to improve sleep, The Insomnia Workbook for Teens helps teens change their sleep habits so that they can feel more alert and ready to face life's challenges.If you're like many other teens, you probably aren't getting enough sleep. And is it any wonder? Between early school start times, social media, electronic devices, extracurricular activities, and late-night homework—teens are at the highest risk of any age group for sleep deprivation. And in the long run, insomnia can lead to a host of health and mental health issues—including diabetes and depression. So, how can you cultivate a healthy sleep routine, so you can be your best?The Insomnia Workbook for Teens offers proven-effective tips and strategies to help you get to sleep and stay asleep. You'll learn about the different reasons you may experience insomnia, target your own “sleep disrupters” like caffeine and sugar, and discover skills for managing these disrupters so you can stop feeling drowsy and grumpy every day.It's hard being a teen in today's fast-paced world. And it's even harder to reach your goals when you're feeling tired and run-down. Based on up-to-the-minute science, this workbook will give you real solutions for overcoming insomnia and getting those much-needed zzzs.

This book brings together an unprecedented number and range of contributions from different disciplines relating to sleep in one comprehensive volume. The contributors explore the science of sleep - what it is, what makes it happen and why we do it - as well as the measurement of sleep, its importance for daytime performance and its sociological and cultural aspects. Sleep disorders, sleep quality and the importance of sleep for daytime performance are also explored, as are the ways in which sleep can be affected by medication and medical and psychiatric conditions. This groundbreaking and insightful book will be of great interest to students, academics and professionals in a wide range of disciplines, and anyone else who wishes to discover more about this fascinating topic.

Sleep is quite a popular activity, indeed most humans spend around a third of their lives asleep. However, cultural, political, or aesthetic thought tends to remain concerned with the interpretation and actions of those who are awake. How to Sleep argues instead that sleep is a complex vital phenomena with a dynamic aesthetic and biological consistency.Arguing through examples drawn from contemporary, modern and renaissance art; from literature; film and computational media, and bringing these into relation with the history and findings of sleep science, this book argues for a new interplay between biology and culture. Meditations on sex, exhaustion, drugs, hormones and scientific instruments all play their part in this wide-ranging exposition of sleep as an ecology of interacting processes.How to Sleep builds on the interlocking of theory, experience and experiment so that the text itself is a lively articulation of bodies, organs and the aesthetic systems that interact with them. This book won't enhance your sleeping skills, but will give you something surprising to think about whilst being ostensibly awake.

Sleep Health Journal of the National Sleep Foundation is a multidisciplinary journal that explores sleep's role in population health and elucidates the social science perspective on sleep and health. Aligned with the National Sleep Foundation's global authoritative, evidence-based voice for sleep health, the journal serves as the foremost publication for manuscripts that advance the sleep health of all members of society. The scope of the journal extends across diverse sleep-related fields, including anthropology, education, health services research, human development, international health, law, mental health, nursing, nutrition, psychology, public health, public policy, fatigue management, transportation, social work, and sociology. The journal welcomes original research articles, review articles, brief reports, special articles, letters to the editor, editorials, and commentaries.

Nature and Science of Sleep is an international, peer-reviewed, open access journal covering all aspects of sleep science and sleep medicine, including the neurophysiology and functions of sleep, the genetics of sleep, sleep and society, biological rhythms, dreaming, sleep disorders and therapy, and strategies to optimize healthy sleep.

SLEEP SCIENCE is the official journal of the Brazilian Sleep Association (ABS - Associação Brasileira de Sono) and Latin American Federation of Sleep Societies (FLASS - Federación Latinoamericana de Sociedades de Sueño). It is an international, interdisciplinary and open access journal dedicated to investigation of sleep, chronobiology, and related topics. The journal welcomes original studies, reviews, short communications, theoretical essays and case reports in both pre-clinical and clinical research.

The Journal of Sleep Research, owned by the European Sleep Research Society, is an international journal dedicated to basic and clinical sleep research. reflecting the progress in this rapidly expanding field, promoting the exchange of ideas between scientists at a global level.

SLEEP Advances is a Gold Open Access companion journal to SLEEP. It will publish original research articles, commentaries, and review papers in sleep and circadian science across the basic, translational, and clinical research spectrum.

Boring Books for Bedtime is a weekly, ad-free sleep podcast for the stressed, the anxious, the insomniacs—anyone who struggles with the brain chatter that keeps us up at night. In each episode, we calmly, quietly read something rather boring. Think Galileo, Aristotle, Emerson, and whoever wrote the 1897 Sears Catalog. If you’re on Team Sleepless, lie back, take a deep breath, and let us read you to rest.

Get Sleepy is a twice weekly story-telling podcast with the goal of helping you get a great night’s rest. In reviews, listeners have described the podcast as “Life changing”. Behind the podcast is a small creative team of writers, voice-over artists, and meditation experts. Together, with the guidance of leading sleep experts, our goal is to create the best podcast to help you fall asleep.

Welcome to Night Falls a podcast of bedtime stories designed to help you sleep, tonight. Every Sunday and Tuesday, you can settle into a relaxing bedtime story, spoken in soothing tones and mixed with soft sounds and sleep music. If you struggle with sleep, just let go and spend a night at the falls.

Drew Ackerman is the creator and host of Sleep With Me, the one-of-a-kind bedtime story podcast featured in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Buzzfeed, Mental Floss, and NOVA. Created in 2013, Sleep With Me combines the pain of insomnia with the relief of laughing and turns it into a unique storytelling podcast. Through Sleep With Me, Drew has dedicated himself to help those who feel alone in the deep dark night and just need someone to tell them a bedtime story.