Dreams can tell you a lot about how stressed you are, your desires and your fears. Some dreams are meaningless, formed from the random firing of neurons while we are asleep.  Dreams can also be a good indicator of how well you are sleeping. When your sleep quality deteriorates, for whatever reason, your dreams are one of the first things to change. You may have different kinds of dreams, more or fewer dreams, or even have no dreams at all.  Here’s what your dreams say about your sleep quality. If you want to learn more about dreams, their role and what they mean, we have a post on the science of dreams. Does Sleep Quality Affect Dreams? Dreams do not...

Revenge bedtime procrastination is something you probably do all the time but don’t realize it has a name or that it’s a major area of research. It refers to the habit of staying up late voluntarily and needlessly, even though you know it’s bad for you.  All those nights you stay up late gaming, binging on Netflix or browsing on your phone — that’s revenge bedtime procrastination and it’s bad.  Causes of Revenge Bedtime Procrastination    Revenge bedtime procrastination (what we’ll call RBP henceforth) is actually a fairly well studied psychological phenomena.  For many of us, our days are super busy and almost completely taken up by work, errands and family. We barely have time for ourselves. If you are lucky,...

I don’t know if you remember, but there was a time when we were all crazy about wearables. Fitbit was in its heyday and it made fitness tracking super popular. It was also around when sleep tracking started picking up.  These days, the hype has died down a bit but sleep tracking is still popular especially for people who want to boost their productivity or are worried they are not getting good quality sleep. More devices than ever, from smartwatches to smartphones and even smart mattress pads, can track your sleep.  But are sleep trackers really helpful? Can you improve your sleep quality by monitoring your total sleep time, sleep phases, sleep latency, sleep efficiency and other metrics? Or are...

Think of sleep as depositing money in a bank. Each time you sleep for 8 hours (or whatever time your body needs to feel rested), your account is all good. But fall short and your sleep account goes into the red. You experience fatigue, daytime sleepiness, irritability and other symptoms.  That’s called sleep debt or sleep deficit. It is the difference between how much sleep you need and how much sleep you actually get.  Sleep debt affects your mental health, productivity and overall health. In some cases, it can be downright dangerous. Luckily, it’s pretty easy to repay the debt — just go to sleep.  What Causes Sleep Debt? Staying up too late is the most common cause of sleep...

There are severe cases of insomnia and other sleep disorders that warrant prescription medication. But for most people who are struggling to sleep well, there’s no need to go that far. There are plenty of natural products that can improve your sleep quality from herbal teas to supplements.  Here are the ten best home remedies and natural sleep aids for insomnia and other sleep problems.  1. Melatonin  If you are struggling to fall asleep in the evening, you are probably not producing enough melatonin. This is the hormone that helps us relax and prepares the body for sleep.  Taking melatonin supplements can help you fall asleep easier. The standard advice is to start at 0.5mg about an hour before you...

One of the worst things to do when you can’t sleep at night is trying to force yourself to sleep. All that stuff about counting sheep or counting backwards from 100 usually doesn't work with insomnia. If anything, the more you try to force sleep, the harder it gets to sleep.  Whatever you do, do not turn on your phone. You will end up staying awake for hours. In fact, if you often struggle with insomnia don’t go to bed with your phone to eliminate any temptation to browse when you can’t sleep. Here’s what to do instead when you find yourself tossing and turning.   1. Get Out of Bed Normal sleep latency (how long it takes to sleep) is...

You should, ideally, get 7-9 hours of sleep each night with few to no interruptions. This type of sleep where you snooze in one continuous segment is called monophasic sleep. Believe it or not, it is a surprisingly recent phenomena in human history.  For most of the time man has been around, people slept in multiple periods, usually two. This is called biphasic sleep. There’s also polyphasic sleep, where you sleep more than two segments throughout the day.  Polyphasic sleep was and is typically common with famous and eccentric people like Nikola Tesla and Winston Churchill. Today, people practice polyphasic sleep to try and get more out of their day. But whether polyphasic sleep improves productivity is something research has...

One of the worst things to do when you can’t sleep at night is trying to force yourself to sleep. All that stuff about counting sheep or counting backwards from 100 usually doesn't work with insomnia. If anything, the more you try to force sleep, the harder it gets to sleep.  Whatever you do, do not turn on your phone. You will end up staying awake for hours. In fact, if you often struggle with insomnia don’t go to bed with your phone to eliminate any temptation to browse when you can’t sleep. Here’s what to do instead when you find yourself tossing and turning.   1. Get Out of Bed Normal sleep latency (how long it takes to sleep) is...

You should, ideally, get 7-9 hours of sleep each night with few to no interruptions. This type of sleep where you snooze in one continuous segment is called monophasic sleep. Believe it or not, it is a surprisingly recent phenomena in human history.  For most of the time man has been around, people slept in multiple periods, usually two. This is called biphasic sleep. There’s also polyphasic sleep, where you sleep more than two segments throughout the day.  Polyphasic sleep was and is typically common with famous and eccentric people like Nikola Tesla and Winston Churchill. Today, people practice polyphasic sleep to try and get more out of their day. But whether polyphasic sleep improves productivity is something research has...

Most of us today are monophasic sleepers. That means we sleep for just one segment each day, typically during the nighttime hours. But this is a relatively modern sleep pattern.  From as early as the stone age and up to the 17th century, people typically slept in multiple separate segments. They would wake up in the middle of the night, have an interlude for an hour or two, then drift back to sleep till morning.  This type of sleep involving two sleep segments is called biphasic sleep. If you sleep for more than two segments, it is called polyphasic sleep.  Brief History of Biphasic and Polyphasic Sleep? Sleeping for a single continuous period each night seems pretty normal. Having more...