Want better sleep? Try thinking about your day’s positive interactions before bed.
For ages, many people have believed in a link between the mind and body. Studies have pointed to the benefits of positive thoughts — such as reports pointing to a positive relationship between lifespan and optimism, or trials that show the puzzlingly beneficial effects of placebos. However, only recently have researchers found clues as to precisely where this link lies in our body. Recent studies indicate that the vagus nerve is largely responsible for the mind-body connection many of us experience.
The vagus nerve sends signals that tell your body to slow down during moments of calm and safety. Its effectiveness in different people varies and is measured by what’s called a “vagal tone”. Higher vagal tones have been linked with healthier bodies, while lower vagal tones have been linked with health risks and disease. …
Why we sometimes feel sleepy after a “good night’s sleep”.
At bedtime, our mission is to help people develop the best sleeping habits possible. For many of us who struggle with sleep, simply getting in bed and falling asleep is 90% of the struggle. A smaller, yet significant, challenge is also evaluating our sleeping habits, especially given how inconsistent we can feel after a night of “great sleep”.
Researcher suggests that one cause of these inconsistencies may be how much time we set aside for ourselves to sleep. Studies show that healthy sleepers spend 90% of the time they are in bed asleep. Which is leading researchers to recommend that sleepers budget between 7.5 …
Take a step back and think about how much time, energy and effort you’ve spent (or wish you could) on trying to improve things like your memory, cognitive performance, communication, mood, metabolism, and immune system.
It turns out the simplest thing you can do to improve all of these aspects of your life is simply getting better sleep.
The NYTimes reports that The Centers for Disease Control has called sleep deprivation a public health crisis, saying that one-third of adults don’t get enough sleep. Some 80 percent of people report sleep problems at least once per week.
Sleep deprivation wreaks havoc on your body and mind. What’s worse is that studies show that individuals are typically unable to identify when they’re sleep deprived. …
Introducing bedtime
For the last three years we’ve been obsessed with sleep. It started when we entered the working world a few years ago. We were no longer college students, or even young adults, but we still slept like them — staying up too late, waking up early, and not sleeping enough. Around the same time we realized this was a problem for many of our loved ones, no one was getting enough sleep. In fact, 1 in 3 adults doesn’t get enough sleep according to the CDC. To make matters worse, sleep is now one of the most commonly cited behavioral factors in our overall health and life quality, so this pervasive problem has far reaching consequences. …
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