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6 Foods That Will Help You Sleep

In order to avoid laying in bed waiting for some miracle to happen that will help you fall asleep, check out these types of food that can help you get that extra rest. Cherries – Amazingly enough, cherries are one of few natural foods that contain Melatonin, the hormone that tells our body it is…

The Missing Link Between Sleep and Memory

It is quite common knowledge that sleep helps our memory. That is the reasoning everyone uses when they don’t want to spend the whole night studying/getting ready for an important day at work. But, it has not been made clear why exactly sleep is so helpful. A recent study that took place at the University…

How to Prevent Snoring

Classed as one of the most irritating bedroom habits, snoring affects as many as 30% of us with the chances increasing with age. Everything from your diet to allergies can affect your quality of sleep, but you may not have known that they have surprising effects on your snoring patterns. We share four changes that…

Hate Everyone at the Office? Go to Bed

There are those days when you go to work, you look around and you think “please, can no one speak to me today?” or in the more extreme situations- “why do I work here? Everyone is awful!”. Well, though you might be right, it could also be that you just need to get some sleep…

Working Shifts? Read this New Study!

Sleep, for me, has been a quite the learning process. Going to an academically rigorous high-school, I pulled plenty of all-nighters, and generally got very little sleep. This increased my stress level, decreased my productivity and made me gain weight. Following that, I spent two years working 24-hour shifts. This was even worse. It meant…

Love to Procrastinate? You Should Read This

Procrastinating is a common thing we all love and hate at the same time. We know it’s not good for us in the long run, but the immediate satisfaction of spending some time on social media or finishing the new season of that show is so enticing, that many times it overcomes our responsible selves….

How to Get Horrible Sleep

Tired of waking up rejuvenated, calm, happy, and ready to go? Over being well-rested? Who isn’t? Well, don’t you worry. That’s what we’re here for! Here are some tips on what to do in order to assure you will not get a good night’s sleep. 1. Work out – we all know that working out…

4 Companies That Value Sleep

A study conducted by Swan Medical shows that over 50% of employees in the United States experience poor or insufficient sleep. “So?”, you may ask, “don’t we all pull all-nighters? And why should companies care? It’s not like these employees are falling asleep at work”. Actually, they kind of are. According to the Swan Medical…

Basic Rules for a Good Night’s Sleep

Sleep hygiene is a set of practices that promote and maintain healthy and restful sleep. People with sleep difficulties have been using them for decades to improve their nighttime rest and stave off unwanted symptoms of sleep deprivation during the day. The goal is to prevent sleep issues from interfering with daily life. Start your hygiene checkup…

What Factors Influence your Sleep?

Sleep needs are determined by different factors, mainly age, individual and genetic characteristics, the duration of previous wakefulness period, as well as an internal biological clock that sets a daily, or circadian rhythm. Age and sleep: close to birth babies sleep 16 to 18 hours a day in time intervals spread around the clock. The…

How to Overcome Jetlag

People’s biological clocks are usually synchronized with the time zone where they live. When moving quickly across several zones, that synchronization disappears temporarily. This happens only while travelling west or east. North or south journeys have no impact on synchronization because the time zone doesn’t change. The severity of jet lag complaints generally correlates with the…

How does Alcohol Affect your Sleep?

Alcohol influences sleep significantly. Its most obvious impact is shortening the time to fall asleep (sleep latency), which is why it is a popular aid for people who have difficulty falling asleep. It increases the amount of deep sleep during the first half of the night as well. This may be viewed as a sleep…

Are you an Owl or a Lark? Morning vs. Evening Type

Our biological clock tells our body and mind when to go to sleep and when to wake. If that inner clock doesn’t quite synchronize with life’s obligations, normal people will be able to adapt. But they may not always feel great throughout the day. Owls (or night owls or evening types) feel best and most alert…

The Importance of Sleep

What is Sleep? Sleep is both universal and fascinating. Although we spend a third of our lives sleeping, scientists don’t fully understand its nature and purpose. The most precise definition available at this time is descriptive: It’s a natural behavioral state (another is wakefulness) governed by the nervous system that is characterized by perceptual disengagement…

Objective Measures of Daytime Sleepiness

Sleep physicians have two well-established objective tools at their disposal to measure daytime sleepiness.   Multiple Sleep Latency Test (MSLT) The MSLT measures daytime sleepiness in a sleep lab after a whole-night polysomnography (PSG), which evaluates sleep and identifies sleep disorders such as obstructive sleep apnea. In the morning, the patient remains connected to the polygraph to…

How much Sleep do you Really Need?

There is no standard for the amount of sleep an individual requires. Each person is unique. In simple terms, you need enough sleep to avoid drowsiness and to perform at peak efficiency during the day. That need changes with age, so what works best in one stage of your life may not be appropriate for…

Thank you for Sharing Your Stories

At SleepRate, we strive to give you the best resources and tips to improve your Sleep-Life Balance. We want to help you achieve your health and fitness goals because you are living proof that sleep is an essential part of your overall health and fitness. Your stories give us great insights into how your productivity,…

How does Stress Affect Sleep?

Sleep and stress are connected tightly. Epidemiological studies report a gradual decline in average sleep time in developed countries since the end of the 19th century. That drop has been even more pronounced in the last few decades. At the same time, these studies report a commensurate increase in anxiety. This makes perfect sense because sleep…

Don’t Drive while Sleepy

A growing public health concern in many countries is the number of traffic accidents attributable to sleepiness. Drowsiness leads to the same level of impairment as driving under the influence of alcohol; and like alcohol consumption, people seldom perceive the degree of their own impairment. The best estimate is that roughly 25% of fatal accidents…

Daytime Sleepiness – is it normal?

Daytime sleepiness is the propensity to fall asleep at inappropriate times during the day. The degree of daytime sleepiness correlates directly to the amount and quality of sleep during the previous night. The duration people need to stay awake varies with each individual, but surveys and research indicate most people perform optimally with 7.5 –…

Subjective Measures of Sleepiness

How can you measure how sleeping you really are? Two standard tests are used frequently to assess degrees of sleepiness. Stanford Sleepiness Scale (SSS) In 1973 sleep scientists at Stanford University developed a subjective measure of alertness called the Stanford Sleepiness Scale. Individuals rate themselves according to one of several statements that most closely describes…

What is a Sleep Disorder?

Along human history the mystery of sleep preoccupied the minds and souls of great philosophers and thinkers, poets and artists. The entire understandings regarding sleep were based on observation. Some observations serve as the basis for a branch of the medical science: Sleep Medicine. This relatively new field deals with the overlooked part of human…

How to Talk to your Doctor

What should I say to my doctor when I sleep poorly or can’t sleep at all? Do your best to be concise and clear. State, in succinct terms, how you perceive the problem. For example: “It takes me a very long time to fall asleep.” “I wake up frequently during the night.” “I have trouble…

How Sleep Affects Your Brain, Your Productivity, and Your Safety

Sleep deprivation is a major public health concern in many countries. One example everyone knows about: accidents caused by sleepy drivers. It turns out that sleepy driving is a concern that plagues about 60% of adult drivers as 168 million Americans have driven a vehicle while feeling drowsy in the past year alone. Alarmingly, 37%…

How to Regulate Sleep for Shift-Work

Our nonstop, 24-hour society requires that some people work during nonstandard times (in the evenings or during the night). This is a difficult burden for people, especially if they have families. Sleep scientists have done considerable research on how to maintain performance at a shift job while reducing potential harm. There are no easy answers…

Just Do It: Sleep Better and Boost your Fitness

More people than ever are aware of the necessity of exercise to get to peak physical health. However, only about 1 in 5 adults get the amount of exercise that is suggested by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Physically active people live longer and have lower risk for heart disease, stroke, Type 2…

What is Sleep?

When we look at human beings from a certain perspective, it appears that there are two different normal states of being: sleep and wakefulness. Looking closer into these two different states, it becomes clear that sleep is not a homogeneous entity, but it consists of two very different phases: REM sleep and NonREM sleep, and…

How Does Sleep Help You Lose Weight?

The statistics are alarming: About 65% of Americans are now overweight or obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The number of obese adults jumped from 15% in 1980 to 27% in 1999. This trend doesn’t seem to be changing anytime soon: the estimate is that 75% of the U.S. population will…

Night Terrors, Sleep Talking, and Other Odd Nighttime Events

Unusual events occur sometimes at night. These events are intriguing, sometimes funny and other times scary. They are mostly harmless and weird phenomena that we understand only partially and study them, as they represent some kind of a naturally occurring experiment that can teach us a lot. Night terrors, Sleep talking and Sleep walking are…

Is Napping Good or Bad?

Is napping good or bad? Human beings have a natural tendency arising from their internal clock to sleep during the night and be awake during the day. There is an additional time during the day when people have a normal tendency to sleep: in the early afternoon, around 2pm our bodies and minds tell us…

Find Your Sleep-Life Balance to Reach Your Potential

We’re thrilled to announce the launch of our new Sleep-Life Balance Program™, designed to help you reach important personal goals — weight loss, enhanced athletic performance and improved focus & productivity – by simply detecting and fixing unhealthy sleeping patterns. “Studies have shown insufficient sleep makes for poor food choices, can slow down recovery in athletes,…

Why is Sleep-Life Balance Important?

Nowadays, people brag about how little sleep they get and how busy they are throughout the day. However, we often see those same people zone out during the day, drooping from exhaustion and chugging coffee to stay awake. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 30% of adults get less than 6…

What are the Fundamentals of Sleep?

Sleep deprivation is so common nowadays that not getting enough sleep seems like a given. But sleep is a very important part of our bodies health, fitness, and rejuvenation, and sleep deprivation can lead to many serious health problems. What is sleep? Sleep is defined as a naturally recurring state that is easily reversible. It…

What Causes Sleep Disruptions? Part 3

This is the third and last part in our series about causes for insomnia. In part 1 we highlighted the psychological factors that contribute to insomnia and in Part 2, the environmental factors that contribute to insomnia. In this post, we will focus on physiological contributors. Snoring may signal a temporary narrowing or blockage of…

What Causes Sleep Disruptions? Part 2

In Part 1 of our blog series on Causes for Insomnia, we highlighted a few of the psychophysiological factors that cause poor sleep. In this second part we will describe a few environmental factors that can contribute to insomnia. For better or worse, kids can wreak havoc on parent’s sleep, many of whom slept fine…

What Causes Sleep Disruptions? Part 1

Can’t sleep? You’re not alone. Insomnia is the most common sleep disorder. Over 10% of the population suffers from chronic insomnia and nearly 50% of the population experiences intermittent insomnia. Insomnia is defined as difficulty falling asleep, waking up in the middle of the night and being unable to fall back to sleep, or waking…

Should Parents Permit Late Night Cram Sessions?

It’s final exam season, and for many parents, that means doing whatever they can to either support or discourage their kids’ late-night cramming. But a lot of parents are left in indecisive state, wondering which stance to take. We want our kids to perform well on their exams, but should we allow them to engage…

Is Binge-Watching TV Costing You Sleep?

Last year we had a feeling all the multi-episode consumption was cutting into some viewers’ sleep time so we ran a survey to see how much sleep people were losing. The results? Not only did the majority (55%) of respondents admit their marathon TV sessions were costing them up to three hours of sleep in…

SleepRate: Stress Awareness Month

Calm down, rest up. It’s a catch-22: when you’re stressed it’s difficult to get a good night’s sleep, but a good night’s sleep will help lower your stress levels. Stress is a very basic response that allows us to adapt, respond and cope with environmental threats, social and economic demands. A certain amount of stress…

Infographic: How Stress Can Impact Your Sleep

Does the Full Moon Affect Our Sleep?

Hooowwwl! Another full moon comes to our evening sky on April 4, inspiring many to talk of men transforming into werewolves and people going crazy. Of course, it’s all hooey. There’s no scientific evidence we know of that supports any correlation between lunar cycles and human behavior. That doesn’t mean the moon doesn’t affect us….

How does Melatonin Impact Sleep?

If you have trouble sleeping, sooner or later, you may consider taking melatonin. What is melatonin? Melatonin is a hormone made by a small gland in the brain; when it is dark, this hormone is released into the bloodstream and tells our body that it is night and time to start winding down for sleep….

How does your workload affect your sleep?

Does it take you a long time to fall asleep? Feel sleepy and fatigued during the day? You may have a high workload, according to a recent article published in the scientific journal SLEEP. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania studied 63 adults in a well-controlled ten-day laboratory study. Half of all participants performed computer tasks under a…

Infographic: Top 10 Sleep Myths Debunked!

Why are sleep myths so common today? Why do they exist in the first place? Why does everyone have an opinion or some advice about how you can improve your sleep? It may be in part due to there are so many sleep problems and sleep issues are so common. One in three people in…

How does SleepRate compare to other sleep apps?

There are several sleep trackers that use actigraphy, or body movements, to estimate sleep onset and duration. Actigraphy is often measured with sensors embedded in a watch or bracelet, or even your iPhone. Any tracker that involves placing your iPhone on your bed to measure sleep is using actigraphy. With actigraphy, the basic assumption is…

Join our March 10 Twitter Chat for Sleep Awareness Month

March is Sleep Awareness Month. Did you know the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently called sleep deprivation a public health epidemic? Ever wonder if you’re doing everything you can to get a good night’s rest? Are you concerned about the effects poor sleep patterns can have on sleep? Join us on Tuesday, March…

How does SleepRate measure sleep?

First of all, how does one measure sleep? The gold standard is polysomnography, or PSG for short. When patients are referred to a sleep laboratory, it is very likely that their sleep will be measured using PSG. Poly is Latin for many, and in polysomnography many aspects of body functioning are monitored including brain waves,…

How long did it take you to fall asleep last night?

How long did it take you to fall asleep last night? Are you sure? Have you ever seen someone nod off in the middle of the day, and when they woke up they swore they were never asleep? As it turns out, this is very common and sleep scientists term this experience “sleep state misperception.”…

How can you fall asleep fast?

Don’t you wish there was a quick and easy trick for falling asleep as soon as your head hits the pillow? Unfortunately, for many of us it is not that simple. So, is there a secret trick for how to fall asleep fast? Well, sleep is an automatic process, like breathing. In order to fall…

Why Should You Maintain Good Sleep Habits through the Holidays?

Whether you’re traveling to visit relatives or hosting relatives in your own home this holiday season, it’s needless to say you’ve been busy making arrangements. But have you included maintaining healthy sleep habits in your holiday planning? It may sound unnecessary, but think about it. Holiday festivities do tend to keep everyone up late, and…

Struggling with insomnia, What’s love got to do with it?

A partner’s sleep can influence our own, and vice versa. Research from Dr. Wendy Troxel, a behavioral scientist at RAND and advisor to SleepRate, has shown that relationship conflict can spill into shared sleeping problems at night, which in turn can fuel even more relationship conflict the next day. On the other hand, higher levels…

We’re Celebrating the end of Daylight Savings by offering you a chance to win a Sleep Improvement Kit

It happens every year. It shouldn’t come as a surprise, but how many of us actually plan for it? Yes, I’m talking about the time change that will happen for most Americans at 2 a.m. on November 2. But relax—really—it’s the good time change. The one that gives us an extra hour to play with…

Survey: Your dates want to know if you snore

Uh oh. If the 75% of people we polled in our latest survey are to be believed, all the single people need to be more up front about their snoring before they reach that point in their relationship where they can both hit the sack together. Does this mean online dating sites will start requiring…

Can Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR) Help with Sleep?

Over the summer, I read an article about ASMR or autonomous sensory meridian response. Despite its somewhat clunky moniker, ASMR has become a huge hit among a growing subculture of users on YouTube and Reddit where they watch, share and discuss videos of people talking in soft consonants, folding towels, tapping on hairbrushes, and other…

How Does Stress Affect Sleep?

Stress. Too much of it will affect your sleep. Sleep. Too little of it will affect your stress. Whether you’re constantly on the go, worried about work, or simply agitated by the news, chances are stress is a big part of your life. You may try to alleviate it by working out, spending a night…

Can you really catch up on lost sleep?

Ask people what they’ve got planned for the weekend, and there’s always the one or two who respond with, “Catching up on sleep.” But can you really make up for a sleep-deprived work week by sleeping in on weekends? The answer is yes. But also no. There is such a thing called sleep debt, which…

Back to School… How Do You Get Kids Back to Sleep?

It happens every summer. Parents (at least all the ones I know) either treat their kids to later bedtime schedules or simply stop enforcing them. For many, it’s simply accepting reality. An 8:30 p.m. bedtime, which can be hard enough to stick to during the busy school year, is nearly impossible after a day full…

What is Productive vs. Perceived Sleep?

At one time or another, we’ve all experienced it. We fit in a reasonable amount of sleep and still wake up feeling like we haven’t slept at all. So what’s going on? Well, simply put, you’re not getting enough sleep. And even when you think you’re sleeping, you might not be. Confused? Research shows slows…

How does warmer weather affect your sleep?

The Washington Post recently covered our latest survey on summer stress, including our finding that warmer weather can affect sleep with “80% saying they sleep better in cool weather.” It turns out, this statistic has more to do with science than personal preference. As a Stanford Biology professor told WebMD, “When you go to sleep, your…

Summer Travel: Surviving Jet Lag

There are plenty of ways summer travel can cut into our much-needed sleep. Many of us miss the comfort of our own beds. Some of us are usually out late and up the very first thing to make the most of the travel experience. But the biggest and most dreaded factor that disrupts our sleep…

Is Insomnia Turning You into a Liability at Work?

Insomnia is a national epidemic. Depending on who you ask, as many as 40-70 million people in the US have insomnia or some other chronic sleep disorder. And it’s costing them more than a good night’s rest. Aside from such associated health woes as hypertension, diabetes, obesity and major heart related issues, recent research published…

Sleeping through Travel

The three-day weekend is here! Any long-weekend plans? Ask anyone, and you’re likely to get one of the two most common responses: “Yes, I’m going out of town!” “No, I’m catching up on sleep!” But for those who plan on doing both, catching up on sleep may be difficult to keep in the equation. The…

Top Signs You are Sleep Deprived

Are you sleep deprived? Even if you’ve been able to trick your body into not feeling tired, whether it’s through sugar or caffeine, your body may be trying to tell you in other ways: Has your sex drive gone down? Are you forgetful? Are you making what you consider stupid mistakes? Are you gaining weight?…

What the Heart Tells Us About Sleep

Most of us love to sleep. And surprise—our hearts love it, too. But the Center for Disease Control and Prevention says more than a quarter of the U.S. doesn’t get enough of the stuff. And it’s hurting more than our energy levels—it’s harming our hearts. Did you know sleep deprivation is associated with a number…

Sleep Medication Pros and Cons

We live in a fix-it age where quick fixes are all the rage. As long as there’s been commercialism, people have been drawn to everything from diets to hair tonics that promise to make us feel better and feel better about ourselves. Some work. Some don’t. And then there are the products that work, but…

SleepRate: Is Binge-Watching TV Costing You Sleep?

Time is a funny thing. You can try being two places at once. You can try doing a dozen different things at once. But time will never let you. So when we conducted a survey on TV binge-watching habits (see infographic below), we had a feeling all the multi-episode consumption was cutting into some viewers’…

How Disruptive Technology Disrupts Sleep

New technology is often touted as disruptive—usually by those tasked with marketing the technology. According to Harvard Business School professor Clayton M. Christensen, who coined the term: disruptive technology is any technology that unexpectedly displaces other more established technologies. A lot of these technologies tend to be disruptive in other ways, too. While we marvel…

CBTI Part III: Reducing Sleep-Interfering Arousal/Activation

In Part I we introduced SleepRate’s “secret sauce,” CBTI (Cognitive Behavioral Treatment for Insomnia), the exclusive, Stanford-developed program we use to improve people’s sleep, and discussed how it uses Stimulus Control to establish the bed as a cue for sleep. In Part II, we discussed another important aspect of the CBTI: Sleep Restriction. This week,…

Sacrificing Sleep for Late Night Study Sessions is Counterproductive

It’s final exam season, and for most college students, that means a lot of late-night cramming and very little sleep. To keep their energy up, many students will be reaching for one, several or all of the energy boosting products that are at their disposal. But while the rush they get from coffee, energy drinks,…

Removing the Shroud of Mystery from CBTI, Part II: Sleep Restriction

In Part I we introduced SleepRate’s “secret sauce,” CBTI (Cognitive Behavioral Treatment for Insomnia), the exclusive, Stanford-developed program we use to improve people’s sleep, and discussed how it uses Stimulus Control to establish the bed as a cue for sleep. This week we’ll discuss another important aspect of the CBTI: Sleep Restriction. While Stimulus Control…

Removing the Shroud of Mystery from CBTI, Part I: Stimulus Control

Sleeprate is unique in that it not only monitors and offers a very detailed assessment of your sleep, but also provides treatment for Insomnia through an exclusive Stanford-developed program called Cognitive Behavioral Treatment for Insomnia — CBTI. Unless you’re a psychologist, this is probably Greek to you, so here’s a crash course in CBTI. CBTI…

The Unlucky Side of St. Patrick’s Day: Alcohol and Sleep

Thanksgiving is always on a Thursday. Perhaps we should consider making St. Patrick’s Day always fall on a Friday, because as one of the biggest drinking days of the year, people are bound to be hurting at work the next day. Sure, there are the hangovers, but what many people overlook is the effect that…

Surviving Spring Forward

Let’s be honest. Most of us have no idea what daylight savings time is supposed to accomplish, other than offering one weekend in the fall when we feel very well rested, and one in the spring that gives the coffee industry a major boost. In contrast to the cherished “fall back” weekend, most of us…

Spring Forward Sleep Tips

Check out these tips for keeping your sleep on track this Sunday!

Is a Sleep Lab Right for You?

Many experiencing sleep problems are initially inclined to go to a sleep lab for help. Setting aside the issue of cost (which may be considerable), there’s one other factor that you need to take into account when seeking better sleep — convenience. Sleepwired A sleep lab is very much a lab, and when you’re there,…

How Sleep Affects Athletic Performance

Although the specific functions of sleep are not completely known, it is generally accepted that sleep is an active process that is as vital as food, water and air. Sleep is crucial for good health in general, for optimal physical and cognitive performance in particular. Sleep needs and quality are individual and may be altered…

Facing Down Our Sleep Deprivation Epidemic

Imagine you just woke up from sleeping for 25 years. Hopefully you’d feel well-rested, because you’d be anxious to get out of bed and see what you missed! In actuality, most of us spend one-third of our life asleep (roughly 25 years for most of us), and 8 years dreaming. Yet, for about 1 out…

Long Term Health Consequences of Poor Sleep

We’ve all had times when we couldn’t get to sleep or wake up in the middle of the night and can’t fall back asleep. You feel groggy the next day and time cannot pass by fast enough to get home and hit the hay. For many people, these nights are few and far between. But…

Cupid and the Sandman: the Untold Story

Better sleep leads to a better life. In few areas is this more true than in your love life Sex Drive: are you the Big Bad Wolf, or the sleepy little lamb? First and foremost, sleep is intimately — no pun intended — connected to your sex drive. Numerous psychologists have reported that lack of…

Want to Lose Weight? Sleep Better!

When it comes to losing weight we hear a lot about nutrition and exercise, but one critical component is often left out of the conversation: sleep. In 2010, scientists estimated that 1.5 billion of the world’s population was overweight and 500 million were clinically obese. It’s even worse in America, where it’s estimated that 75%…

Causes of Poor Sleep

When you sleep poorly, your days are miserable – it is hard to concentrate, you are irritable, you have headaches, just want to go back to sleep and wake up refreshed. Why do people suffer from poor sleep? What causes poor sleep, and how can you tell? The first place most people go to find…

SleepRate Names The Top Public Enemies of Sleep!!!

In identifying the top enemies of sleep, perhaps a more appropriate term would be “frenemies,” because in fact some of the biggest disruptors are things we normally consider positive. Technology, social life, family, entertainment — all enrich our lives immeasurably, but can wreak havoc on our sleep patterns. Consider for example how difficult it was…

SleepRate Launches to Help Millions of People Suffering with Poor Sleep Take Control of their Nights

We’ve been developing sophisticated technology over the past five years to understand and assess the underlying causes of poor sleep. Today we are proud to publicly launch our service for the millions of people who suffer from poor sleep. We understand not only the importance of sleep, but also the three main causes of sleep…