NOOOOOO!!!! Noooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!! (To hear our actual stance on permanent DST, check out this blog post. Short version: we love getting rid of the seasonal time change, as long as we end up on permanent standard time, not permanent DST.)
Interview with Dr. Louise O’Brien
Thanks for letting us interview you, Dr. O’Brien. Would you mind introducing yourself to our audience—where do you work, what do you do? I’m Louise O’Brien, an Associate Professor at the Division of Sleep Medicine, Department of Neurology, at the University of Michigan. My work focuses mostly on sleep disruption in pregnant women and its […]
Naps, part one.
The first thing I want to say about naps is that I’m almost always for them. Naps can help you recover from sleep deprivation. Naps are good. But let’s talk about that almost always. When might you want to avoid napping? Well, maybe you’re trying to shift your personal time zone and are at a […]
Interview with Dr. Cathy Goldstein
We sat down to talk with Dr. Goldstein on what she sees as the future of wearables in the sleep clinic. Enjoy! Thank you for taking the time to meet with me today! Could you take a minute to introduce yourself and say a little about what your job is? Cathy Goldstein, MD. I’m a […]
Take a Break (From Social Jet Lag)
Why do you go to sleep when you do? Sure, there’s a big part of it that’s physical: You go to sleep because you’re sleepy. But you might also stay awake, even when you’re on the verge of collapsing from fatigue, because you have work to get done. Or because your neighbor is practicing a […]
No, we shouldn’t make DST Permanent
I recently got some blackout curtains for my bedroom. This was pretty long overdue: about thirty feet from my bedroom window is a cheerfully bright, energy-efficient street lamp, which—while great when I’m taking the dog out for a nighttime stroll—is the photic equivalent of somebody standing in my azaleas and playing “Seventy-Six Trombones” while I’m […]
Measuring Sleep Regularity
What is sleep regularity and why is it important? Sleep regularity is a gauge of how consistent a person’s sleep patterns are, based on the day-to-day variability in their sleep–wake times. In general, having poorer sleep regularity, or irregular sleep patterns, has been shown to lead to many adverse outcomes in metabolism, mental health, and […]
Circadian Rhythms 101: What Every College Student Should Know About Sleep
I woke up feeling groggy and lazy almost everyday in the past school semester leading up to this summer. I was already doing research on sleep at that point and I had a general idea about what I was doing wrong, but when I tried to dive deeper into the hundreds of articles on sleep […]
Signs of Circadian Disruption
Signs of Circadian Disruption In this blog post, I want to point to some common symptoms of circadian disruption. The role of circadian rhythms in sleep is subtle, and many times issues that are attributed to other sources really have circadian factors as the root cause. The two process model: To understand the interaction between […]
Shift Work Disorder
What Exactly is Shift Work Disorder? Shift work disorder, or SWD, is a type of circadian rhythm sleep disorder which is caused by working shifts that do not fall within the conventional working hours of around 9 am – 5 pm. These shifts overlap with periods of significant light sensitivity which can cause shift workers […]