Snoozester Sleep Blog

The BBC has a great article online, “Are you getting enough?“

The article discusses the pervasiveness of sleep disorders in the U.K. (and modern society in general) as well as some interesting suggestions to help you fall asleep faster. Here are a few:

Systematically tense each muscle group in turn until it starts to hurt - about 20 seconds - and then let go. This creates a warm feeling of relaxation, and any tension should flow away. The theory is that with physical relaxation comes mental calmness. PMR is used as a stress buster, as well as helping sleep.

Just repeating “the” could be the solution. It’s known as a blocking strategy, another cognitive technique. The aim is to stop the mind racing. Repeating a simple word like “the” at irregular interval blocks other thoughts coming into your head.

According to a recent study, women who recently gave birth should sleep more if they want to lose weight. According to a Sydney Morning Herald article about the study, ” They found that mothers who slept five hours or less a day when their babies were six months old were three times more likely than more rested mothers to have kept on the extra weight at one year.”

This sounds like a win-win, more sleep and less weight, but I can’t imagine it is very easy for mothers of newborns to get any sleep, let alone more sleep. Your thoughts?

This is another one of those conclusions that seems obvious, but hadn’t necessarily been thoroughly analyzed until now. Not getting enough sleep can make you feel grumpy.

Researchers at the University of California-Berkeley and Harvard Medical School conducted a study of the effects of sleep-deprivation on the brain’s control over emotions. The researcher’s studied 26 adults aged 30 and under; the participants were divided into two groups, one group stayed awake for 35 hours, the other group was allowed to sleep normally. the participants were shown a series of images, some of which were disturbing, while researchers monitored their brain activity. The researchers found that the sleep-deprived participants became aversive and experienced a decrease in prefrontal lobe activity, the area of the brain that controls emotions.

One of the researchers, Matthew Walker, said, “Sleep appears to restore our emotional brain circuits, and in doing so prepares us for the next day’s challenges and social interactions. Most importantly, this study demonstrates the dangers of not sleeping enough.”

For more information about the study, check out the most recent issue of Current Biology, where the study is published. More information is also available via Fox News and the USA Today.

Find out - About the Snoozester Sleep Blog

This may sound obvious - If your pillow is too tall, it may impact the quality of your sleep.

Less obvious - How tall is too tall? Not very according to a Japanese study discussed in a recent Bloomberg article. Two excerpts from the study:

“Even a pillow that’s 2 centimeters (1 inch) too high can reduce sleep quality by causing shoulder and back strain”

“Those using an ill-fitting pillow were 2.8 times more likely to suffer back pain and 1.5 times more likely to experience tiredness”

Forbes has an article on their website, “Sleepless Kids Are Troubled Kids,” about the causes and effects of poor sleep on children’s performance. The article discusses the wide range of sleep disorders that affect children - “That spans everything from kids who are waking during the night, to resisting bedtime, to sleepwalking, disordered breathing — the gamut,” as well as some of their effects - “One 2006 study in the journal Public Library of Science Medicine found that youngsters with sleep apnea scored lower on standard IQ tests compared with unaffected kids — an average of 85 points vs. 100, respectively.”

Massage therapist, Jen, sent us her video offering some helpful suggestions re: how to position a pillow for maximum support depending on your preferred sleeping position. Please note - this video and the associated comments are somewhat suggestive and may offend some viewers

Video - How to position your pillow

If you’re like me, you’re always too hot in bed, except when it’s  freezing outside and you’re sleeping with the windows open. Given the recent temps here on the East Coast, you won’t be able to enjoy that feeling anytime soon, unless…

Yep, you guessed it, you need to buy a Kuchofuku. What is a Kuchofuku you ask? Of course, it’s an air conditioned bed! Well actually, it’s more like an air conditioner for your bed, but either way, it’s pretty cool. In both senses of the word. Anyone out there tried one of these? Let us know with a comment below.

This is the first in what we hope will become a series of product reviews here on the Snoozester Sleep Blog. Over the past month, we’ve had a chance to get a feel for CleanRest’s line of mattress and pillow covers. CleanRest’s products are designed to “Protect your Sleep ™” by shielding you from the dust mites, allergens and microscopic toxins that take up residence in your bed (actually your mattress, box spring, pillows and comforter).

CleanRest’s products utilize a proprietary, patented fabric known as Micron One to create a barrier between you and your bedding. The key is, as you may have figured from the name,  that the pores in the fabric are only one micron (read: very, very, very small). For a series of reasons that are beyond the scope of this review, this has the effect of preventing the evil-nasties from getting cozy in your napping nook.

This much you could have gathered from the CleanRest website, so on to our review…

We don’t have the scientific know-how or the equipment to prove whether or not CleanRest’s products are as effective at protecting you from dust mites, micro-toxins and allergens as they claim, so we decided to focus on the overall CleanRest experience. To start, the product packaging was very good, similar to the packaging used for other bedding products like sheets and pillow cases. One concern I have with purchasing high-tech, synthetic fabrics, especially ones I’m going to wear or sleep on, is - do they have a weird petrol-like smell? In the case of the CleanRest products we received, thankfully, no.

On to “installation” - if you can put a pillow case on your pillow, you can “install” the CleanRest system on your bed. We didn’t test the mattress cover on an exceptionally thick / deep mattress (15″+), but it doesn’t seem like many mattresses would be too big to fit (if you are considering buying for your bed, and you have trouble buying fitted sheets, you may want to call ahead and confirm).

So now that we’ve got our CleanRest mattress and pillow covers installed, how do they feel? Well, for starters, they are designed to go underneath your linens, so you aren’t in direct contact with the MicronOne material. The addition of the CleanRest products to our test bed (get it? ha ha!) did not seem to have any noticeable impact on in-bed temperature (as someone who is always too hot, this was one of my primary concerns). We did, however, notice that the MicronOne fabric can be kind of noisy (in a swishy, pantlegs-of-a-jumpsuit-rubbing-together kind of way). This may bother some more than others. The MicronOne fabric is less “plasticy” than plastic, but we’re not talking about 1200TC Egyptian cotton here; the best description for the texture of the fabric would be something like a high-end hotel shower curtain liner - part fabric, part plastic.

All-in-all, the addition of the CleanRest system had a fairly small impact on the comfort of our test bed (aside from the potential, but hard-to-measure benefit of the reduction in microscopic bed pirates), since we like our bed the way it is, that’s a good thing. That brings up another point - do you really need an allergen / micro-toxin / dust mite barrier in your bed? Well, maybe… If you suffer from allergies to allergens, micro-toxins or dust mites that live in your bed, then yes. If not, then probably not.

The Wall Street Journal published an article several years ago debating this very point as it applies to products that claim to protect you from dust mites.

In conclusion, the CleanRest system seems to be a great solution for all those who are allergic to, irritated by or paranoid about the allergens, dust mites and micro-toxins living in their beds. At about $320 - $510 (depending on the size of your bed) for a complete set that will cover your bed, it may not be worth the money for the rest of us.

3.5 stars out of 5 stars (stars subtracted for mild noisyness, high cost and debatable necessity)

According to a study presented at the American Professional Sleep Society’s annual meeting, children and teenagers who sleep in on the weekends may be hurting their scholastic performance. An article in the Poughkeepsie Journal discusses the study’s findings, which suggest that by sleeping in on weekends, kids are basically subjecting themselves to the effects of jet lag. When Monday rolls around and it’s time to go back to school, the kids feel tired and groggy and their performance suffers as a result. The whole problem is compounded by the fact that many of these kids are not getting enough sleep during the week, and they are trying tomak up for it by getting extra sleep over the weekend.