Having trouble sleeping? Here’s some advice.
This is the classic not-so-shut-eye experience of many Americans who think they are sleep-deprived and possibly need pills or other treatment to fix their insomnia, teeth grinding, jet lag, restless or jerky legs, snoring, sleepwalking and so forth.
Reality is quite different.
For instance, insomnia is said to be the most common sleep disorder, but these dissatisfying sleep experiences only get in the way of daily activities for 10 percent of us, according to the National Institutes of Health. And in almost half of those cases, the real underlying problem is illness (often mental) or the effects of a substance, like coffee or medication.
The most interesting thing in the article was the concept of polyphasic sleep.
So-called polyphasic sleep is seen in babies, the elderly and other animals (and Thomas Edison reportedly slept this way). For the rest of us, it is more realistic and healthy to sleep at night as best we can and then take naps as needed. EEGs show that we are biphasic sleepers with two alertness dips – one at night time and one mid-day. So talk to HR about setting up a nap room, like they have for NASA’s Phoenix mission team members.
The rest of the advice was kind of mixed. If I tried to get away with a “mid day desk nap” I probably wouldn’t be working at my current job for much longer.