Readers

• How Many Hours of Sleep Do You Really Need? A Sleep Doctor’s Guide by Age

  “How much sleep do I actually need?” is one of the most common questions I hear in clinic. Most people expect a single number. The honest answer is that it depends on your age, and the target moves a lot from infancy to adulthood. Here...

• How to Choose a Mattress: A Sleep Doctor’s Evidence-Based Guide

  By Waiz Wasey, MD | Board-Certified Sleep Medicine Physician You spend about a third of your life on your mattress. Yet most people pick one after lying on it for two minutes in a showroom, or after reading a review written by someone with a...

• 13 Struggles of Someone Living With Idiopathic Hypersomnia

  Idiopathic hypersomnia, or IH, is a chronic sleep disorder that causes extreme daytime sleepiness even after a full night of sleep. Unlike ordinary tiredness, this sleepiness does not go away with rest. People with IH often sleep 9 to 11 hours a night and still...

• Orthosomnia: When Sleep Tracking Makes Your Sleep Worse

  You check your ring or watch first thing in the morning before you even sit up. The score says 62. Now you feel tired, even if you felt fine ten seconds ago. That reaction has a name. It is called orthosomnia, and it is becoming...

• Sleep Divorce: Does Sleeping Separately Actually Help Your Relationship?

  More couples are choosing to sleep in separate beds or separate rooms. The trend has a catchy name, sleep divorce, but it has nothing to do with ending a relationship. It is about protecting sleep, and in many cases, protecting the relationship itself. As a...

• Sleepmaxxing: What Actually Works vs What’s Hype

  “Sleepmaxxing” is everywhere right now. Mouth tape, weighted blankets, magnesium, blue light glasses, ice cold bedrooms, and a wrist full of sleep data. The idea is simple. Optimize every part of your sleep and you will wake up sharper, calmer, and healthier. Some of this...

• Bedwetting and Sleep: What Every Parent Should Know About Enuresis in Children

  Nearly 1 in 5 children who wet the bed also have a breathing problem during sleep. Most parents never make that connection. They see bedwetting as a bladder issue or a “phase” their child will grow out of. Sometimes that is true. But for a...

• Do I Have Insomnia? How to Recognize the Signs and When to Get Help

  You lie in bed. Your mind is running through tomorrow’s to-do list. An hour passes. Then two. You start to wonder if this counts as insomnia, or if you are just a light sleeper going through a rough patch. This question comes up in my...

• What Is Beauty Sleep, and Where Did the Term Come From

  You have heard someone call it their “beauty sleep.” Maybe you have said it yourself, half joking, before heading to bed early. But the phrase is older than you think, and the science behind it is more real than most people assume. Here is what...

• Idiopathic Hypersomnia: What You Need to Know

  On average, people with idiopathic hypersomnia wait years for a correct diagnosis. Studies from the United States, the Czech Republic, and India report delays of 6 to 9 years in adults, and in some patients the wait stretches even longer. If you or someone you...

• Why CBT-I Is the Best Treatment for Insomnia

  If you have insomnia, you have probably been told to try sleep hygiene tips first. Cut caffeine. Dim the lights. Stick to a schedule. These things help a little, but they rarely fix chronic insomnia on their own. The treatment with the strongest evidence behind...

• Can Poor Sleep Raise Your Risk of Dementia? Here Is What the Research Shows

  If you regularly sleep six hours or less a night in your 50s and 60s, your risk of developing dementia later in life goes up by roughly 30 percent. That number comes from a 25-year study of nearly 8,000 people, and it is one of...

• Fixing Delayed Sleep Phase Before School Starts

  Summer bedtimes drift late. School start times don’t. That gap is why so many kids and teens walk into the first week of school running on four to six hours of sleep. If your child can’t fall asleep before midnight and can’t wake up before...

• How Many Hours of Sleep Does an Adult Need?

  Most adults need at least 7 hours of sleep a night. That’s not a rough guess. It’s the conclusion of a joint consensus statement from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM) and the Sleep Research Society (SRS), based on a review of more than...

• How Dust Storms Disrupt Your Sleep (And What You Can Do About It)

  If you live in a region prone to haboobs, you already know the drill. The sky turns orange, visibility drops, and you shut your windows and wait it out. What you may not know is that the storm keeps affecting you long after the dust...

• Why Permanent Daylight Saving Time Is the Wrong Fix

  Congress is close to ending the twice-a-year clock change. That part is popular. But the version moving through Congress locks in permanent daylight saving time, not permanent standard time. Sleep medicine has been warning against this exact outcome for years. Here’s the problem in one...

• Can You Trust Your Sleep Tracker? Here’s What the Research Actually Shows

  You wake up, check your watch, and see a sleep score. Maybe it says you only got 12 minutes of deep sleep. Maybe it tells you your REM sleep was low. You start the day feeling like you failed at sleeping. Here’s the problem. That...

• What is Hypersomnia

  If you sleep 9 to 12 hours a night and still feel exhausted the next day, something more than “being tired” may be going on. That’s hypersomnia. It’s not laziness and it’s not just needing an extra cup of coffee. It’s a real sleep disorder,...

• Sleep Changes During Menarche: What Every Teen and Parent Should Know

  If your daughter suddenly can’t fall asleep, feels tired all day, or seems moodier than usual after her first period, it’s not just teenage behavior. Menarche changes your biology in ways that directly disrupt sleep. Why your sleep changes when your period starts Menarche is...

• Counting Sheep Does Not Help You Fall Asleep. Picturing a Calm Scene Works Better

  Counting sheep is the classic advice for a mind that won’t switch off at bedtime. The idea is that a dull, repetitive task will bore you to sleep. The research tells a different story. Counting is too easy to hold your attention, so your worries...