You know that 3 PM cup of coffee that feels like survival fuel? It might still be working overtime long after you’ve shut your laptop, brushed your teeth, and are lying in bed wondering why sleep won’t come. Enter the Caffeine Calculator in Arcashift: an interactive feature that lets you see how that last cup […]
Melatonin Is a Stage Manager, Not the Star of Sleep
Let’s talk melatonin. Or, as I like to call it (to the confusion of my friends and loved ones): negative light. What I mean is this: This doesn’t mean darkness = melatonin. You need darkness at the time your body wants to make melatonin. For most of us, this happens at night. You can expect […]
Circadian Rhythms Are Like Walking
Have you ever timed up your steps with a friend’s as you walk on the sidewalk? Or synced up your steps to match a pattern of tiles on the ground? Our bodies know what it’s like to find a groove, a pattern, a rhythm. It turns out, that’s not just true for your feet—it’s also […]
Interview with Dr. Hrayr Attarian
Thanks for joining me today. You have such an impressive resume. Would you mind telling me about yourself and how you got into sleep medicine? While studying for my undergraduate in biology, I took a class in abnormal psychology, and one of the lectures was about dreams, which piqued my interest in psychology and sleep […]
My New Year’s (Circadian) Resolution
Although circadian rhythms are being recognized more and more for their relevance to jet lag, shift work, the grogginess people feel after daylight saving time transitions, and health and medicine at large, it’s still a long way behind sleep in entering popular discourse. People know “8 hours a night,” but they don’t know “align your […]
Sync your batteries, Shift your awareness
When are you most productive? Are you an early bird, a night owl, or somewhere in between? Your prime productivity window each day may be different from mine, and it may even shift during your lifetime. For example, my current prime productivity period is from roughly 9am to 12pm each day, but ten years ago […]