College, as any student can attest to, is a hectic life. Look no further than my past spring semester for a prime example of this. Taking multiple difficult classes while managing club activities and a social life was a whirlwind that was both exhausting and invigorating at the same time. The thorn in my side, …
A Guide to Non-Photic Zeitgebers We can all agree that the difference between night and day is, well, night and day when it comes to light. The progressive change in light present in our environment is subconsciously tracked by our bodies and that information is used to help time our sleep-wake cycles. Of course, not …
Imagine you’re on a swing on a playground with a friend standing behind you. This friend is not a jerk, so they’re going to push you when a normal person would push you on a swing—right when you’re at the end of your backwards motion and ready to start moving forward again. They, like a …
Back by popular demand, here is part two of the “We Rate Sleep Memes” blog series. If you’re just now tuning in (check out part one here), the title pretty much says it all. We take sleep-related memes we find online, we use them as an excuse to talk about sleep and circadian science, and …
So you want to help shift workers feel better—sleep better, be safer, have fewer of the long term chronic health problems that go hand in hand with shift work. How do you do it? Where do you start? As some of the most circadian-wrecked people around, shift workers have been the topic of no small …
My friend sent this to me the other day: “If I go to bed at 10:30 pm, I often wake up at 4:30 or 5:30 am and can’t go back to sleep. But if I go to bed at 1:00 am, I fall asleep easily and can sleep until 9:00 am. Throughout the work week …
We’ve noticed a lot of shift worker communities online. I’m not talking about just a few here—I’m talking about hundreds. These communities also each tend to have thousands of active followers. Surprising, right? Until you remember that over 30 million people in the U.S. currently live with shift work. From Instagram accounts to Twitter hashtags, …
In a recent interview with Dr. Amy Bender, she talks about the importance of improving the sleep of professional athletes. Could you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about what you work on? I’m the Director of Clinical Sleep Science at Cerebra. We’re a sleep technology company focused on better diagnosis and treatment …
One of the things we’re interested in as scientists is what longitudinal, large-scale data collection can tell us about sleep. Along those lines, one of our research projects involves looking at how models of circadian rhythms, as well as different sleep regularity metrics, can help us understand different outcomes for different folks. And as part …
When by Daniel H. Pink Another month, another Book of the Month! Starting with its title, When by Daniel Pink hones in on just how simple the idea of timing things better really is. The question of “when” is in the same fundamental category as where, why, how, and what. Yet, as Pink notes: “We …
