I recently got some blackout curtains for my bedroom. This was pretty long overdue: about thirty feet from my bedroom window is a cheerfully bright, energy-efficient street lamp, which—while great when I’m taking the dog out for a nighttime stroll—is the photic equivalent of somebody standing in my azaleas and playing “Seventy-Six Trombones” while I’m […]
Measuring Sleep Regularity
What is sleep regularity and why is it important? Sleep regularity is a gauge of how consistent a person’s sleep patterns are, based on the day-to-day variability in their sleep–wake times. In general, having poorer sleep regularity, or irregular sleep patterns, has been shown to lead to many adverse outcomes in metabolism, mental health, and […]
What School Never Taught You About Sleep
I woke up feeling groggy and lazy almost every day in the past school semester leading up to this summer. I was already doing research on sleep at that point, and I had a general idea about what I was doing wrong, but when I tried to dive deeper into the hundreds of articles on […]
Signs of Circadian Disruption
In this blog post, I want to point to some common symptoms of circadian disruption. The role of circadian rhythms in sleep is subtle, and many times issues that are attributed to other sources really have circadian factors as the root cause. The two process model: To understand the interaction between sleep and circadian rhythms […]
Shift Work Disorder
What Exactly is Shift Work Disorder? Shift work disorder, or SWD, is a type of circadian rhythm sleep disorder which is caused by working shifts that do not fall within the conventional working hours of around 9 am – 5 pm. These shifts overlap with periods of significant light sensitivity which can cause shift workers […]
(Lack of) Light at the End of the Tunnel
A sleep story Today we had the pleasure of interviewing one of our own, Eric. He’s a skilled mathematician and AWS developer here at Arcascope. Everyone has their own unique experience when it comes to catching Zzz’s, or in Eric’s case, NOT doing that. We wanted to chat with him and learn more about these […]