Blog & Columns
Useful information about health and Korean medicine.
Total 28 posts
"A drink helps me sleep" is only true for the first half of the night
Alcohol before bed puts you to sleep fast in the first half of the night, then wakes you often in the second. Three nights is enough to change your sleep. Stop at least 4 hours before bed and avoid three nights in a row.
"Coffee doesn't affect my sleep" — is that really true?
Caffeine doesn't remove tiredness; it hides the sensor that notices it. Coffee 6 hours before bed still cut sleep by over an hour, and people didn't notice. Don't quit — just move your last cup earlier.
Is it OK to nap? Napping borrows from the sleep you'd use at night
A nap uses up some of the sleep pressure you'd otherwise use at night. If you have insomnia, cut back. If you need one, keep it under 20 minutes, early in the afternoon, and out of bed.
Feeling groggy in the morning isn't proof that you slept badly last night
The transition between waking up and feeling alert, called sleep inertia, lasts 30 minutes to an hour even for people who slept well. Grading last night's sleep by how you feel in the morning feeds anxiety. Here's an experiment of shifting your alarm by 30 minutes on especially groggy days, and ways to cut a groggy morning short.
Can't sleep at night and can't get up in the morning? Start by changing your morning light
Falling asleep late and waking up late most likely means your body clock has been pushed back. Morning light pulls the clock earlier, and evening light pushes it later. Here's why indoor lighting isn't enough, how to get light outdoors as soon as you wake up, and what to try tomorrow morning.
If you feel too hot to sleep when you lie down, your body may not be cooling down
To fall asleep, your core body temperature needs to drop, and the body releases that heat through the hands and feet. In an analysis of 17 studies, a 10-minute warm shower or bath 1–2 hours before bed shortened the time it took to fall asleep. Here's what to try tonight, from heated mattress pads and blankets to late-night habits.
"I didn't sleep a wink," I say. "You were snoring," says my family
"I didn't sleep a wink last night." "What are you talking about? You were snoring." You've probably had this conversation. The first thing to make clear is that you're not lying. Your family isn't lying either. You may both be telling the truth.
Is it normal to sleep less as you get older?
At 4 a.m., the living room light is on. "Everyone's like this when they get older" is only half right. It's true that sleep changes with age, but that phrase covers up causes that can be fixed: pain, reflux, sleep apnea, the timing of medications, mood, and the amount of time you spend lying in bed.
The baby is sleeping, but Mom can't
Even after the baby starts sleeping through the night, Mom's sleep doesn't come back. The baby is sound asleep, yet you wake up every two hours on your own and look at the clock. This isn't about having a sensitive personality. Months of sleeping with one ear open have taught your body that "the bed is a place for standing by." What was learned can be unlearned through new learning.
I've worked night shifts for years. Why haven't I adjusted yet?
You work all night and head home in the morning. Your body is exhausted, but when you lie down, your sleep is strangely shallow. After years of this, one thought keeps coming back: other people say they adjust, so why am I still like this? Researchers who study the body clock have reached a conclusion: the human body never fully adjusts to night work. It isn't a matter of willpower but of how the body is built.
The night you cut your sleeping pill in half on your own: why did you sleep even worse?
Maybe I'll take just half a pill tonight. Or maybe I'll skip it altogether and tough it out. And that night, you lie awake far worse than usual. The conclusion you reach the next morning: I guess my body just can't sleep without pills. But that night isn't proof that your body is broken. It's a predictable reaction that happens when a medication is suddenly taken away.
If you can't fall asleep, get out of bed
"Tonight I'm definitely going to bed early," you think, and lie down an hour early. But your eyes are wide open and you just keep looking at the clock. Lying in bed longer is the most common effort people with insomnia make, and it's also the very first habit insomnia treatment corrects. That's because your bed is being learned as "the place where sleep doesn't come."