Everything You Must Know About Sleep but Are Too Tired to Ask
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(HealthNewsDigest.com) – Many people regard sleep as a luxury, a waste of time, and even a weakness of character, boasting that they can get by on just a few hours per night. They’re unaware of how lack of sleep significantly affects mood, performance, relationships, health, and even longevity. It’s time we learned to value sleep not as a luxury, but as a necessity.
Now Dr. James B. Maas, a Professor of Psychology at Cornell University and one of the foremost sleep researchers in the country, returns with SLEEP FOR SUCCESS! Everything You Must Know About Sleep but Are Too Tired to Ask (AuthorHouse; October 5, 2010; $ hardcover), co-authored with Rebecca S. Robbins. Not since his first bestseller, Power Sleep, published in 1998 and featured on the Today Show, Oprah, and 20/20, has Maas written a book that encompasses the latest research on sleep, much of it conducted in his own sleep lab at Cornell, where he tracked the sleeping habits of 450 students during the past year.
Beginning with two tests—the Maas Robbins Alertness Questionnaire, which includes 20 simple questions, and the Epworth Sleepiness Scale—readers can determine how well they sleep and the costs of sleep loss. Dr. Maas shares the latest findings that link poor sleep with colds/flu, unhealthy skin, weight gain, diabetes, heart disease, and cancer, as well as stress, anxiety and depression. According to Dr. Maas, the good news is that just one extra hour of sleep per night can greatly improve health, mood, and alertness—and has even been shown to reduce blood pressure.
Providing an entertaining crash course on what actually happens when our heads hit the pillow each night, Dr. Maas unlocks the mysteries of sleep and dreaming, such as why we sometimes wake with a jerk (not the person sleeping next to us), what lucid dreams are, why we have recurrent dreams, and what distinguishes nightmares from night terrors. He explains the 5 Stages of Sleep, including REM dream sleep and Stage 4, the deepest stage of sleep and closest form of human hibernation that many people don’t reach each night.
In the second half of SLEEP FOR SUCCESS!, Maas provides sure-fire strategies for getting a healthy night’s rest—from the best and worst bedtime snacks and the ideal bedroom environment for peaceful slumber, to tips on purchasing the perfect pillow and mattress and taming your snoring spouse (trick: tie a tennis ball to the back of your partner’s nightshirt to keep the perpetrator on his/her side and less prone to snoring). He also shares his Four Essential Keys to Sleeping Well:
* Essential Key # 1: Determine your Personal Sleep Quotient (or PSQ) and meet it nightly.
* Essential Key # 2: Go to bed at the same time every night and wake up naturally at the same times every morning, including weekends.
* Essential Key # 3: Get your required amount of sleep in one continuous block.
* Essential Key # 4: Make up for lost sleep as soon as possible.
Final sections of the book address sleep at all life stages, with advice for populations that need to pay special attention to sleep, such as teens, seniors, shift workers, athletes, and women who are pregnant or going through menopause. Dr. Maas also shares time-management advice to combat stress, tips for managing jetlag, and guidelines on sleep medications. Throughout the book, he rates devices designed to help you get better sleep, including the Sleep for Success! Smart Choice Pillows to ensure proper neck alignment, and the revolutionary ZEO Headband, a sleep-monitoring device that measures sleep quality.
People are stressed now more than ever, causing them to lose precious hours of shut eye every night and presenting serious consequences for their overall health, productivity and well-being. In SLEEP FOR SUCCESS!, the 65% of sleep-deprived Americans are provided with answers to their most common questions about sleep from an expert who has devoted 45 years to studying this fascinating subject and crucial part of our lives.
SLEEP FOR SUCCESS! Everything You Must Know About Sleep but
Are Too Tired to Ask
By Dr. James B. Maas and Rebecca S. Robbins
AuthorHouse
October 5, 2010
$24.95 hardcover
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