Here at Slumber Ease, we are all about helping you get amazing sleep regardless of whether you choose to buy one of our high-quality custom mattresses. This week we’re bringing you more of the latest sleep resources, research, and news.
Last month we heard about the high-tech sleep pods in Louisiana State University’s football locker room, reviewed our favorite sleep lotions, and found out that a warm bath taken 1-2 hours before bed can help you sleep. Learn more about all that in our July Best Sleep Roundup blog post.
Best Sleep Apps:
Relax Melodies allows you to combine melodies and sounds with guided meditations and/or brainwave beats. You can create a wide variety of sound combinations to quiet your mind and relax. The app includes exercises developed in collaboration with sleep professionals.
Relax Melodies is available for Android and iOS. You can try it for free, but you must pay for a subscription to access the full array of sounds and functions.
Sleep Cycle Power Nap helps you take strategic naps. You can set the time for a 20-minute power nap or a full 90-minute sleep cycle. The app uses the phone’s accelerometer to sense when you fall asleep and then starts the timer to ensure your nap is the ideal length of time.
This app is available for iOS and costs $1.99 to download.
Sleep Science Roundup:
Attitude is everything! Research shows that optimistic people sleep better and longer than pessimists. Individuals with greater levels of optimism were 74% more likely to report no symptoms of insomnia and 78% more likely to report very good sleep quality.
The researchers aren’t sure exactly how optimism influences sleep patterns, but they hypothesize that positivity may promote better stress coping mechanisms that in turn promote good rest. Previous research found that optimists between ages 45 and 84 are twice as likely to have ideal heart health as non-optimists.
Your insomnia might be genetic. New research shows that approximately 1 in 300 people have an extremely early natural sleep cycle known as advanced sleep phase (ASP), and most of these cases ran in families.
Meanwhile, others may have the opposite genetic problem: delayed sleep phase (DSP). A previous study found that a dominant genetic mutation may cause some people to be unable to fall asleep before midnight regardless of the time they have to wake up.
Regardless of your sleep phase tendencies, it’s important to be gentle with yourself when you can’t sleep. If you need to stay up later, push your bedtime back 20 minutes per day and use bright light stimulation to keep yourself awake until half an hour before bedtime. Night owls who need to fall asleep earlier can avoid stimulating activities and caffeine before bedtime.
Better Sleep in the News:
You can sleep in a sandcastle on Coney Island for $29 a night. Master sand sculptor Matt Long, who was a cast member on the Travel Channel’s reality show Sand Masters for two seasons, constructed this 18-square-foot “sand-sion.”
The project involved 100 tons of sand at Luna Park. You can find sea shells, sea stars, coral, and other marine decorations inside, along with a well-stocked bar cart.
Penguin Random House is releasing audiobooks intended to send listeners to sleep. The audiobooks will convey “descriptive narratives” without much plot in a soothing voice. They will also include soothing background sounds like soft rainfall and lapping water to help the listener relax.
Publisher Richard Lennon said the stories were carefully planned to be “engaging enough not to put you off” without boring the listener, since boredom doesn’t help people sleep. Collections of “Sleep Tales” will be released for adults and children.
About Slumber Ease
Slumber Ease Mattress Factory creates hand-made custom mattresses in Marysville, WA, USA. We believe in custom fitting each mattress based on our clients’ individual health needs, body, sleep preferences, need for motion isolation, and any other concerns they may have.
Stop by our factory showroom to get started on creating the perfect mattress for you.
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