Sleep Education - Sleep Disorder and Sleep Health Information

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Healthy Sleep Awareness Project

The AASM is collaborating with Centers for Disease Control and the Sleep Research Society to promote healthy sleep.

Sleep Apnea Risks

Sleep apnea affects more than just older, overweight men. Discover the risks for obstructive sleep apnea.

Do This, Not That

Sleep hygiene help for when you can't sleep

Sleep Articles

Could Homer Simpson’s sleep apnea lead to his death?

Jul 30 2014...

Someone on The Simpsons will die in the season 26 premiere and it could be Homer Simpson, who has a newly-diagnosed sleep disorder. With a portly build and a large neck circumference, television’s most famous cartoon dad has long fit the profile of a person at-risk for sleep apnea.

The teaser (see below) for the fateful episode shows Homer not only has sleep apnea, but an extremely severe case. Worse yet, he does not appear to be adherent to his CPAP treatment. It’s been well documented that untreated sleep apnea is associated with mortality, since the disease can lead to heart disease, stroke and diabetes.

READ MORE>>
Sleep deprivation may create false memories

Jul 28 2014...

A new study published recently in Psychological Science suggests that not getting enough sleep may increase the likelihood of forming false memories.

The study was conducted by psychological scientist Steven J. Frenda of the University of California, Irvine and colleagues. Results show sleep-deprived people who viewed photos of a crime being committed and then read false information about the photos were more likely to report remembering the false details in the photos than were those who got a full night’s sleep. READ MORE>>
Poor sleep tied to lower physical activity in people with PTSD

Jul 21 2014...

A new study suggests that poor sleep quality predicts lower physical activity in people with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

“We found that sleep quality was more strongly associated with physical activity one year later than was having a diagnosis of PTSD,” said lead author Lisa Talbot, postdoctoral fellow at the San Francisco VA Medical Center and the University of California, San Francisco. “The longitudinal aspect of this study suggests that sleep may influence physical activity.” READ MORE>>
Interruptions, fragmented sleep may be same as barely any sleep

Jul 15 2014...

When parents of infant children talk about their lives, you’ll hear words like “exhausting” or “hellish” nearly as often as “miraculous” and “life changing.” New parents have notoriously disturbed sleep. Whether the crying is for a feeding, a diaper change or nothing at all, the result is always the same: fragmented sleep.

The price of multiple night waking is the same as staying up nearly the entire night. Scientifically speaking, the negative cognitive impact, shortened attention span and poor moods are equivalent to no more than four consecutive hours of sleep.

It’s hard to blame them for having mixed feelings about parenting. They often wake up in the morning feeling more tired than the night before. READ MORE>>
The way you handle stress may affect your sleep

Jul 11 2014...

A new study finds that the way we handle stress could cause insomnia.

Results show that coping with a stressful event by giving up on dealing with the stress or by using alcohol or drugs each helps trigger the relationship between stress exposure and insomnia development. READ MORE>>
Short sleep linked to aging brain

Jul 02 2014...

A new study finds that the less older adults sleep, the faster their brains age.

Results show that each hour of reduced sleep duration changed the annual expansion rate of the ventricles by 0.59 percent. Ventricles are the internal chambers of the brain. Their expansion is a reliable marker for the risk of cognitive impairment. The study also found that reduced sleep sped up the annual decline rate in cognitive performance by 0.67 percent. READ MORE>>