Our brains generate four stages of sleep, two lighter stages and two deeper stages.⁣ REM Sleep is one of the two deep stages of sleep.⁣ Brain waves during REM sleep are similar to wakefulness showing the brain is very active.⁣ REM Sleep is distinguished from all the...

A popular and sensible trend in the food industry is eating in season. Eating locally what’s available because it’s natural and grown in an organic manner not engineered or mass produced.    When I worked in Anchorage I thought about this a lot and how a similar...

I always tell people if you give me an hour of your time to talk to you about sleep, I’ll diagnose you with a sleep disorder. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, to me it means I can help you sleep better. And it’s a reflection of the current state of affairs in our...

Daylight saving time is coming to an end tomorrow night. Did you know it dates all the way back to Benjamin Franklin who proposed it as a way to conserve energy?    However it was not until WWI that it was actually implemented and used for that purpose. It was then...

Dear Cosmo. We had a good run. We spooned and we snuggled. There were so many mornings we slept-in together. You even purred on my baby bump when I was pregnant with T.S. which was so soothing. I will always treasure those times but the honeymoon is over. It is time...

✈️ Social jet lag is a term used to describe a pattern of sleep-wake characterized by a delayed schedule on weekends, usually by several hours. In other words, staying up later and sleeping in later on the weekends when compared to the weekdays. ⁣Social jet lag...

A lot of people ask if I recommend a mattress, pillow, sleep tracker, etc for sleep. ⁣⁣⁣ One of the thoughts that comes to mind is being crammed like a sardine into a tent, at high altitude, pitched on a glacier with an inch of foam for cushion, with climbing partners...

I don’t know about you but the stress of the COVID-19 pandemic has definitely been making me have more vivid dreams and even mild anxiety dreams.⁣⁣ Anxiety dreams are also known as nightmares and are usually recurring dreams that contain disturbing mental experiences...

Insomnia is one of my areas of expertise within sleep medicine. It is challenging to post a short blurb or have a quick chat with someone about insomnia that is going to make a big difference because insomnia is a complex and multi-faceted problem that can’t be...

A lot of products are emerging on the market for blocking blue light. What is all the hype about blue light? There are a group of cells in the retina responsible for transmitting non-image related information to the brain. ⁣⁣These retinal ganglion cells are most...

Sleep Hygiene by itself is not an effective treatment for insomnia! Dr. Nathaniel Kleitman (pioneer in sleep medicine) first described “The Hygiene of Sleep” in Sleep and Wakefulness which was published in 1939. ⁣ Later in 1977, insomnia expert Peter Hauri coined the...

To wrap up this series on chronic insomnia and CBT-I let me share some final thoughts. Like any treatment in medicine, appropriate patient selection is key. Here are some factors I consider:    ✅ Motivated for non-pharmacological treatment  ✅ Co-existing psychiatric...