From the start, I wanted The Sleep Revolution to include both the most important recent scientific discoveries on sleep and a wide range of human stories and experiences. And, as I kept going, I kept finding more voices to include. So in many ways it became the book equivalent of co-sleeping—with more and more people and ideas crawling in. The book is all the richer for it, and I’m tremendously grateful to everyone who has helped make it what it is.
Sleep has been one of my passions for years, but it was my great friend and literary agent Jennifer Rudolph Walsh who saw the potential for a book all about sleep. She sent me on this amazing journey and has been with me every step of the way, giving me feedback, guidance, and wisdom.
The Sleep Revolution is built on a mountain of scientific research, and there was nothing I cared about more than establishing the importance of sleep in our lives in a scientifically rigorous way. My profound thanks to Brian Levin, Anna McGrady, Margaux McGrath, Marcos Saldivar, and David Sze for their skill and commitment in researching, organizing, and fact-checking every last detail—including the 1,200 endnotes—as the book expanded and evolved over time.
I’m deeply grateful to my editor, Roger Scholl, for his masterful editing of the book and for encouraging me to add more anecdotes from my own family as well as from people I’ve met and from HuffPost readers around the world. This is our third book together and it gets better and better every time! Thank you also to Ed Faulkner, my UK editor at Random House, for all his insightful edits, including his guidance on how to give the book a global resonance. I’m so lucky to work with the amazing team at the Crown Publishing Group: president Maya Mavjee; Aaron Wehner, publisher of the Harmony imprint; and editorial director of Harmony, Diana Baroni. Also production editor Patricia Shaw, the guardian of the process that turned the manuscript into a book; Chris Brand for the book’s inspired jacket design, and Elizabeth Rendfleisch for her smart and accessible book design; Dannalie Diaz, editorial assistant to Roger Scholl; and the entire Crown sales force for all they’ve done to ensure that the book and its message get out into the world. And a special shout-out to Crown’s director of marketing, Julie Cepler, and senior marketing manager Christina Foxley for all the imagination they have brought to the book’s rollout, and to executive publicist Penny Simon and senior publicist Rebecca Marsh for all their work and commitment to making sure people actually, you know, read it.
Then there’s Stephen Sherrill and Greg Beyer, who edited countless drafts, greatly improving all of them. And deep thanks to Roy Sekoff—this is my eighth book he has edited through our sixteen years of working together. Also many thanks to Carolyn Gregoire, Suzy Strutner, Damon Beres, Tyler Kingkade, and Krithika Varagur, who have written about sleep and meditations, sleep and hotels, sleep and colleges, and sleep and technology on The Huffington Post and whose research has been invaluable.
I reached out to many scientists, doctors, and historians—studying everything from REM sleep and chronobiology to dream incubation and segmented sleep—and was awed by the generosity of their responses, which have enriched every aspect of the book. So my profound gratitude to Jennifer Ailshire, M. Safwan Badr, John Bargh, Mathias Basner, Christian Benedict, Rakesh Bhattacharjee, Michael Breus, Kelly Bulkeley, Victor Carrion, Mary Carskadon, Anjan Chatterjee, Christopher Colwell, Elizabeth Damato, Richard Davidson, Horacio de la Iglesia, Michael Decker, William Dement, David Dinges, Murali Doraiswamy, Helene Ensellem, Russell Foster, Indira Gurubhagavatula, Gregg Jacobs, Harvey Karp, Paul Kelley, Kristen Knutson, Frank Lipman, Cheri Mah, Pittman McGehee, James McKenna, Emmanuel Mignot, Rubin Naiman, Maiken Nedergaard, Matthieu Ricard, Rebecca Robbins, Till Roenneberg, Michael Roizen, Clifford Saper, Clare Sauro, Richard Schwab, Claire Sexton, Jerome Siegel, John Timmerman, Wendy Troxel, Eus van Someren, Joan Williams, Chris Winter, Heather Cleland Woods, Carol Worthman, Duncan Young, and Janet Zand.
Patrick Fuller generously read the entire manuscript and helped translate complex scientific findings into layman’s terms, and Colin Espie created the sleep questionnaire in the appendix. And my deep thanks go to Alan Derickson, Kat Duff, and Roger Ekirch for their work on the history of sleep, which has informed and broadened my understanding, and for taking the time to read the manuscript and send suggestions.
I’m deeply grateful to Sheryl Sandberg for reading an early draft of the manuscript and not only identifying missed opportunities but actually sending me line-by-line edits and requests for more humor in the middle of all the science! And also to Sherry Turkle for her thorough edits that vastly improved the structure of the book and for reminding me that I didn’t need to include every single scientific study.
Special thanks to Paul Kaye, whose wisdom and unwavering support have helped me both in writing the book and on my own journey to prioritizing sleep in my life, and to Patricia Fitzgerald, our HuffPost wellness editor, for sharing her insights about acupuncture, herbs, homeopathy, and all sorts of natural ways to improve our sleep.
To Patty Gift, John Montorio, Elaine Lipworth, Faith Bethelard, Shelley Reid, Fran Lasker, Jan Shepherd, Timothea Stewart, and Joan Witkowski, many thanks for all the thoughtful edits.
Thank you to Dan Katz, Jeff Swafford, Katie Spear, and Horacio Fabiano for all their support, and also to the great team that was responsible for bringing the book to many countries around the world: Monica Lee, Lena Auerbuch, Tracy Fisher, Rafaella De Angelis, Elizabeth Sheinkman, Eric Zohn, Katie Giarla, and Elizabeth Goodstein.
And finally, I want to thank my sister, Agapi, who has walked alongside me since childhood in our shared quest for better sleep. She read every draft multiple times, reminded me of stories I had forgotten, and made it better in so many ways. And my daughters, Christina and Isabella, who I’m happy to say were converts to sleep at an early age, and who are actually now checking up on me to make sure I’m getting all the sleep I need when I’m traveling. One great unintended consequence of Isabella reading the Dreams chapter is that she now pays much more attention to her dreams and shares them with me, which has led to some fascinating conversations.
I dedicated this book to all the millions of people around the world who are sick and tired of being sick and tired, and longing for a good night’s sleep. I hope that The Sleep Revolution will help them get it.
We are in the midst of a sleep-deprivation crisis, and this has profound consequences – on our health, our job performance, our relationships and our happiness. In this book, Arianna Huffington boldly asserts that what is needed is nothing short of a sleep revolution. Only by renewing our relationship with sleep can we take back control of our lives.
Through a sweeping, scientifically rigorous and deeply personal exploration of sleep from all angles, Arianna delves into the new golden age of sleep science that reveals the vital role sleep plays in our every waking moment and every aspect of our health – from weight gain, diabetes and heart disease to cancer and Alzheimer’s.
In The Sleep Revolution, Arianna shows how our cultural dismissal of sleep as time wasted not only compromises our health and our decision making but also undermines our work lives, our personal lives and even our sex lives. She explores the latest science on what exactly is going on while we sleep and dream. She takes on the dangerous sleeping-pill industry and confronts all the ways our addiction to technology disrupts our sleep. She also offers a range of recommendations and tips from leading scientists on how we can achieve better and more restorative sleep, and harness its incredible power.
In today’s fast-paced, always-connected, perpetually harried and sleep-deprived world, our need for a good night’s sleep is more important – and elusive – than ever. The Sleep Revolution both sounds the alarm on our worldwide sleep crisis and provides a detailed road map to the great awakening that can help transform our lives, our communities and our world.
ARIANNA HUFFINGTON is the co-founder, president and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post Media Group. Her most recent book, Thrive, was an international success and a No.1 New York Times bestseller. Among her other bestselling books are Third World America and On Becoming Fearless.
This sleep-quality questionnaire—the Sleep Condition Indicator—was developed by Colin Espie, professor of sleep medicine at the University of Oxford and a cofounder of the sleep-education app Sleepio. Consider it a helpful, science-backed tool to start a conversation with yourself, your family, and your friends, and a useful reference as you take steps to renew or sustain your relationship with sleep.
To start, circle the most accurate response for each question. At the end, add up your points to get your sleep assessment, along with tips for improvement.
Thinking about a typical night in the last month . . .
1. How long does it take you to fall asleep?
0–15 min. | 4 points |
16–30 min. | 3 points |
31–45 min. | 2 points |
46–60 min. | 1 point |
>60 min. | 0 points |
2. If you then wake up one or more times during the night, how long are you awake in total? (Add up all the time you are awake.)
0–15 min. | 4 points |
16–30 min. | 3 points |
31–45 min. | 2 points |
46–60 min. | 1 point |
>60 min. | 0 points |
3. If your final wake-up time occurs before you intend to wake up, how much earlier is this?
I don’t wake up too early/Up to 15 min. early | 4 points |
16–30 min. early | 3 points |
31–45 min. early | 2 points |
46–60 min. early | 1 point |
>60 min. early | 0 points |
4. How many nights a week do you have a problem with your sleep?
0–1 | 4 points |
2 | 3 points |
3 | 2 points |
4 | 1 point |
5–7 | 0 points |
5. How would you rate your sleep quality?
Very good | 4 points |
Good | 3 points |
Average | 2 points |
Poor | 1 point |
Very poor | 0 points |
Thinking about the past month, to what extent has poor sleep . . .
6. affected your mood, energy, or relationships?
Not at all | 4 points |
A little | 3 points |
Somewhat | 2 points |
Much | 1 point |
Very much | 0 points |
7. affected your concentration, productivity, or ability to stay awake?
Not at all | 4 points |
A little | 3 points |
Somewhat | 2 points |
Much | 1 point |
Very much | 0 points |
8. troubled you in general?
Not at all | 4 points |
A little | 3 points |
Somewhat | 2 points |
Much | 1 point |
Very much | 0 points |
Finally . . .
9. How long have you had a problem with your sleep?
I don’t have a problem/<1 month | 4 points |
1–2 months | 3 points |
3–6 months | 2 points |
7–12 months | 1 point |
>1 year | 0 points |
Now add up your total score and enter it here: _________
Use the following as a guide:
0–9Your sleep problems seem to be severe. You should definitely try to get some help.
10–18You have some sleep problems. It’s important to examine your sleep habits and see how you can make changes.
19–27Your sleep is in good shape, but there are still many steps you can take to make it even better.
28–36Your sleep is in great shape. Keep doing what you’re doing and spread the word!
For more information, go to the Sleepio app or www.sleepio.com.
To help you disengage from the stresses of the day and prepare your mind and body for sleep, here’s a list of recommended guided meditations—as well as some soothing music and other relaxing audio guides.
First, here’s a meditation created for The Sleep Revolution. You can also hear my sister, Agapi Stassinopoulos, reading it online at bit.ly/meditationforsleep (she sounds exactly like me!).
Settle into a comfortable position. Take in a deep breath and then, very gently and naturally, exhale and let go. Now take in another breath, and this time as you exhale, breathe away the day and any worries. Gently relax your jaw and take in another breath, this time exhaling away any concerns, upsets, and irritations. Just breathe them away.
Now relax more deeply and begin to breathe normally, observing the rising and falling of your breath. If a thought intrudes, just come back to your breath. Don’t follow the thought, don’t get caught up in the thought. Just return to your breathing—not forcing the breathing, just allowing it. It’s as if you are being breathed. With each breath you take, you find yourself getting more and more relaxed, any tension dissolving away.
Be aware of the sensations in your back, your arms, your shoulders, your legs—all of them relaxing more deeply into the surface of your bed. No matter how relaxed you think you are, there is always a deeper place of relaxation.
As you continue to let go, you will find yourself relaxing more deeply with each inhale and exhale. In this state of relaxation, you are aware that the room you are in is filled with light. It’s as if a pure white mist pervades it. This light surrounds you and fills you, for your highest good. Feel the protection and the warmth of this mist around you and observe it as it changes color.
Right now you see this white mist turn to a beautiful red, which brings you balance.
Now this red gently turns to a vibrant orange that fills you with an inner strength.
Take in another deep breath as it now turns a bright yellow. Surrounded by this yellow mist, you let go, relax, and attune to your deeper self.
The mist now turns to a soft, natural, healing green. If any part of your body or your consciousness needs healing, let that part absorb this soft green healing color.
You find yourself relaxing even more deeply, smiling a very soft smile, for you know that all is well.
The green mist now turns to blue, signaling a spiritual attunement with your deeper self, the part of you that remains loving, peaceful, and joyful no matter what’s going on. As this blue pervades the room and your consciousness, it strengthens the sense that all is well and everything is in its right and proper place.
Remain aware of the rising and falling of your breath as the mist gently turns to a rich purple that pervades the room, transmuting any negative thoughts and feelings. Be willing to release any disturbances into this purple and see them replaced by unconditional love.
Now the mist becomes a pure white light, comforting and relaxing you. You breathe in and out through your heart. You breathe in love, and you breathe out love. Continue to breathe this love in and out through your heart and feel this energy of peace and calm arc from your heart center into the center of your head. As you breathe in love and breathe out love, another arc begins to form from your heart into your belly, below your navel.
Your heart, your mind, and your whole body are now in harmony. All you need to do is follow the rising and falling of your breath, in and out, silently repeating the word “love” or “peace” or “joy”—whatever word works for you.
It’s as if you’ve become a finely tuned instrument, and the sound you’re playing is one of pure harmony. As you continue to breathe in and out of your heart, you are aware of a deep centeredness, a peace and serenity that go from your heart into infinity.
At this point there is only love, only harmony and peace. As you follow this love, harmony, and peace in and out of your heart, you are ready to relax into a deep, restful sleep where you regenerate and renew yourself.
Here are twelve other meditations compiled by our HuffPost senior health and science writer, Carolyn Gregoire. To avoid the temptations of having your smartphone by your bed, I recommend putting these meditations on an iPod. But if you’re one of those strong enough to resist the texting and social-media temptations of your phone, there are four meditation apps at the end of the list.
1. Body-Scan Meditation from Mindfulness: Finding Peace in a Frantic World by Dr. Mark Williams and Dr. Danny Penmar
Allow yourself to move into a state of relaxation with a fourteen-minute body-scan meditation recommended for sleep.
This meditation guides you to gently focus on your breathing and then to redirect your attention from your overcrowded mind by releasing lingering tensions from the day.
Available for free download at www.franticworld.com.
2. “Tuck Me In: Relaxing Yourself to Sleep” by Martha Ringer
Martha Ringer, a productivity consultant, created this soothing eight-minute meditation to recapture the feeling of comfort and safety we felt as children being tucked in to bed.
Available for $0.99 on Amazon.com, Google Play, and iTunes.
3. Deep Calm by Dr. Andrew Weil and Joshua Leeds
Deep Calm features psychoacoustically rearranged relaxing classical melodies from composers including Schubert, Chopin, and Beethoven, selected by holistic-health expert Dr. Andrew Weil and sound researcher Joshua Leeds. A change from nature noises and synthesizer soundscapes, it helps calm the mind and prepares the body for sleep.
Available starting at $7.99 on Amazon.com, Google Play, iTunes, and Sounds True.
4. Delta Sleep System by Dr. Jeffrey Thompson
In two tranquil thirty-minute tracks, acoustics expert and composer Jeffrey Thompson will help prepare your mind for sleep. Sounds of wind, flowing water, and chimes are layered on tones designed to increase delta-brain-wave activity, which is associated with deep sleep.
Available starting at $7.99 on Amazon.com, Google Play, iTunes, and Sounds True.
5. “Dying Each Day” Meditation by John-Roger
Invoking the traditional biblical idea that we are born and die each day, spiritual teacher John-Roger’s “Dying Each Day” meditation guides you in finding stillness at the end of the day by letting go of your attachments. As you surrender your challenges and worries, you’ll experience an expanded sense of peace and love—and deeper sleep.
Free download available from the Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness online store. Go to bit.ly/dyingeachdaymeditation and use promo code 4HUFF1.
6. “Body Balance” Meditation by John-Roger
In this meditation, John-Roger guides you to release any tensions, pains, or stuck energy from the day through an exercise in progressive relaxation. Once your body is relaxed, you’ll imagine yourself being transformed by a healing white light, which will help you drift off to sleep.
Free download available from the Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness online store. Go to bit.ly/bodybalancemeditation and use promo code 4MS1A8.
7. The Zen Effect by Rolfe Kent
This album from the composer Rolfe Kent uses soothing sounds aimed at stilling the mind in each twenty- to thirty-minute track.
Available starting at $5.49 on Amazon.com and iTunes.
8. Majesty by Aeoliah
This series of four ten-minute meditative tracks from Aeoliah is intended to lull you into a deep sleep with tranquil synthesizer music and choral voices.
Available starting at $3.97 on Amazon.com, Google Play, and iTunes.
9. Sleep Meditations from Headspace
The popular meditation app Headspace, created by the mindfulness teacher and former Buddhist monk Andy Puddicombe, features a collection of thirty short meditations designed for promoting sleep, as well as two individual ten-minute sleep meditations. Guided by Puddicombe’s soothing voice, you’ll begin to quiet your racing thoughts, and prepare your mind for rest.
Available for free download from the Apple App Store and Google Play; $7.99/month with a yearly subscription.
10. iSleep Easy: Meditations for Restful Sleep
Created by the founders of the popular podcast and website Meditation Oasis, iSleep Easy includes a collection of guided meditations, sleep playlists, and “wee hours rescue,” which allows you to create a customized combination of voice-guided audio and relaxing background music. You may want to start with the short but sweet “Put Away the Day” meditation, which guides you in putting your concerns into a container, where they’ll be waiting for you the next day!
Available for download from the Apple App Store ($4.99) and Google Play ($2.99).
11. “Fade” and “Hello” from Buddhify
Designed to “turn down the senses” so that the mind can prepare for sleep, the meditation app Buddhify’s “Fade” meditation leads you through a process of “fading out” each of the five senses as you fall asleep. Another meditation, “Hello,” guides you in a playful mindfulness technique of naming and saying hello to various emotions and thought patterns that might be keeping you awake.
Available for download from the Apple App Store ($4.99) and Google Play ($2.99).
12. 7 Days of Sleep by Calm.com
Calm.com, a website that offers short guided and nonguided meditations featuring beautiful nature backdrops, also offers a range of sleep meditations. Its 7 Days of Sleep program features a series of daily meditations meant to be used over the course of a week, which teach a range of techniques for better rest. The eleven-minute meditations—including “Relax the Body,” “Eliminate Worry,” and “Thinking like a Good Sleeper”—will help you get around the most common roadblocks to a good night’s rest.
Available for free download from the Apple App Store and Google Play; $3.33/month with a yearly subscription.
“The Way Forward” highlights many of the hotels across the country and around the world taking steps to help their guests get the best sleep possible. Here are some more hotels that are tapping into the creativity of designers, engineers, and scientists for the purpose of improving guests’ sleep.
CORINTHIA HOTEL LONDON
(LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM)
The Corinthia Hotel London wants to make sleep the main event of your stay. If you book its “Sumptuous Sleep Retreat,” you get the expertise of a sleep professional, a nutritionist, and a chef in addition to blackout curtains, a choice of pillows, and white-noise machines. The retreat also includes a 120-minute sleep ritual that includes a foot massage and hot-stone scalp massage, specifically designed to reduce stress after a day of travel and technology immersion. The spa also offers sleep acupuncture, sleep osteopathy, and a specialized Ayurvedic treatment with aromatherapy oils.
www.corinthia.com/hotels/london
CROWNE PLAZA HOTELS & RESORTS
For its Crowne Plaza Hotels, the InterContinental Hotel Group has created a Sleep Advantage program, so that guests who seek peace and quiet can be grouped together on “quiet zone” floors. In addition to like-minded sleep-loving neighbors, the zones have reduced housekeeping and engineering activity. Guests also receive sleep kits with lavender sprays and, in some rooms, special headboards that are padded and curved to significantly reduce noise.
www.crowneplaza.com
FOUR SEASONS HOTELS AND RESORTS
Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts developed its own custom heat-absorbing Simmons mattress, with a stabilizing feature to keep you still when your partner gets up or moves during the night. And if you love your bed, you can buy it! Four Seasons also soundproofs each of its rooms by placing heating and cooling systems in the ceiling to reduce noise, insulating walls and doors, and utilizing headboard-to-headboard room layouts (so TV noise does not disturb guests in the next room). It also offers a sleep-focused turndown service in which a staffer will dim the lights, adjust the temperature to a sleep-friendly zone, and put on soft music. But don’t expect a chocolate on your pillow. Four Seasons has replaced the traditional treat (because of the caffeine and sugar) with herbal tea and other sleep-friendly amenities.
www.fourseasons.com
HILTON HOTELS AND RESORTS
Hilton’s Canopy bed is the result of a partnership with Serta, with fabric that regulates heat flow. Given that sleeping in a cooler environment leads to better rest, the bed also incorporates memory foam infused with Serta’s MicroSupport gel to reduce pressure and therefore reduce heat buildup in the body overnight. And guests can purchase the bed.
www.hilton.com
MARRIOTT INTERNATIONAL
In 2013, Marriott opened a 10,000-square-foot lab in Bethesda, Maryland, where the hotel chain can try out various room and bed layouts. Guests who stay at the company’s JW Marriott properties can select the Nightly Refresh Program. The “curated turndown service” includes Revive Oil, an essential oil that JW Marriott provides in partnership with Aromatherapy Associates.
www.marriott.com
MGM GRAND LAS VEGAS HOTEL & CASINO
(LAS VEGAS, NEVADA)
At the MGM Grand Las Vegas Hotel & Casino, Delos, a wellness real estate company, collaborated with the Cleveland Clinic and Dr. Deepak Chopra to pioneer Stay Well hotel rooms, which feature air purification, vitamin C–infused showers, aromatherapy, a healthy menu, and special lighting timed to circadian rhythms. “Light levels,”1 Paul Scialla, the founder of Delos, says, “constitute one of the most powerful external cues the body uses to align its circadian rhythms with the solar day.” So Stay Well rooms feature soft, warm white lighting to minimize disruption to circadian rhythms, subtle red lighting at night that does not suppress melatonin, dawn simulators to wake guests naturally, and, in the morning, an energizing light that has the effect of sunlight.
www.mgmgrand.com
STARWOOD HOTELS & RESORTS
In 2011, Starwood, the parent company of Westin Hotels & Resorts, opened an 11,000-square-foot lab in Stamford, Connecticut, where it has tested lighting technology that could help guests sleep better. Its researchers are also testing how the feeling of natural surroundings affects our sleep. This involves walls covered with patterns that mimic a leafy forest, curtains with images of dragonfly wings, and terrariums in rooms.
Some sleep-friendly features at the Westin are already on the market, such as its Heavenly Bed, so beloved that the hotel has sold one hundred thousand of them. The Heavenly Bed features an all-white design, three-hundred-thread-count Egyptian cotton bedding, five pillows, three sheets, and a custom-designed mattress.
www.starwoodhotels.com
The new sleep consciousness, of course, extends to children. At the Hilton Waikoloa Village on the Big Island of Hawaii, there’s a special kids’ turndown service, which features books on Hawaiian culture and flash cards with stories about the Hawaiian goddess Pele. Great Wolf Lodge, a chain of family resorts in the United States and Canada, offers a pajama story time in front of their fireplaces. And at the Ritz-Carlton on Amelia Island in Florida, kids can enjoy the “Pirate Tuck In,” with costumed “pirates” bearing cookies and milk (hopefully the new sleep consciousness has reached the pirate community, so they know to make those cookies light on before-bedtime sugar).
www.hiltonwaikoloavillage.com
www.greatwolf.com
www.ritzcarlton.com/en/hotels/florida/amelia-island
With some hotels, sleep enhancement comes less from added bells and whistles and more from what’s taken away. We’re often our own worst enemies when it’s time to shut down our devices and turn off our connection to the world. So some hotels are doing what they can to help.
FOUR SEASONS RESORT COSTA RICA AT PENINSULA PAPAGAYO (PENINSULA PAPAGAYO, COSTA RICA)
This hotel offers a Disconnect to Reconnect program, in which you surrender your smartphone for a day. For your withdrawal pains, you’ll get it back, safe and sound, in a new case.
www.fourseasons.com/costarica
MOUNT SNOW RESORT
(WEST DOVER, VERMONT)
To get parents and kids working together toward better sleep, this hotel offers a Family Camp package where mobile devices are highly discouraged. Wi-Fi is available only in the camp’s main lodge, and most rooms are Wi-Fi-free. Camp staff encourages families to put down their devices and enjoy games, water sports, chef-made meals, and the great outdoors as they slow down and connect with one another instead of with the entire world.
www.mountsnow.com
PETIT ST. VINCENT ISLAND AND RESORT
(PETIT ST. VINCENT)
All accommodations at this Grenadine island resort are free of telephones, television, and Wi-Fi. Guests use a flag system to signal for room service or any other service (including, presumably, requests for more flags?).
www.petitstvincent.com
RIVERPLACE HOTEL (PORTLAND, OREGON)
The RiverPlace Hotel in Portland offers a service where you can check your smartphones, tablets, and laptops in a safe and in exchange receive truffles, a private bath butler who personally draws a bath with amenities such as bath oil and salts, and wine (which you can use to toast being unplugged and in the moment). Sounds like a great trade!
www.riverplacehotel.com
VILLA STÉPHANIE (BADEN-BADEN, GERMANY)
Here you can choose a room that allows you to flip a switch and shut off all online connections to the room. Maybe someday this will be standard in all hotels—and homes.
www.brenners.com/eng/villa-stephanie
And here are a few other hotels that prioritize sleep, assembled by HuffPost associate lifestyle editor Suzy Strutner:
AKA (NEW YORK, NEW YORK)
If you find yourself in need of an extended stay in New York for business or pleasure, AKA’s four Manhattan properties have partnered with the New York University School of Medicine Sleep Disorders Center and the New York Sleep Institute to have experts available for in-room sleep screenings. Complimentary features of the Sleep Institute include in-room light boxes, blackout curtains, and sleep seminars on topics such as bedtime routines and sleep apnea.
www.stayaka.com
THE BODYHOLIDAY (CASTRIES CITY, ST. LUCIA)
At this Caribbean island getaway, a two-day Sleep Restoration Program offers a range of massage, bodywork, aromatherapy, and nutritional counseling to send you back home with better sleep habits.
www.thebodyholiday.com
FAIRMONT VANCOUVER AIRPORT (VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA)
Nothing quite says terrible night’s sleep like an airport hotel. But this one, within the busy Vancouver International Airport and a two-minute walk from the baggage-claim carousels, has soundproofed rooms with triple-paned windows. For jet-lagged travelers, there’s the Quiet Zone, with no service interruptions or knocks on the door from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m.
www.fairmont.com/vancouver-airport-richmond
GRAND RESORT BAD RAGAZ (BAD RAGAZ, SWITZERLAND)
In Switzerland, while you’re at the Grand Resort Bad Ragaz, you can get a thorough sleep diagnosis that includes an EEG, respiration monitoring, and blood-oxygen-level readings, all of which its medical staff will analyze and then make recommendations for how you can improve your sleep.
www.resortragaz.ch
THE HERMITAGE HOTEL
(NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE)
The pillow menu here isn’t just an afterthought amenity, it’s a passion. If the goose-down, buckwheat, latex-foam, and memory-foam pillows waiting in your room aren’t enough, call for reinforcements: neck pillows, body pillows, water pillows, reading pillows, leg pillows, diamond-filled pillows (okay, the last one is made up). And if you develop a particularly strong pillow bond during your stay, they’re all available for purchase.
www.thehermitagehotel.com
KAMALAYA KOH SAMUI
(KOH SAMUI, THAILAND)
Kamalaya’s Sleep Enhancement program is for guests who are serious about renewing their relationship with sleep. Since that takes time, the hotel asks for a five-night minimum commitment. Influenced by traditional Chinese medicine, the program takes you through a range of therapies and treatments—from acupuncture, yoga, and herbal foot baths to Ayurvedic massages—all designed to help you develop healthy sleep habits that will stay with you long after you head home.
www.kamalaya.com
LIBRARY HOTEL COLLECTION (NEW YORK, NEW YORK; BUDAPEST, HUNGARY; PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC)
This line of four boutique hotels in Manhattan (with additional locations in Budapest and Prague) offers a carefully curated Escape to Serenity program, where you can request a range of complimentary items that help you prepare for sleep, such as fleece blankets, feather-bed mattress toppers, hypoallergenic Micro Gel fiber pillows, and headphones that emit soothing sounds as you fall asleep.
www.libraryhotel.com
LORIEN HOTEL & SPA (ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA)
Here guests find a “dream button” on their room phone that lets them choose from the Dream Service Menu. There are scent diffusers to relieve tension, bedtime books for a calming lullaby read, and sleep masks to block the outside world. Choose from an extensive list of pillows, including a magnetic pillow that reduces swelling. For little ones, the menu also includes children’s books and special night-lights.
www.lorienhotelandspa.com
MIRAVAL RESORT & SPA (TUCSON, ARIZONA)
This property in Tucson features Definity Digital Good Night LED bulbs, which reduce blue-light exposure to better maintain your body’s natural sleep cycle. The resort consulted with a sleep specialist to outfit rooms with the bulbs, which use the same light-filtering technology developed for astronauts in space.
www.miravalresorts.com
PARK HYATT BEAVER CREEK RESORT AND SPA
(BEAVER CREEK, COLORADO)
Working with sleep expert Nancy Rothstein, Beaver Creek has introduced the Sound Sleep Initiatives to improve sleep for guests and employees alike. There’s a TV channel dedicated to sleep (with music composed by sleep expert Jeffrey Thompson), slumber kits including eye masks and earplugs, relaxing massages, and a “sleep elixir” with chamomile and apple cider to help guests power down.
www.beavercreek.hyatt.com
PARK HYATT TOKYO (TOKYO, JAPAN)
Here guests are invited to prepare for bed with a complimentary Good Night Sleep Stretch. Guided by a physical trainer, the thirty-minute session uses stretching, essential oils, and herbal tea to help guests unwind in a scenic studio forty-seven stories above the busy city. You’ll also practice breathing exercises to loosen your muscles and prepare for rest.
www.tokyo.park.hyatt.com
SIX SENSES HOTELS RESORTS SPAS
With properties all over the world, Six Senses offers a Yogic Sleep program for guests, focusing on yoga nidra, the sleeplike state that yogis enter during meditation. Rooms are set to the optimal temperature for deep sleep, and “pillow mist” aromatherapy products and relaxing music are part of the guest experience. Guests receive a sleep journal to clear the mind, prepare for the day ahead, or log thoughts on their trip, as well as a guide filled with sleep tips to take home.
www.sixsenses.com
SWISSÔTEL BERLIN (BERLIN, GERMANY)
Good sleep habits follow you throughout the day at Swissôtel Berlin, a luxury property on one of the city’s most hectic streets. Book the DeepSleep Package to awaken with a “power drink” that includes maté tea and a bright-light lamp session to energize your body for the day. Aromatherapy, calming drinks, and specialized “sound pillows” with brain-wave-calming beats help you wind down.
www.swissotel.com/hotels/berlin
WESTHOUSE (NEW YORK, NEW YORK)
Through a partnership with the innovative specialty sleep retailer Sleep Studio, WestHouse lets you tailor your sleep experience with sleep masks, aromatherapy oils, and Sleep Studio’s proprietary mattresses.
www.westhousehotelnewyork.com
It’s not really a surprise that a quality mattress is a key factor in getting a good night’s sleep. And a great deal of scientific, engineering, and design skill is being poured into the mattress industry, which has become its own hub of sleep-related innovation.
This change reflects a larger shift, away from dealing with sleep as some sort of necessary evil and toward savoring it and enhancing its many benefits. That extends to the experience of buying a bed. As Michael Silverstein, a Boston Consulting Group senior partner, put it, “The market for beds is a very large one,1 with a high degree of dissatisfaction.” So the would-be disruptors have flooded that market and injected some twenty-first-century verve into what just a few years ago was one of the most stagnant and, yes, sleepy industries out there. Not long ago, mattresses were advertised mostly in holiday weekend newspaper inserts you threw out or used to clean up spills. Now they’re at the center of a start-up revolution.
CASPER
Casper offers one mattress and sells directly to consumers. It has an interesting origin story. As CEO Philip Krim said, he met his fellow cofounders while working for different companies at a shared workspace in New York City. “We noticed that everyone was drinking green juice and working at standing desks to stay healthy and increase productivity,2 yet sleep was something that everyone sacrificed,” he said. “Even worse: they bragged about how little they slept.” So they saw a business opportunity. “We realized sleep is something that you should take seriously,” he said. And Casper was born. And in 2015, Casper launched Van Winkle’s, a news website dedicated to all things sleep.
www.casper.com
COCO-MAT
Coco-Mat was founded in Greece and now has stores in the United States, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. Shoppers testing the store’s handmade, all-natural mattresses get free food, drinks, robes, and slippers, and they can “test-drive” the beds—that is, settle in for a real nap—in Coco-Mat’s “nap chambers.” After all, as Mike Efmorfidis, Coco-Mat CEO, told me, “When you buy a car,3 you take it out for a test drive. No reason a mattress should be any different.”
www.coco-mat.com
SLEEP NUMBER
Sleep Number’s smart mattress has interior sensors to track your sleep, giving you a daily SleepIQ score from 1 to 100 that includes how much restful time you spent in bed, along with your average heart and breathing rates. If a partner shares your bed, you’ll get a reading of how his or her sleep affects you and vice versa—making for some fun breakfast table discussion, no doubt. For those who don’t want wearable sleep trackers, Sleep Number eliminates the need by putting them into the mattress. When I met Sleep Number’s CEO, Shelly Ibach, she greeted me not just by shaking hands but by giving me her SleepIQ score. Sleep transparency as an intimacy-building tool!
www.sleepnumber.com
TEMPUR-PEDIC
The mattress company Tempur-Pedic has its roots in space exploration. When NASA developed a temperature-sensitive material in the early 1970s to cushion astronauts during liftoff, a group of Swedish scientists began to test the material for use in mattresses. Today Tempur-Pedic has a number of innovative features for comfort, support, and keeping you cool at night. Its famous TV commercial, with a glass of red wine set on a Tempur-Pedic mattress and not spilling even as a woman in pajamas jumped on the bed, was a memorable way of showing that two people could sleep on the same mattress without disturbing each other, which, as we know, can be a significant problem with significant others.
www.tempurpedic.com
THE LATEST START-UPS
Other companies are also getting creative and making a difference—from Yogabed, an online mattress retailer that uses luxury foam that supports the body and reduces pressure points, to Leesa, which donates one mattress to homeless shelters for every ten sold, to Helix, which sells custom-made mattresses based on sleep preferences and body types, to Saatva, which got some enviable press in September 2015 when Pope Francis slept on a Saatva mattress (queen-size, memory-foam mattress, organic cotton covers) during his visit to Philadelphia.
www.yogabed.com
www.leesa.com
www.helixsleep.com
www.saatvamattress.com
There’s also a shift toward incorporating technology into our beds and bedding. While we’re sleeping, our beds can be working.
SLEEPSENSE
Samsung’s SleepSense, announced in September 2015, is a gadget that goes under your mattress. It tracks your heart rate, movement, and breathing patterns and will also provide you with customized advice from Harvard Medical School professor Dr. Christos Mantzoros. SleepSense emails you a report of how you slept, and its “family care” option allows you to keep tabs on how a loved one is sleeping. You can even program it to communicate with other smart devices in your home—for instance, tell your television to turn itself off when you’ve fallen asleep.
www.sleepsense.com
LUNA
In 2015, San Francisco–based Matteo Franceschetti set out to create a smart mattress cover. His goal on Indiegogo was to raise $100,000; he raised nearly $1 million. Using several layers, each with a different purpose, Luna’s Wi-Fi-enabled mattress cover promises not only to track your sleep—by monitoring respiration and heart rate—but also to learn and adapt to your sleep patterns and preferences. For instance, it can automatically adjust the temperature on each half of the bed separately, adjust the temperature in the room, put on relaxing music, and, if it makes you feel less anxious, lock your bedroom door for you. It can even start your coffee pot in the morning so you don’t have to wait for that first cup (though if you’ve slept well, you shouldn’t be as desperate for it). A future version will even get up and take your kids to school (I’m kidding, but this is one full-featured mattress cover).
www.lunasleep.com
BEDDIT
Beddit, another Indiegogo success, monitors sleep, via heart rate and breathing, by using a sensor that you put underneath the sheets. When you wake up, you find a sleep report waiting for you. The data include noise and light levels as well as a record of your snoring. You’ll also get suggestions for improvement.
www.beddit.com
SARVSHRESHTH GUPTA WAS a first-year analyst at Goldman Sachs in San Francisco in 2015.1 Overwhelmed by the hundred-hour workweeks, he decided to leave the bank in March. He soon returned, though whether this was a result of social or self-inflicted pressure is still unclear. A week later, he called his father at 2:40 a.m. saying he hadn’t slept in two days. He said he had a presentation to complete and a morning meeting to prepare for, and was alone in the office. His father insisted he go home, and Gupta replied that he would stay at work just a bit longer. A few hours later, he was found dead on the street outside his home. He had jumped from his high-rise building.2
DEATH FROM OVERWORK has its own word in Japanese (karoshi),3 in Chinese (guolaosi),4 and in Korean (gwarosa)5. No such word exists in English, but the casualties are all around us. And though this is an extreme example of the consequences of not getting enough sleep, sleep deprivation has become an epidemic.
It is a specter haunting the industrialized world. Simply put: we don’t get enough sleep. And it’s a much bigger problem—with much higher stakes—than many of us realize. Both our daytime hours and our nighttime hours are under assault as never before. As the amount of things we need to cram into each day has increased, the value of our awake time has skyrocketed. Benjamin Franklin’s “Time is money!” has become a corporate-world mantra. And this has come at the expense of our time asleep, which since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution we have treated like some dull, distant relative we visit only reluctantly and out of obligation, for as short a time as we can manage.
Scientists are resoundingly confirming what our ancestors knew instinctively: that our sleep is not empty time. Sleep is a time of intense neurological activity—a rich time of renewal, memory consolidation, brain and neurochemical cleansing, and cognitive maintenance. Properly appraised, our sleeping time is as valuable a commodity as the time we are awake. In fact, getting the right amount of sleep enhances the quality of every minute we spend with our eyes open.
But today much of our society is still operating under the collective delusion that sleep is simply time lost to other pursuits, that it can be endlessly appropriated at will to satisfy our increasingly busy lives and overstuffed to-do lists. We see this delusion reflected in the phrase “I’ll sleep when I’m dead,” which has flooded popular consciousness, including a hit Bon Jovi song,6 an album by the late rocker Warren Zevon,7 and a crime film starring Clive Owen.8 Everywhere you turn, sleep deprivation is glamorized and celebrated: “You snooze, you lose.” The phrase “catch a few z’s” is telling: the last letter of the alphabet used to represent that last thing on our culture’s shared priority list. The combination of a deeply misguided definition of what it means to be successful in today’s world—that it can come only through burnout and stress—along with the distractions and temptations of a 24/7 wired world, has imperiled our sleep as never before.
I experienced firsthand the high price we’re paying for cheating sleep when I collapsed from exhaustion, and it pains me to see dear friends (and strangers) go through the same struggle. Rajiv Joshi is the managing director of the B Team—a nonprofit on whose board I serve,9 founded by Richard Branson and Jochen Zeitz to help move business beyond profit as the only metric of success. In June 2015, he had a seizure at age thirty-one during a B Team meeting in Bellagio, Italy, collapsing from exhaustion and sleep deprivation. Unable to walk, he spent eight days in a hospital in Bellagio and weeks after in physical therapy. In talking with medical experts, he learned that we all have a “seizure threshold,” and when we don’t take time to properly rest, we move closer and closer to it. Rajiv had crossed his threshold and fallen off the cliff. “The struggle for a more just and sustainable world,” he told me when he was back at work, “is a marathon, not a sprint, and we can’t forget that it starts at home with personal sustainability.”
According to a recent Gallup poll,10 40 percent of all American adults are sleep-deprived, clocking significantly less than the recommended minimum seven hours of sleep per night. Getting enough sleep, says Dr. Judith Owens, the director of the Center for Pediatric Sleep Disorders at Boston Children’s Hospital, is “just as important as good nutrition,11 physical activity, and wearing your seat belt.” But most people hugely underestimate their need for sleep. That’s why sleep, says Dr. Michael Roizen, the chief wellness officer of the Cleveland Clinic, “is our most underrated health habit.”12 A National Sleep Foundation report backs this up:13 two-thirds of us are not getting enough sleep on weeknights.
The crisis is global. In 2011, 32 percent of people surveyed in the United Kingdom said they had averaged less than seven hours of sleep a night in the previous six months.14 By 2014 that number had rocketed up to 60 percent. In 2013, more than a third of Germans and two-thirds of Japanese surveyed said they do not get sufficient sleep on weeknights.15 In fact, the Japanese have a term, inemuri,16 which roughly translates as “to be asleep while present”—that is, to be so exhausted that you fall asleep in the middle of a meeting. This has been praised as a sign of dedication and hard work—but it is actually another symptom of the sleep crisis we are finally confronting.
The wearable-device company Jawbone collects sleep data from thousands of people wearing its UP activity trackers.17 As a result, we now have a record of the cities that get the least amount of sleep. Tokyo residents sleep a dangerously low 5 hours and 45 minutes a night. Seoul clocks in at 6 hours and 3 minutes; Dubai, 6 hours and 13 minutes; Singapore, 6 hours and 27 minutes; Hong Kong, 6 hours and 29 minutes; and Las Vegas, 6 hours and 32 minutes. When you’re getting less sleep than Las Vegas, you have a problem.
Of course, much of this can be laid at the feet of work—or, more broadly, how we define work, which is colored by how we define success and what’s important in our lives. The unquestioning belief that work should always have the top claim on our time has been a costly one. And it has gotten worse as technology has allowed a growing number of us to carry our work with us—in our pockets and purses in the form of our phones—wherever we go.
Our houses, our bedrooms—even our beds—are littered with beeping, vibrating, flashing screens. It’s the never-ending possibility of connecting—with friends, with strangers, with the entire world, with every TV show or movie ever made—with just the press of a button that is, not surprisingly, addictive. Humans are social creatures—we’re hardwired to connect. Even when we’re not actually connecting digitally, we’re in a constant state of heightened anticipation. And always being in this state doesn’t exactly put us in the right frame of mind to wind down when it’s time to sleep. Though we don’t give much thought to how we put ourselves to bed, we have little resting places and refueling shrines all over our houses, like little doll beds, where our technology can recharge, even if we can’t.