Andrew Mager

My favorite podcast on CNET is The 404. They cover the culture of the web in New York. Today, they interviewed Dr. Michael J. Breus, an expert on sleeping. Here are the notes I took from the interview:

In a 20 minute nap, you don’t fully go into deep sleep, but your mind goes into a resting mode and you become refreshed.

45 minute naps are bad because you fall into deep sleep and then awake right in the middle of it.

You sleep in 90 minute cycles, so that amount of time for a nap is perfect.

Everybody has different sleep needs. If you wake up in 6 hours and feel okay, then don’t force yourself to lay in bed for another two hours.

If you sleep with a snoring bed partner, you can lose up to two hours of a sleep a night. The size of your bed has a huge factor in the comfort of your sleep. They even have mattresses with a “spoon slot”, a hole in the mattress where you can put your arm if it’s uncomfortable.

Lucid dreaming is a skill. You dream about whatever it was you were thinking about right before you goto sleep. If you think good thoughts, you should be okay.

Dreaming appears as though it’s a storybook. If you wake somebody up early, they are in chapter one. If you wake them in the middle of the night, they might be in chapter 6 of that same “story”

The ending of the dream does occur, but most times you don’t remember it because you are amnestic for the first minute or two when you wake up. It takes your brain a little while to function. Keep a notepad by your bed.

Fatal familiail insomina is only present in a small section of Italy. As time goes on, you eventually just stop sleeping. And it kills you.

If you try to stay awake for a long period of time, your body will just throw you into a state of sleep.

Tips for good sleeping:

• 20 to 30 minutes of cardiovascular exercise
• Slowing down your caffiene consumption (it can have a half-life of up to 12 hours)
• Have a bowl of cereal before bed

There is no data to suggest that Benadryl puts you to sleep faster than a sugar pill. It makes you feel fuzzy-drug-head, and you fall asleep, but there are other methods.

You would have to eat a 46 lb. turkey to have enough tryptophan to make you fall asleep.

Sometimes people hallucinate a little bit when they wake up. It’s usually okay, but it can be an early sign of narcolepsy.

You can’t smell during sleep. That’s why you don’t wake up from sleep farting.