The Insomnia Blog - Sleep Doctor Michael Breus, PhD

Sleepless in the White House

How long do you think you would last if your alarm rang at 4 am every morning and you often didn’t stop working until very late at night? Your days last 18 hours, 7 days a week, but you’re expected to be on-call for 24 hours. And you’re not a physician who can take several weeks of vacation a year. OK, the vacation part is a joke!

The Washington Post published an article this week detailing the grueling lifestyles of the people working in the West Wing. It’s bad. It’s worse than anything depicted on the TV drama. Highlights of some of the descriptions of people’s days sound unbearable: 

Sleep Paralysis Gets Screentime—But Not as a Horror Flick

Ever wake up and it feels like your mind woke up but your body didn’t?  Now that’s a nightmare in real time, and it can happen to anyone. And one that a team of film producers has made the subject of their documentary.

The phenomena is called sleep paralysis, which is characterized by a waking from REM sleep but the body remains paralyzed (it is supposed to be paralyzed in REM-so you do not act out your dreams!).

Better Marriage, Better Sleep

Does that really surprise anyone? A new study out of the University of Pittsburgh says that women who have stable marriages sleep better than women who are unmarried or who have lost a partner. The study also pointed out the fact women who start dating a new partner also sleep better as compared to their single—partner-less—counterparts.

Surely you and I can list several factors contributing to this result. (And I’d bet that if a study were performed on men, they’d find similar results.)

Let’s be honest: a good relationship, married or not, often leads to: