ANCSLEEP BLOG

Part of getting a good night's sleep is making sure that you are comfortable. Mattress comfort is important, but can sometimes be so expensive that it's not able to be modified. However, there is another part of your sleeping environment that may be more easily modifiable, and very effective. 

Your pillow may actually be causing you some issues with your comfort. And the best part is, replacing your pillows is significantly cheaper than replacing your mattress. The results of changing your pillow can be life changing, as your pillow can actually cause a lot of challenges throughout the night if it is not a good pillow. Continue reading to find out more about how your pillow may be ruining your sleep.  

The interest in vegan and plant-based diets has increased tremendously over the past few years. From athletes to business professionals, everyone has their own reason for pursuing this new diet. There are a variety of reasons, like beliefs, dietary necessity, weight loss goals, and a genuine interest to see how your body may transform. But did you know that going vegan can actually help you with your sleep? Continue reading to learn five benefits of going vegan. 

Dear employees, be prepared to send this to your boss so you can get a three-day weekend every weekend. The four-day workweek is making a robust emergence in the wake of COVID-19. As employees value their lives more than their work, employers have had to become more strategic with how they encourage their employees to do their work. This includes shortening the workweek from the traditional five-day workweek to four.

What would be the benefit of this change? Well according to a recent survey, sleep! Employees who are already a part of the 4-day workweek scheme are using their extra day off to catch up on sleep they missed throughout the week. Continue reading to find out more about the benefit of this new change.   

The beginning of school will be here before you know it, and it's important to understand your kid's sleep. There is so much information on the internet about sleep, it can be easy to pick up misinformation. But for the sake of your child's well being, it is vital that you understand the truth about sleep.

A lack of sleep can lead to irritability, failing grades, and other inadequacies in your child's life. As they are in a developmentally sensitive period, sleep is optimal for their neurological and physiological health. Continue reading to learn about 3 myths that parents get wrong about their kids' sleep.

Putting away technology before bed can be a huge barrier to getting a good night of sleep. Scrolling through bed can create issues with falling asleep due to the blue light that is emitting, and the temptation of continuing to scroll without an ending. 

In order to overcome this, Cara Newhart, the DIY designer of "Never Skip Brunch" created an item called a "Tech Tuckaway". This is an anti-clutter design hack to help hide electronics in the nightstand without unplugging them. 

If your nightstand is cluttered, and your electronics pose a great threat to getting a good night's sleep, then consider using this clutter-clearing organization hack to help meet several needs that you have. 

Going back to work on Monday can induce a feeling of dread, anxiety, and what some refer to as Sunday Scaries. This can make falling asleep on Sunday difficult for many, which is indicated by the number of individuals who have more trouble falling as sleep on Sunday compared to any other day. Continue reading to find out more about why Sunday is so scary, and what you can do to overcome those anxious feelings. 

Do you know someone, or are you yourself someone, that claims they can run on five or six hours of sleep and be just fine? While you may feel okay, the reality is is that getting sufficient amount of sleep requires you to sleep for much longer than five or six hours. Although you may be able to function in the long-term, or your body has adapted to that after years of building that habit, that doesn't mean that you aren't suffering to some degree. Continue reading to find out what happens to your body when you get different amounts of sleep. 

Is pain keeping you awake at night? You are part of a group with nearly 40 million adults in the U.S. also struggling with severe pain. 80% of those individuals have sleep disturbances and more than half have insomnia. In fact, most patients with chronic pain as report that as the reason for intermittent sleep disturbances. 

Focusing on the anxiety that comes from pain can turn into this endless cycle of poor sleep, anxiety about pain, which then leads to more sleep disturbances and increased pain. The mind and the body are interconnected, and the more anxious you feel anticipating a bad night of sleep, the more tense you'll feel which can further contribute to feelings of pain as well as sleep disturbances. The more pain you experience while sleeping, the less dopamine your brain will make and opioid receptors that you have, making you more sensitive to pain. 

Getting good sleep is vital for pain management. But knowing that fact can have one of two effects: increase one's motivation to find solutions for great sleep, or increase the amount of anxiety that one feels about the necessity of good sleep that they are not going to get. Continue reading to learn more about how to overcome feelings of pain throughout the night.  

The jaw is a common place to store stress and anxiety. This is why some may find themselves grinding their teeth and clenching their jaw at night. This same response can happen repeatedly throughout the day, and throughout the night. It's known as bruxism when it's involuntary, or not on purpose. 

Bruxism can happen whether or not one is awake, but they are much less likely to know that they grind their teeth when they are sleeping. It's often not until a dentist appointment where one may discover that they actually are grinding their teeth down throughout the night. 

This habit can be pretty damaging to your teeth in the long run, so continue reading to learn more about bruxism, and what you can do about it. 

When you experience sleep challenges and sleep deprivation, it is exhausting. Literally. And it seems like the harder you try, the more trouble you have with sleep. You can read all the articles you want to (including this blog), try all the apps, make all the changes, but it just seems like sleep is still not coming. This is not because you are doing anything wrong. But, it has to do with the fact that sleep is a passive process. 

There is nothing you can do to make sleep come on, no matter how tired you are. You just have to let it come to you, which is easier said than done. The key is to not focus on going to sleep, but to focus on the two aspects that drive sleep: drive and arousal. The other tips on the internet do inherently try to achieve high sleep drive and lower arousal, but with too much emphasis on getting sleep, rather than reducing the causes of not achieving those two factors. 

Continue reading to find out how you can do less to sleep more.