Tag Archives: bed
Things We Like: Warm Feet For Better Sleep
Post by Kyle St. Romain.
Do you ever get cold feet when falling asleep? Apparently, cold feet may actually inhibit your ability to fall asleep quickly. A group of Swiss researches conducted a study a while back that found a correlation between the distal-proximal temperature gradient — a fancy term used to measure the blood flow in your hands and feed — and your body’s ability to fall asleep quickly. In other words, the warmer your hands and feet are in the late evening, the faster you’re able to fall asleep.
The researchers learned some other interesting connections between body temperature and sleep: your body temperature predictably increases on its own as it readies for sleep. This change in temperature can be triggered by a number of factors such as whether you’re lying down (which pushes blood and heat out to your fingers and toes), where your body is along its circadian clock (your natural clock starts warming you up for bedtime on its own), and whether it’s dark outside (darkness is a long-time trigger for sleep). And for those of you who like to sleep with the air conditioning on cold, it may actually be due to the fact that a cooler ambient temperature increases the transfer of heat at your extremities.
Some people have suggested that wearing socks can help you fall asleep faster, but many have expressed a general discomfort for wearing extra clothing to bed. Fortunately, if you’re one of those people who doesn’t like wearing socks to bed, you can stimulate a similar effect by placing a warm bottle of water at the foot of the bed. In earlier times, many households used metal pans filled with hot coals to warm the bed. Today, plastic has made it much easier (and safer) to achieve the same effect.
If you’d like to read more about the study’s findings, you can find a nice summary of the research here (and it’s free). The text begins at the top right column, and continues down to the second page.
Do you find that you sleep better with warm feet (or socks on)? Do you have any other tips and tricks that help you doze off quicker? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below.
Bedroom Design: A Better Way to Wake Up
Post by Stephanie Noble.
On weekdays, I wake to a squawking beep that is impossible to ignore. That is by design, because it is not easy to get up at 5:00a.m. when my body is saying, “Just another hour or two would be so much better .”
We may not raise corn or cows, but our commute has us keeping farmer’s hours.
“Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.” My first grade teacher had us memorize this advice from Benjamin Franklin and for most of my life I have followed it, although never quite as early to rise as I currently manage.
On the weekends and holidays, the squawking is turned off. It is replaced by a much more palatable, “Dad? Mamma? DAD? MAMA? DAD?? MAMA??” refrain of our son letting us he’s ready for us to rescue him from his crib and start our day’s adventures.
Sometimes, if Alarm Number Two is really tired and sleeps past 6:30, I wake up to the avian songs of our neighbors who have built a nest next to our window.
Basically, five days of my week I am rushed out of deep sleep in a way that is extra harsh when compared to my weekend wakeup calls.
Thus my quest for a gentler alarm clock, one that breaks through the cozy comfy dream world to get my butt out of bed, but maybe with a little more kindness than the squawking beep that puts me in a bad mood.
The Zen Alarm Clock Company in Boulder, CO has created Zen Clock’s ‘E tone’ chime has been hand-tuned to produce the same tone as the tuning forks used by musical therapists. The 10 minute chime progression sequence follows the “golden ratio progression” to gently move one from sleep to an awake state with music.
I’ve also been looking at Soleil Sun Alarm SA-3 Sunrise and Sunset FM Radio Alarm Clock. It gradually lightens the room to Set the alarm for your desired time to wake in the morning, choose the Sunrise time (i.e., set sunrise for 15 minutes and for 15 minutes prior to alarm time the light will gradually get brighter and brighter until the intensity awakens you. Just like natural sunlight. It can also be set to nature sounds like chirping birds, crickets, flowing water or an ocean.
Much better than the rude squawker!
Movies–er– T.V. in Bed: Grimm
Post by Mark T. Locker.
I’m going to be honest with you: I am a sucker for anything fairy tale-related. Especially things which highlight the inherent darkness present in so many of their tales. (And really most folklore.) Mind you, I’m not going to consume something based only on that one criterion. That show “Once”, for example, simply irritates me. Too many pretty people, perhaps, I don’t know.
“Grimm” is not without its flaws: holes in the plot; unbearable characters; loosening interpretation of Grimm as the show progresses. But for some reason, it is the only show on television that I find myself keeping current on. It’s also fun that it is shot right here in Portland. Basically every summer the city is filled with equipment and actors as “Grimm” and “Portlandia” shoot their seasons.
Nevertheless, I enjoy tuning in to this good-but-not-great show (especially since Burn Notice is on cable) on the rare nights of the week that I don’t fall asleep at the same time as my kid. If you like to watch people turn into weird monsters, like fly-headed people or beaver-faced folk, or if you like watching people open trunks of ancient weapons like morning stars and crossbows (thank you, David Greenwalt for bringing a bit of Buffy to the show!) then this is definitely for you. Enjoy!
Things We Like: Debunking The Eight-Hour Sleep
Post by Kyle St. Romain.
Perhaps the most universal sleep instruction prescribed to all is to get eight hours of sleep, give or take an hour or so depending on the person. On its surface, this sleep regime seems to make perfect sense and I’ve never had any reason to question it before. However, I recently came across some references to a professor who discovered some historical references to the idea of segmented sleep and I decided to do some digging.
Roger Ekirch (don’t ask me how to pronounce that), a professor of history at Virginia Tech, published a book back in 2006 titled, At Day’s Close: Night in Times Past, which explores how society “dealt with” the nighttime throughout history. As the stories go, while Ekrich was researching this book he discovered over 500 references to the idea of segmented sleeping patterns, i.e., sleeping for a few hours after dusk, followed by a waking period of a couple hours, and followed again by a second sleep.
Ekrich’s findings, corroborated with an experiment conducted by Thomas Wehr, a psychiatrist, suggests that a condition called sleep maintenance insomnia, where restless people wake in the middle of the night and have trouble falling back to sleep, may actually be explained by our history.
Basically, the late night restlessness many of us try to overcome is the way we may have actually been intended to sleep before the advent of cheap electricity and plentiful street lighting used to illuminate our previously dark and frightful nights. Now brightened with light bulbs (oil lamps in the past), spending time after sundown has become a more legitimate, if not fashionable, way to spend your time. Today, many of us with sleep problems may simply be two-sleep people living in a one-sleep world.
I highly recommend Ekrich’s book, especially if you’re on the hunt for some late night reading (no pun intended). BBC News has an excellent article discussing Ekrich’s findings if you need some more convincing. Jessa Gamble also did a 6 minute or less talk for TED about the myth of the eight-hour sleep.
In the mean time, if you’re having trouble waking up and falling back to sleep at night, do not despair; use this time to reflect on your dreams, read a book, or chat with your wife (if she’s likewise awake). Waking between sleeps may not be as bad as you thought it to be.
Creative Ceilings: Things are Looking Up!
It’s 3:05 AM, 3:19 AM, 3:23 AM…… You can’t sleep and the day ahead is gonna suck. Staring up at your cracked ceiling is not the answer. It’s a roadmap to despair. You know what wouldn’t suck? Having a gorgeous ceiling to look at while you count sheep/drink warm milk/curse your life. Why not dress that ceiling up with some fabulous wallpaper or an interesting design treatment? Yessssssssss………..
Here are a few examples of spectacular bedroom ceilings to get your wheels turning in a positive direction:
Source: houzz.com
WOW, right? The light fixture in this room is awesome, but it might get lost on a basic painted ceiling. This snazzy wallpaper MAKES the room. It has got great interest and it sets the color story for the space. The modern heart pattern makes me love it even more. WOW, WOW, WOW!
Source: lonny.com
This jacquard-like pattern is genius! It adds fantastic interest to this white room and allows the owner to accessorize the space using corresponding mats beneath the artwork. Lonny.com calls this a Moroccan room. I call it perfection!
Source: http://whimsicalworldoflaurabird.blogspot.com/
Here’s a pattern that really moves! How smart that the bold colors of the painted wall are broken up by a strip of white molding before your eye travels to the ceiling. Also appealing is the mix of traditional furnishings, white with a stripe bedding and some modern touches. It’s mix and match eclectic beauty at its best.
Source: http://design-milk.com/press-conference-room-by-h2o-architectes/
Source: http://www.mrspollyrogers.com/
If wallpaper isn’t your thing, here are two alternate and unconventional ideas for working with or adding to what you’ve got: Wooden perforated ceiling panels and glorious tin ceiling tiles. Talk about thinking outside of the (bedroom) box!
The options for accentuating your bedroom ceiling are endless, just like your thoughts on a sleepless night. Use your imagination, choose patterns you love, and take some melatonin. With your ceiling problem solved, may you now drift off to sleep on a cloud of good design!
