Sleep quality is the greatest indicator of overall health. In a hypercaffeinated, technologically overstimulated society, more people report that maintaining good sleep hygiene is becoming increasingly difficult.
From fine-tuning the environment one sleeps in, to the amount of time one should sleep, and assessing whether supplements are helpful for prolonged sleep disturbances, there’s a lot to consider. Dr. James Maas joined us to help decipher the most important factors in getting a good night’s rest.
Guests:
- Dr. James Maas, a leading authority and international consultant on sleep and performance; CEO of Sleep for Success; Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Fellow and past Chairman of Psychology, professor in the graduate fields of Education and Communication at Cornell University and the Weill Cornell Medical College-Qatar.
- Susan Ross, a former night shift worker who continues to feel the effects of day-sleeping even after transitioning back to the day shift.
Sleep and chronic illnesses
Poor quality sleep can be symptomatic of a larger problem. For example, many people diagnosed with dementia, a stroke or autoimmune disease can experience sleep disruptions that trap them in a cycle of symptoms.
Guest: Dr. Michael Silber, professor of neurology at Mayo Clinic in Minnesota; internationally renowned sleep medicine expert; past president of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine.
Dr. Rosalind Picard
Patients with epilepsy are at risk for a condition called Sudden Unexplained Death in Epilepsy. It causes 2,750 preventable deaths in the United States annually, usually when the patient has a seizure in their sleep and suffocates. If a caregiver is aware of the seizure, they can perform first aid to keep the patient safe, but due to the nature of the condition, it can be hard to know if someone is having a seizure in their sleep.
Dr. Rosalind Picard invented a wearable device that alerts patients and a designated caregiver to their seizures even during the night.
Guest: Dr. Rosalind W. Picard, Sc.D., FIEEE, founder and director of the Affective Computing Research Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab; founding faculty chair of MIT's Mind+Hand+Heart Initiative and co-founder of Affectiva Inc.
