Where you start reading this book will probably say a lot about your current station in life. New parents will probably skip right to chapter 12 and the section subtitled "Tips for Exhausted Parents of Newborns, Infants, and Children." Drowsy office workers might go for chapter 9, which explores the subject of midday naps (which may reduce stress and the risk of heart disease).
Other chapters look at traveling (driving, jet lag), shift work, and insomnia and other sleep disorders. Dr. James Maas has spent 34 years lecturing to drowsy psychology undergraduates at Cornell University, and knows how to hold an audience--even when the subject is sleep, and even when the conclusion is that most of us don't get enough of it.
This is a fascinating book; you'll want to take it in slowly and then sleep on it.
mental performance and concentration during the daytime. Sleep deprivation can lead to immune system breakdowns and decreased
memory capability.
The author recommends at least 10 hours of
sleep daily for peak performance. In addition, there is a suggestion that we should make up for lost sleep as soon as possible. Some benefit may accrue for workers who get approximately 15-20 minutes of sleep at work .
This book will help you to feel better if the advice on optimum sleep is followed. The work contains some important new perspectives on sleeping. The volume is well-researched and current in both I liked this book in a lot of ways, but when it ended, I was dissappointed.
There is worthwhile information about sleep and interesting quotations from famous people about sleep but there seemed to be a lot of filler in this book. The book throws out many statistics but rarely explains how these stastics were obtained. I also thought the book contained too many horror stories about deaths related to people falling asleep while operating heavy machinery etc.
,. I got this book because I am 19 years old and in college and basically ever since I turned 13 I haven't been able to maintain a normal sleep cycle for more than a week at a time. I always end up not being able to get to sleep at my set bedtime and throw off my whole plan to wake and rise at the same time everyday.
Unfortunately, I don't think this book is going to help me change that. I only just finished it today, though, so I'll keep you updated as to how things go. The books' main suggestion is that you should wake up at the same time every day and go to sleep at the same time every night.
This is pretty common knowledge and unfortunately I just don't think this is something I can realistically do because I have tried hundreds of time in the past and just not been able to maintain a consistent schedule. The book gives some valuable suggestions like "don't exercise near bedtime" and "don't eat any heavy meals before bedtime". The book describes the "architecture" of sleep which is interesting to read about and gave me a better understanding of my sleeping patterns.
One valuable piece of information the book gave is that 8 hours of disrupted sleep is not as restorative as 6 hours of deep uninterrupted sleep. The book also suggest that if you are cramming for an exam late at night that you should get a minimum of four hours of sleep. This is a valuable piece of information which I could have used throughout the last year of college.
The message about sleeping pills in this book is that you shouldn't take them. I think one good message that the book delivers is that sleep is more valuable than we think. The book says that, when we get more sleep, we function at a higher level and then throws out some sketchy statistics to support this argument.
There is a list of sleep clinics in the back of the book which is great. I think I'll have to check one of them out because I doubt this book's suggestions are going to solve my sleeping problems. I was very disappointed by the fact that there was no concluding chapter to the book.
The book doesn't tie everything together at the end and just ends with a list of suggestions for elderly people on how to get to sleep and 20 pages of appendixes and footnotes. I also felt mislead by the title of this book. I thought the book would include information about how to sleep less or how to get more restorative sleep but it didn't and I found that most of the information presented is stuff I already knew.
You could probably find most of this information on the internet but I only paid $1 for the book and it did have some interesting information (although it didn't provide me with the type of information I was expecting) so it gets 3 stars. p.s.
I also found the suggestions to "go to sleep now if you're tired and staying up and reading this book" really annoying haha Power Sleep is a dynamic and lucid book that I highly recommend to any individual who wants to live a more stress free life and maximize his or her daytime performance. As a first year college student, I did not realize the vitality of sleep in my life. Many college students do not realize how the amount of continuous nocturnal sleep they get affects other aspects of their life, including their ability to retain new information; however, Dr.
Maas crystallizes these points. Dr. Maas' lucidity and practicality allow the reader to fully comprehend and conceptualize the information presented.
For example, instead of Maas using dreary drawn-out language to describe the nightly sleep cycle, he incorporates friendly diagrams and brief explanations. Dr. Maas uses writing techniques which promote reader participation.
For example, throughout the book, Maas asks several rhetorical questions, such as, "are you getting enough sleep?" These questions stimulate the reader to have a mental response, and therefore, interact with the book. Dr.
Maas, fully achieved his purpose of informing the reader about the importance of sleep and ways of overcoming sleep deprivation. Read the book with intentions to change your life!
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