JULY is Sleep Products Month at SleepyHeadCENTRAL--Introducing SLEEP STUFF

There's a burgeoning market for sleep products that can't be ignored, so SleepyHeadCENTRAL is spending July calling attention to some items that have recently captured attention. SHC will discuss seven categories of products this month, including the following:

• Anti-snoring devices
• Smartphone apps
• CPAP maintenance products
• Nightstand items
• Light therapy
• Wearable technology
• Books on sleep

READERS
Please note that SHC does not have the capacity or ability to "road test" many consumer products. Product highlights, examinations or reviews posted at SHC are for consumer education only; when products have not been tested, they are primarily mentioned as possible options for some readers.

You, as the consumer, are ultimately responsible for your own buying decisions, and SHC encourages consumers to research sleep health products thoroughly and independently. Because the market for these kinds of products is so spectacularly wide, SHC's aim is to show readers that there are many options out there. Your best move as a consumer is to make the most informed choice for your particular situation.

If readers want to learn more about a specific sleep health product, and SHC has not yet examined that product, they are invited to leave SHC a message at sleepyheadcentral@gmail.com and SHC will add these requests to its growing list of consumer options to review in a future post at SHC. Thanks!

Including product highlights, examinations and reviews on the SHC site prompts some important legal language to be shared here to protect SHC and its readers. Please note the following disclosures and disclaimers below. They are applicable not only to SHC and its agents, but to all others participating independently in discussions about these products on the SHC site, which may include patients and healthcare professionals.

• SHC does not, as of the date and time of this post, have any longstanding or preexisting relationships with any product manufacturers.
• The process of selecting products for highlighting, examination or review in posts at SHC is random and driven by SHC's own curiosity and exposure to new items as seen on the Internet, at trade shows, at conferences and at other incidental events.
• SHC will always report how or whether they received any product, if it is highlighted, examined or reviewed at the site.
• A future highlight, examination or review of any product on SHC constitutes no special relationship between SHC and any product manufacturer. SHC simply decided to write about it.
• SHC reserves the right to post both positive and negative reviews of any given product, but only if these products have actually been tested by SHC.
• If SHC receives free products or free meals or gifts from product manufacturer representatives, that does not mean SHC will write and post highlights, examinations or reviews about these products, nor does it imply any endorsement of these products from SHC either in the digital world or the real world.
• If SHC receives material compensation (products, cash, gifts, meals) after highlighting, examining or reviewing a product independently, SHC will report this new affiliation to readers.
• Sometimes SHC receives free items in the mail; sometimes SHC asks for samples. SHC will let readers know in either case.

PRODUCT MANUFACTURERS

If you have a product you would like SHC to learn more about, you may send your product with all manufacturing and usage information to SHC at the address below. This does not guarantee SHC will use, examine, review or highlight your product in the future. But if you really think it's something that SHC readers could benefit from, feel free to send it along, and SHC will take a look. Products given freely to SHC will never be resold, but they may be given away freely to third parties, including readers, sleep health professionals or family members of friends for the purposes of testing or examining. This form of sharing does not imply endorsement of these products by SHC. 

SleepyHeadCENTRAL

321 High School Road NE

PMB 204, Ste. D-3

Bainbridge Island, WA 98110

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SleepyHeadCENTRAL strongly encourages people with ongoing sleep health problems to approach a medical professional to determine appropriate differential diagnoses and treatment. This post, like all other posts on SHC, is not intended to substitute for medical advice.  

Expert Testimony || Blame it on Edison

"Why do roughly six billion humans sleep in a way that is contrary to what worked for millions of years? Because of a production that was once revolutionary and now costs less than two dollars: the lightbulb. The lamp next to your bed contains a device that has changed human sleep perhaps forever, and ushered in a new world of health problems that come from an overabundance of light."—Journalist and professor David K. Randall, author of Dreamland: Adventures in the Strange Science of Sleep

Sleep in the Media || Book Review || Wide Awake and Dreaming

Wide Awake and Dreaming: A Memoir of Narcolepsy
Julie Flygare

Who should read this book?
Anyone with an interest in compelling memoirs would find this book completely fascinating and--ironically perhaps--eye opening. Julie Flygare tells the curious tale of her entree into the quasi-real world of narcolepsy: the strange markers of its onset, how it progressed while she was up to her eyeballs in law school studies, its impact on her social and work life, and where her experience with this rare disorder has taken her since she graduated with a law degree in 2009.

Flygare is now a leading spokesperson for the Narcolepsy Network and helped to establish the first Sleep Walk in Washington DC in 2011. Perhaps one of her most important jobs as spokesperson for sleep disorders has been her collaboration with Harvard Medical School researchers over the last four years in the form of a 5-hour educational workshop based on her narcolepsy experience, now a required educational component for all Harvard Medical School students. It's no small feat to train medical practitioners to recognize the value of sleep: currently, many if not most primary care physicians and specialists in all branches of medicine overlook the critical role sleep plays in endocrinological, neurological, psychological, respiratory, immunological and cardiopulmonary function. Sleep is a whole body process that cannot be ignored or replaced with medication.

Why should you read this book?
I would personally give this book to every person I know who has ever made a wisecrack or insensitive comment about sleep disorders (narcolepsy, in particular, with its unfortunate and insensitive "Mr. Magoo" representation in our sleep-deprived culture) so that they can understand how real, how challenging and how mystifying this illness is. My own experiences are extremely mild compared to Flygare's, for which I am ever so thankful. At the same time, living with this invisible and incurable condition has its own challenges, not least of which is the balance one must strike between the needs of the body and mind while living in a culture which doesn't value sleep and which tends to judge those who take sleep seriously as somehow being lazy, stupid or unstable. Flygare's book is an important entry in the chronicles of contemporary sleep medicine.