If you obsessively check your sleep score every morning, then you know the frustration of watching those numbers stall. One week, your sleep quality, sleep latency, and deep sleep are in the green, and the next, you’re struggling to get just one metric right.
Tag: sleep
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Expert-Approved Bedtime Snacks That Won’t Spike Your Blood Sugar
Bedtime snacks often get a bad rap, but healthy options certainly do exist. The key is looking for one that won’t spike your blood sugar right before bed, inhibiting precious sleep in the process. (Of course you won’t want anything with caffeine, and alcohol isn’t the best idea either). Instead, sleep specialists recommend opting for food groups that will satisfy your hunger, keep blood sugar levels steady, and provide some relaxing benefits to boot.
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If Your Magnesium Supplement Isn’t Cutting It, Try This Instead
Magnesium is one of the most essential minerals necessary for the body to function at its best—and yet, many of us aren’t getting enough of it. As a result, you may have started supplementing magnesium in the hopes of sleeping better, feeling more relaxed, or just getting your levels where you want them.
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How Olympians think about success and failure, and what we can learn from them
If winning gold medals were the only standard, almost all Olympic athletes would be considered failures.Video above: Amber Glenn opens up about mental health, coming out and her figure skating journeyA clinical psychologist with the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee, Emily Clark’s job when the Winter Games open in Italy on Feb. 6 is to help athletes interpret what it means to be successful. Should gold medals be the only measure?Part of a 15-member staff providing psychological services, Clark nurtures athletes accustomed to triumph but who invariably risk failure.The staff deals with matters termed “mental health and mental performance.” They include topics such as motivation, anger management, anxiety, eating disorders, family issues, trauma, depression, sleep, handling pressure, travel and so forth.Clark’s area includes stress management, the importance of sleep and getting high achievers to perform at their best and avoid the temptation of looking only at results.”A lot of athletes these days are aware of the mental health component of, not just sport, but of life,” Clark said in an interview with The Associated Press. “This is an area where athletes can develop skills that can extend a career, or make it more enjoyable.” The United States is expected to take about 235 athletes to the Winter Olympics, and about 70 more to the Paralympics. But here’s the truth.”Most of the athletes who come through Team USA will not win a gold medal,” Clark said. “That’s the reality of elite sport.”Here are the numbers. The United States won gold medals in nine events in the last Winter Games in Beijing in 2022. According to Dr. Bill Mallon, an esteemed shoulder surgeon and Olympic historian, 70.8% of Winter and Summer Olympic athletes go to only one Olympics.Few are famous and successful like swimmer Michael Phelps, or skiers Mikaela Shiffrin or Lindsey Vonn.Clark said she often delivers the following message to Olympians and Paralympians: This is a once-in-a-lifetime chance. Focus on the process. Savor the moment.”Your job is not to win a gold medal, your job is to do the thing, and the gold medal is what happens when you do your job,” she said.”Some of this might be realigning what success looks like,” she added. “And some of this is developing resilience in the face of setbacks and failure.”Clark preaches staying on task under pressure and improving through defeat.”We get stronger by pushing ourselves to a limit where we’re at our maximum capacity — and then recovering,” she said. “When we get stressed, it impacts our attention. Staying on task or staying in line with what’s important is what we try to train for.” Kendall Gretsch has won four gold medals at the Summer and Winter Paralympics. She credits some of her success to the USOPC’s mental health services, and she described the value this way.”We have a sports psychologist who travels with us for most our season,” she said. “Just being able to touch base with them … and getting that reminder of why are you here? What is that experience you’re looking for?”American figure skater Alysa Liu is the 2025 world champion and was sixth in the 2022 Olympics. She’s a big believer in sports psychology and should be among the favorites in Italy.”I work with a sport psychologist,” she said without giving a name. “She’s incredible — like the MVP.”Of course, MVP stands — not for Most Valuable Person or Most Valuable Player — for “Most Valuable Psychologist.””I mean, she’s very helpful,” Liu added. American downhill skier Vonn will race in Italy in her sixth Olympics. At 41, she’s coming off nearly six years in retirement and will be racing on a knee made of titanium.Two-time Olympic champion Michaela Dorfmeister has suggested in jest that Vonn “should see a psychologist” for attempting such a thing in a very dangerous sport where downhill skiers reach speeds of 80 mph.Vonn shrugged off the comments and joked a few months ago that she didn’t grow up using a sport psychologist. She said her counseling came from taping messages on the tips of her skis that read: “stay forward or hands up.””I just did it myself,” she said. “I do a lot of self-talk in the starting gate.” “Sleep is an area where athletes tend to struggle for a number of reasons,” Clark said, listing issues such as travel schedules, late practices, injuries and life-related stress.”We have a lot of athletes who are parents, and lot of sleep is going to be disrupted in the early stages of parenting,” she said. “We approach sleep as a real part of performance. But it can be something that gets de-prioritized when days get busy.”Clark suggests the following for her athletes — and the rest of us: no caffeine after 3 p.m., mitigate stress before bedtime, schedule sleep at about the same time daily, sleep in a dark room and get 7-9 hours.Dani Aravich is a two-time Paralympian — she’s been in both the Summer and Winter Games — and will be skiing in the upcoming Paralympics. She said in a recent interview that she avails herself of many psychological services provided by the USOPC.”I’ve started tracking my sleep,” she said, naming Clark as a counselor. “Especially being an athlete who has multiple jobs, sleep is going to be your No. 1 savior at all times. It’s the thing that, you know, helps mental clarity.” Clark agreed.”Sleep is the cornerstone of healthy performance,” she added.
If winning gold medals were the only standard, almost all Olympic athletes would be considered failures.
Video above: Amber Glenn opens up about mental health, coming out and her figure skating journey
A clinical psychologist with the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee, Emily Clark’s job when the Winter Games open in Italy on Feb. 6 is to help athletes interpret what it means to be successful.
Should gold medals be the only measure?
Part of a 15-member staff providing psychological services, Clark nurtures athletes accustomed to triumph but who invariably risk failure.
The staff deals with matters termed “mental health and mental performance.” They include topics such as motivation, anger management, anxiety, eating disorders, family issues, trauma, depression, sleep, handling pressure, travel and so forth.
Clark’s area includes stress management, the importance of sleep and getting high achievers to perform at their best and avoid the temptation of looking only at results.
“A lot of athletes these days are aware of the mental health component of, not just sport, but of life,” Clark said in an interview with The Associated Press. “This is an area where athletes can develop skills that can extend a career, or make it more enjoyable.”
The United States is expected to take about 235 athletes to the Winter Olympics, and about 70 more to the Paralympics. But here’s the truth.
“Most of the athletes who come through Team USA will not win a gold medal,” Clark said. “That’s the reality of elite sport.”
Here are the numbers. The United States won gold medals in nine events in the last Winter Games in Beijing in 2022. According to Dr. Bill Mallon, an esteemed shoulder surgeon and Olympic historian, 70.8% of Winter and Summer Olympic athletes go to only one Olympics.
Few are famous and successful like swimmer Michael Phelps, or skiers Mikaela Shiffrin or Lindsey Vonn.
Clark said she often delivers the following message to Olympians and Paralympians: This is a once-in-a-lifetime chance. Focus on the process. Savor the moment.
“Your job is not to win a gold medal, your job is to do the thing, and the gold medal is what happens when you do your job,” she said.
“Some of this might be realigning what success looks like,” she added. “And some of this is developing resilience in the face of setbacks and failure.”
Clark preaches staying on task under pressure and improving through defeat.
“We get stronger by pushing ourselves to a limit where we’re at our maximum capacity — and then recovering,” she said. “When we get stressed, it impacts our attention. Staying on task or staying in line with what’s important is what we try to train for.”
Kendall Gretsch has won four gold medals at the Summer and Winter Paralympics. She credits some of her success to the USOPC’s mental health services, and she described the value this way.
“We have a sports psychologist who travels with us for most our season,” she said. “Just being able to touch base with them … and getting that reminder of why are you here? What is that experience you’re looking for?”
American figure skater Alysa Liu is the 2025 world champion and was sixth in the 2022 Olympics. She’s a big believer in sports psychology and should be among the favorites in Italy.
“I work with a sport psychologist,” she said without giving a name. “She’s incredible — like the MVP.”
Of course, MVP stands — not for Most Valuable Person or Most Valuable Player — for “Most Valuable Psychologist.”
“I mean, she’s very helpful,” Liu added.
American downhill skier Vonn will race in Italy in her sixth Olympics. At 41, she’s coming off nearly six years in retirement and will be racing on a knee made of titanium.
Two-time Olympic champion Michaela Dorfmeister has suggested in jest that Vonn “should see a psychologist” for attempting such a thing in a very dangerous sport where downhill skiers reach speeds of 80 mph.
Vonn shrugged off the comments and joked a few months ago that she didn’t grow up using a sport psychologist. She said her counseling came from taping messages on the tips of her skis that read: “stay forward or hands up.”
“I just did it myself,” she said. “I do a lot of self-talk in the starting gate.”
“Sleep is an area where athletes tend to struggle for a number of reasons,” Clark said, listing issues such as travel schedules, late practices, injuries and life-related stress.
“We have a lot of athletes who are parents, and lot of sleep is going to be disrupted in the early stages of parenting,” she said. “We approach sleep as a real part of performance. But it can be something that gets de-prioritized when days get busy.”
Clark suggests the following for her athletes — and the rest of us: no caffeine after 3 p.m., mitigate stress before bedtime, schedule sleep at about the same time daily, sleep in a dark room and get 7-9 hours.
Dani Aravich is a two-time Paralympian — she’s been in both the Summer and Winter Games — and will be skiing in the upcoming Paralympics. She said in a recent interview that she avails herself of many psychological services provided by the USOPC.
“I’ve started tracking my sleep,” she said, naming Clark as a counselor. “Especially being an athlete who has multiple jobs, sleep is going to be your No. 1 savior at all times. It’s the thing that, you know, helps mental clarity.”
Clark agreed.
“Sleep is the cornerstone of healthy performance,” she added.
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Brain Health Challenge: Test Your Knowledge of Healthy Habits
Welcome to the Brain Health Challenge! I’m Dana Smith, a reporter at The New York Times, and I’ll be your guide.
To live a healthy life, it’s crucial to have a healthy brain. In the short term, it keeps you sharp and firing on all cylinders. In the long term, it can reduce your risk of cognitive decline, dementia and stroke.
Practicing basic healthy behaviors, like eating nutritious food and getting regular exercise, is the best way to enhance your brain power and protect the longevity of your neurons. These types of lifestyle habits can benefit the brain at any age. And while they won’t guarantee that you’ll never develop dementia or another brain disease, several clinical trials have shown that they can improve cognition or slow decline.
Every day this week, you’ll do an activity that’s good for your brain, and we’ll dig into the science behind why it works. Some of these activities can provide a small immediate cognitive benefit, but the bigger reward comes from engaging in them consistently over time. So along with the neuroscience lessons, we’ll include a few tips to help you turn these actions into lasting habits.
To keep you accountable, we’re encouraging you to complete this challenge with a friend. If you don’t have a challenge buddy, no problem: We’re also turning the comments section into one big support group.
There are so many fascinating ways your daily behaviors affect your brain. Take sleep, for example.
Lots of studies have shown that getting a good night’s rest (seven to eight hours) is associated with better memory and other cognitive abilities. That’s because sleep, especially REM sleep, is when your brain transfers short-term memories — things you learned or experienced during the day — into long-term storage.
Sleep is also when your brain does its daily housekeeping. While you rest, the brain’s glymphatic system kicks into high gear, clearing out abnormal proteins and other molecular garbage, including the protein amyloid, which is a major contributor to Alzheimer’s disease. A buildup of amyloid is one reason experts think that people who routinely get less sleep have a higher risk of dementia.
What other behaviors play a big role in brain health? For today’s activity, we’re going to test your knowledge with a quiz. Share your score with your accountability partner and in the comments below — I’ll be in there too, cheering you on.
Dana G. Smith
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Ready To Actually Sleep Better This Year? 5 Easy Steps To Follow
Good sleep can be frustratingly hard to come by. Even though you may feel tired, the act of getting into bed, closing your eyes, drifting off, and staying asleep somehow isn’t a smooth process. Sleep challenges may stem from stress, feelings of anxiousness, or even not-so-good habits developed over the years (it’s well known that staring at screens too long at night is not good, yet how many of us still do it?).
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I Tested eXciteOSA With Sleep Apnea — My Honest Results
Earlier this year, I was having trouble sleeping. I couldn’t fall asleep, stay asleep and woke up tired everyday almost as if I never went to bed in the first place. I tried taking melatonin supplements, doing mindfulness meditations, not going on my phone before bed. But I still couldn’t sleep.
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Research Says These Sleep Habits Can Reduce Mortality Risk
When it comes to the factors that influence longevity and mortality, lifestyle essentials like regular exercise and a healthy diet are generally top of mind. Another essential? Getting enough sleep. And according to research published in the journal Sleep, getting into a good sleep schedule is just as important as how much of it you’re getting. Here’s what to know.
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Sleep Is Crucial For Preventing Neurological Disease, Experts Say
Sleep is a pivotal factor to our overall health, impacting everything from mood, to digestion, to energy levels. And according to research from the American Neurological Association, it could also be crucial for preventing cognitive and neurological conditions like Alzheimer’s.
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How To Know If You’re Reliant On Melatonin & What To Do
Create a nighttime “power down” ritual: Your wind down routine can involve relaxing activities that don’t involve a screen, like journaling, reading, or listening to an audiobook. “A nighttime ritual helps your body know it’s time to go to bed,” Mysore notes. That said, she recommends against eating, drinking, or exercising too close to bedtime, as these things can be counterproductive.
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Why GABA Is Essential For Sleep & How To Get Enough Of It
When you think about all the ways to improve sleep, you probably think about going to bed earlier, limiting caffeine, or putting your phone away a bit before bed. But there’s another little-known secret weapon that can help get you get a great night’s rest: GABA, a nonprotein amino acid neurotransmitter.
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Your Bedroom Probably Isn’t Dark Enough
Every day, as sunlight streams into your eyes, trillions of tiny clocks in your cells reset. The human body uses light to correctly time myriad processes, ensuring that liver enzymes are made on schedule, hair cells divide at the right time, and blood pressure stays at a healthy level. People who don’t get their daily dose of light at the right time of day can end up with worse health.
But for all its usefulness, researchers are increasingly realizing that light has a dark side. In 2019, one group of researchers found an association between obesity in women and any level of light exposure while sleeping. Another team reported that light at night was linked to high blood pressure, obesity, and diabetes in older adults. And in a study published in October 2025, researchers drawing on light-exposure data from fitness monitors worn by nearly 90,000 people, taking readings every minute, revealed that low ambient light during the night was linked to a higher risk of heart failure and other cardiovascular problems over about 10 years.
While these types of studies on their own can’t prove that light caused these problems, they add to a growing body of work suggesting that good health requires a dark night.
In the recent study, the team used the largest known database of information on personal light exposure, part of the UK Biobank data, says Angus Burns, a research fellow at Harvard Medical School and an author of the paper. The UK Biobank collects information from half a million volunteers, many of whom wore fitness trackers on their wrists for a week. Those data have fueled numerous studies linking step count with health outcomes.
However, the trackers also happened to contain a light sensor. Burns recalls discovering this fact and realizing that if he could figure out how to extract the data, he could have a minute-by-minute record of just how much light each person experienced throughout the day.
Getting the information out of the binary code was tricky. “It was buried in there,” he says. “It was a long journey.” But when he and his colleague Daniel Windred, now a researcher at Flinders University in Australia, had it all before them, they soon realized that even though electric lights have made our evenings brighter, there were still clear differences between day and night, with some telling patterns.
The effects of brighter lights
When researchers sorted people into groups based on how much light their trackers picked up between 12 a.m. and 6 a.m., they noticed something interesting. About half of people had very little light exposure at night. However, the other half were not spending that time in total darkness, and the median over the six-hour period, for people in the top 10% of light exposure, was about 100 lux—about the level of a dimly lit hotel hallway. It might be that they had fallen asleep with the TV on, or they might have been awake late and still winding down for the night.
Compared to people with dark nights, people who had brighter nights were more likely to develop heart disease or have a heart attack over the next ten years or so. The risk was greater the more light exposure they had, and the people with the very brightest nights—the top 10%—had higher risks of atrial fibrillation and stroke, says Windred. Even when the researchers took BMI, prediabetes status, and other health factors into account, the elevated risks, which ranged from about 30-60% higher depending on the condition, were still there. This suggests that light has an effect of its own.
It was not merely that people were sleeping poorly and thus suffering from the health effects of sleep deprivation. “Even after adjusting for how much sleep people are getting, the light exposure was still a strong, independent predictor of these various heart diseases,” Windred says.
That tallies with what other, smaller studies with personal light sensors have found, says Dr. Phyllis Zee, a professor of neurology at Northwestern University who studies sleep and circadian rhythms. She helped lead the earlier study of about 500 older adults that found light at night was associated with an elevated risk of obesity, diabetes, and hypertension. In another study of about 700 pregnant women, she and her colleagues found that more light exposure before bedtime was linked to higher risk for gestational diabetes. There does seem to be something damaging about light at night. “The UK Biobank study really confirms that in even a larger sample,” she says.
The question is, why? What exactly is light doing?
A state of constant alert
Light at night may be interfering with the circadian clock in some way, perhaps by stopping the production of melatonin, a hormone that helps differentiate day from night. Melatonin production can be delayed or arrested by even brief flashes of bright light entering the eye, research has shown. The amount of light these people were exposed to might not seem like much. But in the context of how humans evolved, it could be meaningful, says Burns. “We’re getting light at night orders of magnitude brighter than the moon or campfire,” he says.
At the same time, during the day, which we mostly spend inside, “we’re getting daylight exposure that is orders of magnitude lower than what the sun gives us,” Burns says. The researchers found that having very bright days, probably with lots of time spent outside, and very dark nights may protect against heart problems.
But there may be other factors in play, beyond disrupting the circadian clock. Zee and her colleagues uncovered something surprising when they had young, healthy volunteers sleep in the lab for one night. Some volunteers slept in ambient light of about 100 lux and some in only 3 lux, which is close to total darkness. While heart rates usually go down while we’re sleeping, the heart rates of the bright-light volunteers stayed high. When the researchers tested the volunteers’ metabolisms the next day, they found that the brighter light sleepers’ pancreases were having to work harder at making insulin to keep blood sugar in check. “It was almost like being in a heightened state,” Zee says. The nervous system, alerted by the light, seemed to stay ready for action.
Indeed, in previous work, Windred, Burns, and colleagues found that rates of Type 2 diabetes were elevated in the UK Biobank volunteers who had brighter nights, which also points to a role for metabolism. Windred speculates that there is extra stress put on both the cardiovascular system and metabolism by light when the body doesn’t expect it, and over time, that extra stress leads to damage. There might be ways to mitigate the effects, says Kenji Obayashi, a professor of epidemiology at Nara Medical University School of Medicine in Japan who studies light exposure, who was not involved in the study but finds the results intriguing. “It will be important to examine the results of interventional studies that reduce nighttime light exposure, such as using eye masks, blackout curtains, or shutters to block indoor and outdoor light from reaching the retina at night,” he says.
The conclusions researchers can draw from these studies so far are limited by the data. Zee’s study was only a single night, and the UK Biobank data include only a single week of light exposure. Having light-exposure data for thousands of individuals over thousands of nights, as well as lengthier lab-based studies, would help researchers get to the bottom of the link between brighter nights and poor health.
“Electric lighting is totally aberrant to our biology. It’s brand new, essentially, on the evolutionary scale, that we have light at night in this way,” says Burns. It has led to situations that the body is ill-equipped for, even if the details are still fuzzy to scientists. So if you find yourself regularly up late at night, basking in the TV’s glow, you might be doing more than just depriving yourself of sleep. “Just take yourself back to an ancestral human and our connection with the solar day, which is where our biology developed,” Burns says. Was an ancestral human bathing in light at midnight? “Probably not.”
Veronique Greenwood
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Truvaga Plus Is Like A Reset Button For My Nervous System
If you’re someone who’s constantly “on,” Truvaga Plus is like having a pocket-sized calm button. It doesn’t require hours of meditation or a full wellness routine overhaul—just a few mindful minutes to help your nervous system catch up with your life. I’m not saying it’s magic (I still have my Type-A moments), but it’s one of the few wellness tools I’ve actually stuck with. And for something that fits in the palm of your hand, that’s pretty powerful.
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50+ Unbeatable Black Friday Deals To Save On All Your Favorite Well-Being Essentials
Support your well-being one can’t-miss sale at a time.
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Treating sleep apnea early may help prevent Parkinson’s disease, study finds
Catching and treating a common sleep disorder early may help prevent Parkinson’s disease, a new study shows.
Parkinson’s is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder that causes tremor, stiffness, slow movement, as well as sleep and mental health issues. About 1.1 million people in the United States have Parkinson’s with the number expected to rise to 1.2 million by 2030, according to the Parkinson’s Foundation.
MORE: The brain has 5 stages, but ‘adulthood’ doesn’t begin until age 32, scientists say
Obstructive sleep apnea, a sleep disorder affecting approximately 30 million people in the United States, occurs when throat muscles relax, causing people to temporarily stop breathing and briefly wake up as many as five times an hour throughout the night.
A study published Monday in JAMA Neurology describes a link between untreated sleep apnea and Parkinson’s that may help identify those with the highest risk for the neurological disease, which has no cure.
Using health data collected between 1999 and 2022 from more than 11 million U.S. veterans, researchers found that about 14% of them were diagnosed with sleep apnea. Six years after being diagnosed, the veterans with untreated sleep apnea were almost twice as likely to have Parkinson’s than those who got treatment, according to the study.
Having sleep apnea is “…not at all a guarantee that you’re going to get Parkinson’s, but it significantly increases the chances,” the study’s co-author, Dr. Gregory Scott, said.
Conversely, treating sleep apnea with a continuous positive airway pressure – or CPAP – machine seems reduce the risk of developing Parkinson’s, researchers found. A CPAP machine blows air through a tube into a mask that fits over the face to keep airways open during sleep.
“If you stop breathing and oxygen is not at a normal level, your neurons are probably not functioning at a normal level either,” the study’s lead author, Dr. Lee Neilson, said. “Add that up night after night, year after year, and it may explain why fixing the problem by using CPAP may build in some resilience against neurodegenerative conditions, including Parkinson’s.”
Courtenay Harris Bond
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Oura Black Friday Sale 2025: Up To $150 Off
I swear I light up every time I talk about my Oura ring. It’s been like a road map to better sleep, and I’ve seen the impact in every aspect of my life. Whether you’re hoping to improve your own well-being or snag a very early unforgettable holiday gift, this ring is the ultimate sleep and longevity hack.
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Brace for Cold Nights With the Best Down Comforters We’ve Tried
Compare Our Top 11 Down Comforters
More Comforters We’ve Tested
If you want a warm blanket but you don’t want traditional down, consider a down alternative, or a comforter made with eucalyptus or bamboo.
Buffy Breeze Comforter: The Buffy Breeze Comforter has been on my bed for years. It’s made with a eucalyptus fiber fill and has a eucalyptus fiber cover, which lends it a silky feeling and excellent temperature regulation. It keeps me warm in the winter, but in the summer it doesn’t get too hot or feel too stifling. There are cute duvet covers available that I don’t entirely love—the comforter shifts around inside quite a bit—but if you want a duvet cover, this one is decent and made out of similar materials so it won’t detract from the comforter’s cooling features. The best part is that the Buffy Breeze is pretty affordable, and it goes on sale during basically every shopping holiday.
The Company Store Legends Luxury Luxe Royal Down Medium Warmth Comforter: For the price, I admit I was expecting this to be about as high-end a down comforter experience as one could get. And indeed, the RDS-certified Legends Luxury Luxe Royal looks nice, with a silky embossed basketweave design on the cover, but it didn’t have the same loft or fluffy feel as the brand’s Legends Hotel line. Which is strange, as it has a higher fill power than my favorite Legends Hotel comforter, the Premium Alberta (700-750 to Alberta’s 600-650). And it’s not just me—during testing, I lent the Legends Luxury Luxe Royal to my teen son, who had previously been trying the Alberta, and he only made it three days before asking for the Alberta back. —Kat Merck
Photograph: Kat Merck
LaCrosse Premium Down Medium Warmth Comforter: From the Company Store’s flagship LaCrosse collection, this RDS-certified comforter hits all the brand’s high points: loops for comforters that have ties; 600-650 fill power; combed cotton sateen cover. However, it is around the same price as the Legends Hotel Premium Alberta, above, which is considerably fluffier. —Kat Merck
Courtesy of Brooklinen
Brooklinen Airweave Cotton Quilt: This fluffy quilt is made of a waffled, textured fabric that feels lightweight, airy, and fluffy but still manages to keep heat in. It’s a wonderful blanket for summer months or afternoon naps, and I love the punchy colors. (I tested it in Marigold, a vibrant orange that brings me joy every time I see it.) My tester blanket did have a couple of loose threads, but careful snipping took care of them.
Utopia Bedding Down Alternative Comforter: If you’re on a tight budget, this affordable down alternative comforter offers great value for the price. It’s quilted and lightweight, but it’ll still keep you warm despite not being particularly heavy. I wasn’t a huge fan of the outer fabric—it’s microfiber that I found to be a bit scratchy and rough. But the comforter is available in a wide array of colors (there are 11 to choose from), and it has corner loops so it’ll work with a duvet cover. It’s also well-constructed—I didn’t find a single loose thread or stitch, unlike some other affordable comforters I’ve used in the past.
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Eden & Om Bamboo Comforter: This blanket is silky-soft and quite thin. It’d be a great option for a summer blanket since it’s naturally cooling, though conversely, you might want to have a warmer comforter around for cooler nights. Even in the Extra weight, it doesn’t completely block the chill from my box fan, let alone keep me warm enough in the brutal winter months. But on nights when it isn’t dreadfully chilly outside, this blanket reminds me of the Buffy Breeze comforter (above)—it helps regulate my body temperature without making me too warm or too cold. It’s also pretty breathable so on the off chance I do sweat, I don’t wake up feeling trapped and overheated.
Ikea Fjällbräcka: I used this Ikea comforter for several years. It’s not even 100 percent down (they cut it with duck feathers), it tends to get a little lumpy, and it’s not especially lofty, but it does have a 252-thread-count shell that prevents feather leakage. The biggest downside is that the added duck feathers give this comforter a little more of a “poultry smell” than white goose down feathers would. However, this comforter is also machine washable and sturdier than a lot of quilts I’ve used at this price point. —Martin Cizmar
Comforters We Don’t Recommend
Courtesy of Wayfair
White Noise Goose Down and Feather All Season Comforter: This all-season medium-weight comforter is breathable, balanced, and suitable for all seasons, with between 2 and 3 inches of 600-fill power thickness. The outside material is soft but feels sort of weird to the touch because it’s made of polyester and nylon—although this helps with noise reduction and is quieter than the others I’ve tested. It’s machine washable and struck a great balance between being thin and light enough for warmer weather while having enough thickness to still feel cozy. However, the comforter came with a really weird, pungent odor that smelled like grass and sweat. I washed and dried it two times to make the stench bearable to sleep with, but every once in a while during testing I could still smell the odor faintly. This is a solid all-season down comforter that strikes a good balance and has a great price point. I just wish it hadn’t smelled so gross. —Molly Higgins
Down is the layer of fluffy feathers between a bird’s outer feathers and its skin. It’s a great insulating material—just think of all those birds that manage to stay warm and dry all year long. Down is efficient, it’s more eco-friendly than some alternative materials, and it’s breathable despite keeping things so warm. Down holds up well over time with proper care, so your initial investment will last for years. A down comforter is especially worthwhile if you live in a cold climate. Blankets made with down alternatives or other types of materials can be good, too, but if you’re looking for a warm blanket that’ll last decades, down is probably what you want. We have an article dedicated to helping you decide.
How Do You Choose a Down Comforter?
Look for a cover thread count between 230 and 500. Fabrics with these thread counts are “down-proof” and minimize the chances of feathers poking through.
Fill power vs. fill weight: Fill power is a measurement of how much space, in cubic inches, an ounce of down takes up—for instance, a fill power of 600 means one ounce of down will take up 600 cubic inches. A higher fill power means fluffier, more efficient down. Fill power doesn’t necessarily translate to warmth, but it’s an indication of the quality of the down and how much the down compresses. Fill weight, on the other hand, is the amount of down inside the product. If something has high fill power but low fill weight, it won’t necessarily be warmer than if something has low fill power and high fill weight. It’s a little confusing. The most important factor is how the down is distributed. Look for baffle-box or sewn-through construction in your comforters for an indication that down will be distributed evenly and keep you warm throughout the night. Baffle boxes keep down lofty but need to be shaken sometimes to reallocate the down inside, whereas sewn-through keeps things in place but often results in a slightly less fluffy comforter.
Goose vs. duck down: Goose down has a higher fill power than duck down, so it’s fluffier and loftier. It’s also less smelly and generally more hypoallergenic. On the other hand, duck down is usually more affordable. We think goose down is best unless you’re on a very tight budget. Two common types of goose down are Hungarian and Hutterite. Both are considered to be top-notch based on the large down clusters typical of birds that come from the cold regions of Hungary and Canada. Hutterite tends to be more affordable. You likely wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between the two. Hungarian down can be a bit loftier, and Hutterite down can be a bit softer, but ultimately neither of these factors should make or break your decision to purchase a comforter. When it comes to the types of birds the down comes from, however, you should look for all goose down or at least a blend of goose and duck. That will cut back on odors and allergens and offer a fluffier, more high-quality blanket.
Down comforter care tips: If you’re investing in a comforter, you might want to consider getting a duvet cover, which can help protect the comforter and also usually improves the look (unless you’re into plain white). When it comes to washing the comforter itself, you want to follow the instructions on the care tag, and wash it as infrequently as you can. You can do it at home if your washer is big enough; otherwise, head to local laundromat to use their bigger machines. Use a delicate wash cycle with high spin speed to get as much moisture out as possible, and avoid using fabric softener, which can degrade the down’s fluffy texture. You should also use a small amount of detergent—err on the side of less, not more—and consider an extra rinse cycle to ensure that all the soap is rinsed out. Make sure that your comforter is fully dry using a low-heat setting. It might take a few cycles. Fluff the comforter between rounds to ensure efficient drying and maximum loft. I like using wool dryer balls to help make drying more efficient.
How Does WIRED Test Down Comforters?
For each comforter we tested, our testers slept with our respective picks for at least seven nights in locations around the US—our testers included folks living in Portland, Oregon; northern Illinois; New York City; and Kansas City, Missouri. Every comforter in this list has at least been tested during autumn, though most have been tested during every season. We looked for comforters that struck a balance between price, efficiency, and quality, and sought out different fill weights, fill powers, and materials to ensure our recommendations met a variety of reader needs. We assessed how we felt as we fell asleep, slept, and woke up. We paid careful attention to details such as whether a comforter was noisy while settling in for the night, or whether any feathers poked through. We’re always testing new down comforters, especially during the colder months. We are also testing more down alternative options which will be featured in a separate story.
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Louryn Strampe
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Science Says Sleeping in a Really Dark Room Will Make You Smarter
You probably already know you need at least seven hours of sleep a night to function at your best. (And don’t say, “Not me. I do just fine on five or six hours.” According to a study published in Cell Research, only a tiny fraction of the population functions well on less than seven hours.)
Why? A 2018 study published in Sleep says if you only sleep for five to six hours you’re 19 percent less productive than people who regularly sleep for seven to eight hours. If you only sleep five hours a night? You’re nearly 30 percent less productive.
That’s especially true for entrepreneurs: a study published in Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice found that lack of sleep makes people more likely to start a business on impulse or whim rather than on a solid, well-considered idea. More broadly, a study published in Journal of Business Venturing found that lack of sleep causes you to come up with worse ideas.
And to believe your bad ideas are actually good ideas.
So yeah: getting enough sleep is actually a competitive advantage.
Especially if you take it one step farther. According to a 2022 study published in Sleep, sleeping in as close to total darkness as possible can not only improve the quality of your sleep, it can also improve your memory and alertness.
After just two nights of wearing a sleep mask, participants:
- displayed significantly better learning skills,
- displayed significantly better physical reaction times, and
- learned new motor skills more quickly.
Why? One explanation could be the “synaptic homeostasis hypothesis,” the theory that increased slow-wave activity during sleep (which is promoted by darkness) promotes the “down-scaling” of synapses that became saturated while you were awake and restores your capacity for encoding new information.
Or, in non researcher-speak, a dark night’s sleep primes both your cognitive and motor skills for the next day. The same holds true for feeling (and actually being) more alert.
That doesn’t mean I’m eager to embrace a sleep mask. It feels weird to have a mask on, and it made me feel like I didn’t sleep as well. But I’m probably wrong; as the researchers write:
It deserves mention that even though participants reported that sleeping with the control mask was more uncomfortable in comparison with the eye mask, this did not impact self-reported sleep quality, morning alertness, or sleep parameters.
So even if you don’t love the idea of a mask, the mask will still — in terms of the benefits it provides — love you back.
But you don’t have to wear a mask. Draw your blinds. Consider room-darkening curtains. Turn off device notifications and leave them face-down on your nightstand. The darker you make your bedroom — the more you limit the presence of ambient or intermittent light that can disturb your sleep — the more you’ll benefit in terms of memory performance and alertness the next day.
As the researchers write:
Given the current climate of life-hacking, sleep monitoring, and cognitive enhancers, our findings suggest the eye mask as a simple, economical, and noninvasive way to get more out of a night of sleep.
And so is a really dark room.
The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.
The final deadline for the 2026 Inc. Regionals Awards is Friday, December 12, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply now.
Jeff Haden
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A Viral Chinese Wristband Claims to Zap You Awake. The Public Says ‘No Thanks’
Forget coffee, you can now stay alert by strapping on a wristband that lightly zaps you awake. That’s what eCoffee Energyband, a Chinese gadget that sells for just over $100, is claiming to do.
First released in late 2023, the product is a lightweight wearable with two electrode pads that sit against the inner wrist. WAT Medical, a Canadian company with a Chinese subsidiary making and marketing the device, claims the mild electrical signals sent by the wristband can keep wearers alert by stimulating nerves in the brain. The effect is supposedly about the same as a cup of coffee, minus the risk of caffeine addiction. The only side effect is that your hand could feel numb from the tip of the finger to the inner wrist, the company says, so the makers suggest that it only be worn for three hours a day, and users can switch which wrists they put it on.
The gadget would likely have stayed in relative obscurity if the company that makes it had not attended a recent Chinese trade show, whereafter it suddenly went viral. “The purpose of inventing this eCoffee Energyband is not to replace coffee. Coffee is great, but it’s not always suitable for the afternoon or evening. But we still have the need to feel refreshed during those times,” Xu Haojie, the company’s director of operations, told Chinese state media Xinhua at the trade show. After wearing it, the Xinhua reporter said, “It feels like I’m being gently tapped. I can feel the electric pulse.”
It immediately became a sensation online. On Chinese ecommerce websites, including JD and Taobao, the device appears to be sold out as of now, with hundreds of mixed reviews from buyers. The device is also sold and shipped to markets around the world. The website lists its normal price at $130, with a holiday promotion going on right now that knocks 30 percent off the price.
But on Chinese social media, the wristband has been met with overwhelming sarcasm and skepticism.
The company’s marketing frames eCoffee as a productivity booster, a tool for getting more study and work done. But that message has struck a chord with Chinese people’s resentment
toward “996” culture, the local variant of the grind culture. The young generation in China is increasingly recoiling from workplace burnout. Snarky commentators online called the wristband everything from a portable electric chair to the human version of dog-training e-collars and livestock whips, emphasizing how it benefits the managerial class against the will of the working class.Zeyi Yang
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