Understanding Sleep
Helpful tips & resources to improve your sleep environment…and your overall health.
Sleep is the time when the human body can rejuvenate and heal. At Jordan’s Sleep Lab, our objective is not just to sell you a mattress, but to provide you — and your body — with a means of fighting illness, staying sharp, and being happy. Three main categories affect sleep: environment, disorders and illnesses, and overall well-being. You can learn about them here.
Your sleep environment is crucial to getting a good night’s sleep, with these five factors affecting you the most. Learn More >
Light - One of the most powerful time cues in nature is light. Bright light tends to increase alertness. Conversely, a dark room is more conducive to sleep. The darker the better. Use curtains or shades to prevent light from interrupting sleep.
Noise - Irregular or sudden loud noises from inside or outside the home can disrupt sleep or cause alertness. Steady, low sounds, like those from a fan or sound machine, can be soothing and often help block out distracting noises.
Temperature - The ideal bedroom temperature is 60° F to 65° F. A room that is too warm or too cold can disrupt sleep. Sleeping too hot can cause you to toss and turn, wake up or throw off the covers, and you wake up feeling groggy and tired. During menopause, skin temperature can increase as much as 6° F, leading to increased perspiration during a hot flash, then resulting in chills. We carry a complete selection of temperature-regulating products that can help improve your quality of sleep, including mattress protectors, sheets, and more.
Proper Sleep Surface - It is crucial that your mattress set provides you with both proper support and adequate pressure relief. Pillows are as important as your mattress. If your pillows do not help align you properly, they could contribute to pain in the neck or back.
Environmental Irritants - Reduce your exposure to the irritants in the bedroom that cause you suffering. These things include dust mites, mold, mildew, and bed bugs. The best ways to protect yourself include: enveloping your sleep surface and pillows in protective encasements. You can even wrap up your foundation. This ensures a healthy sleep environment, and will prevent dust mites or bed bugs from finding a home in your bedding. Learn More >
Allergens - Fifty million Americans suffer from allergies, asthma, or both. And, nearly 20 million Americans suffer from symptoms relating to dust mite allergies, so it’s important to know a little about how dust mites impact sleep before selecting a mattress protector or pillow encasement. Here are a few facts:
- The weight of the average mattress doubles after 10 years due to dust mite infestation, and the weight of the average pillow increases 10% in a single year.
- A Johns Hopkins University study showed that “mite population and allergen levels decreased by 90 percent or more” within a month of replacing mattress and pillow covers.
- According to the Center for Disease Control, a used unprotected mattress can have anywhere between 10,000 and 10 million dust mites in it (imagine sleeping with those every night).
- The average dust mite is 0.5 mm in length, not visible to the naked eye. Over 7,000 dust mites can fit on the size of an average human fingernail.
Bed Bugs - Did you know that bed bug outbreaks have tripled in the U.S. since 2005? Bed bugs are “hitchhikers," meaning they transfer from host to host, going easily from infested areas to non-infested areas.
- Bed bugs don’t discriminate. If they are present in your environment, it’s not indicative of cleanliness.
- Just because you don’t have an infestation of bed bugs today, that does not mean you can’t have one tomorrow. They are tiny parasites that often go unseen by the naked human eye. Normally, it takes a large infestation before a person notices there is a problem. That makes preventative measures especially important to take.
- Mattress, foundation, and pillow encasements are easy, cost-efficient, and very effective in protecting against bed bugs. Their materials and product designs keep bed bugs out long before an infestation can begin.
Sleep disorders and illnesses will also greatly affect your quality of sleep. Learn More >
We suggest visiting one of these Greater Boston clinics to address your individual sleep needs:
Boston PainCare Center – This sleep facility is a 20,000-square-foot medical center designed and staffed by physicians to treat patients with chronic conditions. Boston PainCare focuses on creating successful treatment plans tailored to each patient’s circumstances. Our Sleep Lab Technicians are trained by staff at Boston PainCare to understand pain, and its effects on the quality of your sleep, so they can offer informed recommendations.
Center for Sleep Medicine at Tufts Medical Center – This collaborative resource was designed to provide comprehensive care to individuals having difficulty sleeping at night, staying awake during the day, or experiencing unusual movements or behaviors during sleep.
MetroWest Medical Center – Here, all-night polysomnograms, multiple sleep latency tests, and day polysomnograms are performed. These tests help diagnose excessive sleepiness, loud snoring, apnea, and unusual activity at night.
NeuroCare Inc. Center for Sleep Diagnostic – This sleep center location has been providing care to the South Shore area since 1995. The experts at the center have at their disposal a full range of diagnostic capabilities for testing all types of sleep disorders.
Sleep Health Centers – Affiliated with Brigham and Women’s Hospital, this network of sleep centers is staffed by board-certified sleep specialists.
Tri-County Medical – The physicians, physician assistants, and nurse practitioners at this location provide specialty medicine via 20 office locations in Bellingham, Franklin, Hopkinton, Medway, Medford, and Whitinsville among others.
UMass Memorial Sleep Disorders Center – For more than a decade, the clinicians here have provided comprehensive diagnosis and management of about 120 sleep disorders in a state-of-the-art sleep lab.
Winchester Hospital – This full-service sleep disorder center diagnoses and treats patients suffering from sleep-related symptoms.
Yale-New Haven Hospital – Clinicians at Yale-New Haven Hospital's Sleep Medicine Centers evaluate, diagnose and treat sleep disorders, and sleep-related conditions. Accredited by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, the sleep medicine program offers a coordinated approach to the management of a variety of sleep disorders and related conditions.
Discover the important role sleep plays in our overall well-being. Here are some helpful resources. Learn More >
Better Sleep Council – Supported by the industry, this non-profit organization is devoted to educating the public about the importance of sleep, and the role it plays in our overall health and quality of life.
National Sleep Foundation – An independent, non-profit organization, this effort aims to improve public health and safety by promoting the understanding of sleep and sleep-related disorders and illnesses. It does this through public education, research, and advocacy.
Sleep Products Safety Council – This non-profit service organization was established in 1986 by the International Sleep Products Association. Its mission is to provide consumers with information, supporting research, and promotional actions that advance the safety of sleep products sold in the United States.
