61
votes
Accepted
Do teenagers fall asleep and rise up later than kids or adults for biological reasons?
There does appear to be fairly solid research backing this claim.
A summary page from UCLA:
Sleep and Teens
One change in the body during puberty is closely related to how you sleep. There is a shift ...
- 751
57
votes
Accepted
Are blue light filters, not blue lights, on phones and computer screens harmful to sleep?
This is the study itself if you want to read it. Yes it is a study in mice. It is evidence but not proof that blue filters are counter-productive, at least according to the authors of this single, ...
- 8,025
38
votes
Accepted
Has "the destruction of the space shuttle Challenger... been linked to insufficient sleep"?
On the headline question
Has “the destruction of the space shuttle Challenger… been linked to insufficient sleep”
There probably was a link, as it was important enough included in the Rogers ...
- 9,066
19
votes
Does Earthing Therapy reduce cortisol secretion and help sleep?
Short version:
The quoted study is poor quality, and is not sufficient to accept the claims.
Earthing in general is pseudo-scientific nonsense.
Longer Version:
Flawed Journal
The study that ...
- 145k
13
votes
Accepted
Can you increase sleep quality by removing static electricity from the body with a specialized mattress/quilt?
Skeptoid episode #611 covers this claim and its foundation, specifically that static electricity builds up throughout the day. This is false. Fortunately, Skeptoid even covers the bedding aspect:
...
- 254
12
votes
Accepted
Does radiation from sleeping next to your smartphone affect your brain patterns negatively?
Seeing this question pop up again, I want to share something. I did not write an answer before because I did not want to dig up an old question without a conclusive answer.
While the claim is ...
- 14.2k
12
votes
Accepted
Can anyone function on just 2 hours sleep per night?
Short version:
A short-sleep human phenotype has been described in the literature. However, the reported sleep times I found in the scientific literature for those people are around 6h / day vs. 8h ...
- 3,556
11
votes
Is charging your phone overnight dangerous?
Lithium batteries are based on a chemistry that can fail in combustive fashion. To avoid this, elaborate safeguards are in place to avoid those exact failure modes.
A defective battery can still self-...
- 19.2k
8
votes
Accepted
Does it take 30 seconds for a person to consciously realize that they're awake?
The problem is that even specialists in this field of sleep medicine use terms like "awake" or "arousal" with different meanings.
In the sentence emphasized in the question "awake" almost certainly ...
7
votes
Is charging your phone overnight dangerous?
No. The module that controls the rate of charge and whether any charge is drawn from the power source and the AC power adapter resides in the iPhone, itself. As such, it's really not possible to &...
- 9,691
7
votes
Do ultra-heavy blankets reduce stress and anxiety?
Honestly, more research is needed. Some research has already been done in the past 10 years, but not enough to really make solid conclusions. For example, there's no research to support the "10% ...
- 34.1k
6
votes
Accepted
Is sleep "defragmentation" for your brain?
There is a plethora of scientific work that all points towards sleep being very important for the kind of cleanup and reorganisation you are referring to.
Information like this is readily available e....
- 19.2k
6
votes
Do ultra-heavy blankets reduce stress and anxiety?
This heavy blanket may be another version of the so called 'Hug machine'. The hug machine consists of two padded boards, arranged in a V-shape. The user lies or squats between the boards, adjusts the ...
- 345
6
votes
Does having your bedroom door closed while sleeping improve fire safety?
I looked for research into this issue which was independent from the UL FSRI.
In 1999, there was a Master of Engineering student's project report:
Deborah L Palmer, Should bedroom doors be open or ...
- 145k
5
votes
Do ultra-heavy blankets reduce stress and anxiety?
The news article is pretty clearly written as an advertisement. It includes things like a small print notice of "A subsidiary of Futurism launched this product and Futurism collects a share of the ...
- 3,677
5
votes
Does having your bedroom door closed while sleeping improve fire safety?
Certainly UK fire regulations and analysis support this claim. Residential institutions are required to have automatic closers on bedroom doors because of this.
On taller buildings there is a ...
- 344
5
votes
Death by lack of sleep -- is it possible?
Fruit flies were one of the key organisms to cracking the sleep cycle. They have a fond spot in my heart, because I started real lab work (as opposed to student lab work) in 1989 with D. Melanogaster....
- 1,176
4
votes
Is sleepiness after a goods night's sleep a sign of dehydration?
It could be a sign but it could also mean other things. When it comes to your health and symptoms you see there can be many causes.
https://www.risescience.com/blog/waking-up-tired
One of the many ...
- 5,334
4
votes
Does Lee Hadwin have "artistic ability" only when asleep?
The arguments proving his mettle as an artist when sleeping (2013) are the best proof against his skills, which is flimsy proof, but the best we have.
If is was doing a scam then I would be a lot ...
- 1,176
4
votes
Accepted
Do water pillows improve sleep quality?
Lavin et al is the study mentioned. The results of the study support the claim that this water pillow improves neck pain. Another scientific article reviews this first study in its literature review ...
- 12k
4
votes
Accepted
Does the "4-7-8" method help to fall asleep faster?
A medical doctor with a focus on holistic health, Dr Weil, and an holistic practitioner claims it works in the same article Dr. Michelle E. Gordon says it might contribute to relaxation.
The same Dr ...
- 3,012
3
votes
Accepted
Is it healthy to sleep with the head under the blanket?
Assuming that sleeping with head under blanket increases CO2 levels, you can find plenty of studies on the more immediate effects of the latter, e.g.,
It has been shown that when bedroom air ...
3
votes
Is charging your phone overnight dangerous?
Charging you phone overnight is safe, as long as you are sensible. It should be on a hard surface and have adequate room for any heat to vent.
All rechargeable batteries have a risk of causing ...
- 256
3
votes
Does reading off a self-luminous tablet impact the quality of sleep?
Guessing it does not count as science-related: iPads are so bad for your healthy sleep that even Apple offers now a redshifting feature in newer devices. But that is partially because: Evening use of ...
- 44.1k
3
votes
Does the color temperature of a computer screen affect sleep patterns?
Yes, the blue colour may affect sleep cycles, but an app might not be enough to fix it, depending on other lighting conditions.
The existing answers are somewhat theoretical, without considering ...
- 145k
2
votes
Do you eat a certain number of spiders whilst you sleep?
The 1992 book Basic Statistics for the Behavioral Sciences Student Workbook and Study Guide says:
b.This is a very low p, indicating that, over the long run, we can expect to swallow spiders only ...
- 109k
2
votes
Does sleeping on your left side, while pregnant, improve blood flow?
This study examined whether sleep-position affected still-birth risk: Going to sleep in the supine position is a modifiable risk factor for late pregnancy stillbirth; Findings from the New Zealand ...
- 121
2
votes
Was Leonardo da Vinci a polyphasic sleeper?
Leonardi Da Vinci's notebooks are available.
We can see from this that he was not a fan of sleeping:
0 sleepers! what a thing is slumber! Sleep resembles death. Ah, why then dost thou not work in ...
- 121
1
vote
Do we need less sleep when the Sun is shining at night?
The National Center for Biotechnology Information made similar observations:
At Arctic and Antarctic latitudes, personnel are deprived of natural sunlight in winter and have continuous daylight in ...
- 234
1
vote
Does Daylight Savings Time lead to an increase in car accidents and work related injuries the week afterwards?
For Canada, according to Daylight Savings Time and Traffic Accidents N Engl J Med 1996; 334:924-925
The loss of one hour's sleep associated with the spring shift to daylight savings time increased ...
- 109k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible