09/17/2025
Sleep has a huge impact on our health. It helps our brains function, protects against heart disease and supports our immune system. And without it, we would die.
But for something so important, we aren't formally taught how to do it right, says Rebecca Robbins, a sleep scientist at Brigham and Women's Hospital and an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. "In America, you learn about nutrition or s*x ed in school, but never about sleep."
To help educate the public about healthy sleep, Robbins and her colleagues identified popular myths about sleep and debunked them in a 2019 paper published in the journal Sleep Health. They looked at statements such as "many adults need only 5 or less hours of sleep" and "it does not matter what time of day you sleep." And they found that these claims had "a limited or questionable evidence base."
Robbins walks through some of these myths with Life Kit and shares some much-needed tips on how to get better sleep. Read the story here: https://n.pr/4mlOr3p
