Health & the Body · Foundation

Sleep

Sleep is the most advised-about and least measured part of most people's lives. This course is about what is actually known: how sleep is measured and what each instrument can and cannot see, what happens to performance and mood when sleep is restricted under controlled conditions, what the evidence says about the treatments people are offered, and where the popular claims about sleep outrun the studies behind them. It is the sixth course of the term on running yourself, and it is a health course, so it says throughout what it is and is not entitled to claim.

What you'll learn

• Name the instruments sleep research uses and say what each one can and cannot measure, including what a sensitivity and specificity pair says about a device
• State what controlled sleep restriction has been shown to do to performance, with the design, the participants and the outcome measure it was shown on
• Distinguish an experimental finding about performance from an observational association with disease, and say what each licenses
• Distinguish a claim about how much sleep from a claim about when, and name the instrument behind each
• Compare what three clinical guidelines recommend for chronic insomnia, with the strength and the quality of evidence each attaches
• Trace a claim from a research literature into a popular paragraph and name what changed on the way
• Decide what, if anything, to change about your own sleep, and say what the decision rests on and what it costs