The Sleep Prescription

Book excerpt: “Vastly knowledgeable and genuinely brilliant . . . An easy yet most effective how-to guide on sleep.” —Dr. Matthew Walker, New York Times bestselling author of Why We Sleep From renowned sleep scientist Dr. Aric Prather, a book that offers a simple yet powerful plan to improve your sleep in seven days We need sleep to survive. Sleep is as essential as food, water, and oxygen. So how can something that should be so instinctual and automatic be so hard? Dr. Prather runs one of the world’s most successful sleep clinics and has cracked the code to help even the most restless of sleepers get a good night’s rest. In The Sleep Prescription, Dr. Prather shares the powerful solutions that he uses to help his patients at the clinic achieve healing and restorative sleep. Going beyond the obvious solutions, Dr. Prather shares surprisingly simple yet deeply effective techniques that will help you lie back and let sleep work its magic. The seven-day prescription will lead you through these exercises: Day 1: Set Your (Internal) Clock Day 2: Ease Off the Gas Day 3: Energize—But Do It Right Day 4: Worry Early Day 5: You Are Not a Computer; You Can't Just Shut Down Day 6: (Re)Train Your Brain Day 7: Stay Up Late Over the course of seven days, this book will teach you how to get out of your own way, so that your body can do effortlessly what it was built to do: sleep well.