While sleep experts don't recommend surfing the Web from your bed in the middle of the night (it's bad sleep hygiene!), visiting these sites while you're awake and alert—and far from your bedroom—may give you some insight and tips for better sleep.
| Site | Who It's For | Why We Like It |
|---|---|---|
| The Insomnia Blog | Insomniacs looking for some light educational reading | Michael Breus, PhD, a well-known sleep doctor, provides a refreshingly easy-to-read blog about new studies, trends, and findings. |
| Lunesta Sleep Calculator | Fragmented sleepers | This interactive tool, sponsored by a pharmaceutical company, uses several measures of your sleep habits to determine how many hours a night you actually spend sleeping. |
| Help Me to Sleep | Insomniacs looking for detailed literature | This site is compiled by a former insomniac, and features information on natural remedies for insomnia, helpful hints for sleeping well, and coverage of other sleep disorders. |
| Red Hot Mamas | Menopausal women with sleep problems | This menopause-education organization's 2007 sleep survey (in downloadable pdf form) shows that women who experience changing sleep patterns as they age are not alone. The publication also offers a doctor’s take and tips for getting a better night's rest. |
| Sperling's Best Places: America's Best and Worst Cities for Sleep | Insomniacs willing to relocate | Research expert Bert Sperling teamed up with Ambien to study America’s 50 biggest cities and, using five main criteria, ranked them based on where residents were the least and most likely to wake up refreshed. It may not seem like the most scientific study in the world, but it contains some interesting tidbits, nonetheless. |
| SleepStarved.org | People who are dissatisfied with current solutions to insomnia and want to start looking at the problem in a new way | This site was created by Gayle Greene, a health writer and former literature professor who came up with the idea for her book Insomniac at 3 a.m. during a particularly restless night. Greene posts news and insights about insomnia and invites readers to leave their own experiences as comments. |
| Talk About Sleep | Cyber chatters with insomnia | While many websites offer message boards and chat rooms, there's no guarantee they'll be occupied. But Talk About Sleep's insomnia forum features a busy discussion board and a weekly, moderated live chat about insomnia and all types of sleep issues. |
| Neatorama: Eleven Days Awake | Extreme insomniacs looking to commiserate | It’s like a little ray of hope: No matter how sleep-deprived you might feel, you’ll never be as bad off as this guy. |