Aric A. Prather's The Sleep Prescription: Seven Days to Unlocking Your Best Rest presents empirically validated, step-by-step guidance on how to get the deep, restorative and slow-wave sleep our bodies need "to clean the metabolic gunk out of the brain after another long day." Designed to address a spectrum of sleep issues--from occasional sleeplessness to insomnia and everything in between--Prather's debut sets a calm and practical, yet light-hearted, tone that is a perfect antidote to the anxiety surrounding poor sleep and its attendant health problems. Prather, a sleep scientist at the University of California, San Francisco, conducts research to better understand how and why sleep is so critical for health and implements cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia patients. Prather annually treats hundreds of people desperate for a good night's rest and shares techniques and tips that have been successfully deployed by patients with even the most stubborn sleep disorders.
The Sleep Prescription--which notes that the first step toward improving sleep is the commitment to wake up at the same time every day, a choice that stabilizes the body's circadian rhythm--is a roadmap for how to behave during the day in ways that accommodate nighttime slumber. It includes suggestions for countering middle-of-the-night rumination and worry. Prather shares his own struggles to adopt strategies that promote quality rest and refers to sleep as our "well of resilience," encouraging readers to protect their sleep time and equipping them with the armor needed to handle the slings and arrows that life flings our way. --Shahina Piyarali, reviewer