Wirecutter - Your guide to better Zzz’s

Wirecutter Staff

Hi,

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I’m Caira Blackwell, and I sleep for a living.

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My job at Wirecutter involves testing sleep-related products—like mattresses, weighted blankets, and meditation apps, to name a few—and evaluating if and how they improve the quality of sleep. You can imagine, then, why Sleep Week (starting today!) is such an exciting time for me. My team and I have spent hundreds of hours researching, testing, and recommending the best gear to help our readers consistently get a good night’s rest, and over the next week, we’re diving into all of it.

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The biggest lesson I’ve learned as a sleep writer is that the same solution won’t work for everyone. So it’s best to find alternatives and allow space for life’s differences to accommodate that.

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For example, though studies may suggest that doing something like locking a pet out of the bedroom will drastically improve your night’s rest, it simply may not be the best advice for everybody. (It certainly isn’t for me. Though kicking my cat out of my room stops him from walking all over me in the middle of the night, it also turns him into an incessant little beast who loudly headbutts my door until I get up to let him in.)

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Plus, knowing what’s best for your body and brain doesn’t always translate into action. I know that exposing myself to blue light through phone and television screens will mess with my body’s natural circadian rhythms. Yet I still find myself zonking out with my cellphone in hand or an episode of Mad Men blaring in the background of my dreams.

WinkBed