Foundations of Sleep Health

Book excerpt: Foundations of Sleep Health presents sleep health as a critical element of overall individual and population health. Sleep disorders are an increasing problem plaguing more than 40 million Americans. Sleep impacts numerous biological functions and plays a critical role in brain development, including learning and memory consolidation, cognitive functioning, and emotion regulation. This book provides an historic and current overview of the state of sleep health with an emphasis on the interplay between several levels of determinants and factors that influence sleep health. The text provides students in the health professions with in-depth discussion on the theory, research, and practice of sleep health, while also detailing mechanisms, hypotheses, and determinants of sleep and ways to improve sleep health. - Discusses the current state of knowledge of sleep health, research into the factors that contribute to and are impacted by sleep health - Uses a socioecological model to examine the whole range of determinants of sleep health, from biological to upstream environmental factors and possible modes of intervention - Contains a detailed glossary of sleep health terms to aid in the understanding of key concepts - Includes learning outcomes for each chapter, objective assessments of knowledge, with explanations, and open-ended questions designed to facilitate discussion