Shoshana Aultman

Release your inner toddler ‘Our data suggests a 30-minute nap can reverse the hormonal impact of a night of poor Forum.altaycoins.Com sleep,' said one study co-author Brice Faraut. Short of time travel, a nap may be the closest we can get to a second chance at a good night's sleep. Rather than reach for our fifth cup of coffee or third doughnut to deal with the usual post-lunch lull, consider a 20-minute nap. In fact, if you're deciding between the two - caffeine or nap - the science is clear that naps trump caffeine.  When ARIANNA HUFFINGTON, the famously driven founder and editor of The Huffington Post, collapsed due to sleep deprivation, she resolved to overhaul her accelerated lifestyle. She tells Jane Mulkerrins how getting eight hours a night has changed her life Favourite look? The star is clearly trying to get in all her white before Labor Day as she wore the same outfit the day before with different shoes while out with a male friend at the Chateau Marmont in Hollywood ‘I was called into the dean's office to be reprimanded,' Arianna giggles. ‘And she said, "We don't want this to get into Varsity [the university newspaper], so, to avoid that, we will charge you a shilling per man."' I do hope they were worth it? ‘A couple of them were,' she laughs. The Huffington Post - which was sold to AOL in 2011 for $315 million (£221 million), retaining Arianna as editor-in-chief - is testament to her message regarding sleep: there are hammocks in the newsroom and two darkened nap rooms which staff can book for 30 minutes to restore their flagging focus during the day. There's also a cushion-strewn room where weekly breathing and meditation classes are held. Arianna's previous meeting - with the U.S. ambassador to Spain - is running a little over. This is, after all, a woman so well-connected she has Oprah on speed dial, along with the Obamas, the Clintons and the Dalai Lama. So I take a tour of the offices while Arianna finishes. The current campaigns could certainly use some Arianna-influenced sleep promotion. We discuss February's Iowa and New Hampshire primaries, around which much of the talk was of candidates' sleep deprivation.  When I feel in need of a nap, I use the couch in my office. I used to close the curtains of the glass wall that looks out over the newsroom, but one day it dawned on me that leaving the curtains open sends a clear message to the newsroom that not only is there no stigma - at least at The Huffington Post - attached to napping, it's the best thing we can do to recharge ourselves.   And when we're not well rested, it shows. An experiment in the UK tested the effects of sleep deprivation on a group of 30 women. Their skin was analysed and photographed after they slept for eight hours and then again after sleeping six hours for five nights in a row. Fine lines and wrinkles increased by 45 per cent and redness increased by eight per cent. In other words, we wear our lack of sleep on our faces.  Her father Konstantinos Stasinopoúlou was a journalist who was incarcerated in a Nazi concentration camp after publishing an underground newspaper in Greece during the German occupation, and whom Arianna credits with instilling in her a passion for journalism.  As someone who regularly exists on five or six hours a night, The Sleep Revolution is a radical read. The weekend before meeting its author, for the first time in my adult life, I attempted to get at least seven hours each night, as she recommends. Sleep deprivation has also been proven to be one of the biggest variables in our mental and cognitive performance. In just two weeks of getting six hours of sleep a night, the performance drop-off is the same as in someone who has just gone 24 hours without sleep. For those getting just four hours, the impairment is equivalent to that of going 48 hours without sleep.  But what do you do when, for whatever reason - a sick toddler lunch ideas australia, a bad cold, a late night out - you just can't get the recommended seven to eight hours of sleep? Fortunately, there's a great remedy: the nap. Naps are a free and readily available way to enjoy what the National Sleep Foundation calls ‘a pleasant luxury, a mini-vacation'.  As it turns out, naps are great for us even when we are getting good sleep at night. According to David Randall, author of Dreamland, even a short nap ‘primes our brains to function at a higher level, letting us find solutions to puzzles more quickly and recall information more accurately'. While chronic poor sleep can have long-lasting effects on our health, naps can help mitigate some of those effects, at least in the short term.  I learn that skimping on sleep may eventually affect us so badly that those of us who don't end up dead - through cancer, heart disease or fatal accidents caused by exhaustion - will be overweight, stupid and depressed, our brains, metabolisms and moods ravaged. We might also be prime candidates for Alzheimer's.  Back in 2007, the Greek-born, U.S.-based journalist and entrepreneur was working habitually long hours building The Huffington Post, her recently established news website, while touring prospective colleges with her eldest daughter Christina.