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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.
‘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.
'I've spent my entire life in devotion to creativity, and along the way I've developed a set of beliefs about how it works - and how to work with it - that is entirely and unapologetically based upon magical thinking. And when I refer to magic here, I mean it literally - in the Hogwarts sense. I believe that creativity is a force of enchantment.
‘Our data suggests a 30-minute nap can reverse the hormonal impact of a night of poor 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 toddler lunch ideas for picky eaters our fifth cup of coffee or third doughnut to deal with the usual post-Toddler Lunch Ideas Uk 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.
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.
Getting enough sleep really is a matter of life and death… An article based on findings by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, provocatively titled Sleep or Die, discussed the connection between a lack of sleep and an increased risk of heart attack, stroke, diabetes and obesity - the incidence of death from all causes goes up by 15 per cent when we sleep fewer than five hours per night. Even when it doesn't kill us, sleep deprivation makes us dangerously unhealthy. A lack of melatonin, the hormone that controls our sleep and wake cycles, is linked to higher rates of breast, ovarian and prostate cancers.
One of Elizabeth's biggest bugbears is with the fetishisation of the ‘struggle', the image of the tortured artist, and the notion that for anything of merit to be produced, one must have crawled through the fires of hell to birth it.
When people are having an affair, they don't mind losing sleep or missing meals. They will make whatever sacrifices they have to, and blast through any obstacles, in order to be alone with the object of their devotion —because it matters to them.
One of Elizabeth's biggest bugbears is with the fetishisation of the ‘struggle', the image of the tortured artist, and the notion that for anything of merit to be produced, one must have crawled through the fires of hell
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.
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.
After the US college tour, she flew to Portland, then to Los Angeles, then home to New York, where she promptly collapsed in her office, coming to in a pool of blood, with a broken cheekbone and requiring five stitches under her eyebrow.
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.
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.
She uses the example of a close friend of hers, who, in her 40s, took up ice-skating. Not competitively, but because she loves it and it makes her feel she is making something of herself; something, in this case, with herself.
‘I think my bad habits started at Cambridge University. I grew up with a mother who treated sleep as something sacred... And then at Cambridge I wanted to experience everything,' said Arianna Huffington