The Sleep Solution: Why Your Sleep is Broken and How to Fix It Paperback – Illustrated, April 3, 2018

I am not exaggerating when I say that I owe Dr. Winters my sanity.In 2021 I had retained placenta that caused a postpartum hemorrhage. Deeply traumatized by my near-death experience, I developed insomnia that followed me around like a terrifying specter of death for years. On one occasion I lost 30+ pounds in a few months because I was so anxious about not sleeping that I had no appetite. I was able to keep myself from totally losing the plot with the sporadic use of medication to help me sleep, but I knew in the back of my mind that one day the medication would fail—and I had no idea what to do then.Cut to late 2024-I decided to have another baby, and I developed debilitating and terrifying insomnia again. This time, I saw no out to my suffering and was convinced the stress I was experiencing would either kill me or send me to the hospital. Out of desperation, I found this book, and the turnaround was almost immediate. I laughed a lot reading it, had a ton of a-ha moments, then set the book aside and WENT BACK TO SLEEPING NORMALLY AGAIN.Other sleep resources I’d used involved a long process requiring mental work, but Dr. Winters’ whole idea is that your body will force you to sleep no matter what, so you don’t actually need to stress over it. It was crazy how a problem that had plagued me for years really had a solution so easy that it seemed dumb when you think about it.The thing about this book is that you HAVE to trust what he’s saying to be fact (which it is). Your first instinct might be to take offense. The worst insomniacs are completely convinced that there MUST be something physically wrong with them, because it’s frankly embarrassing to think that our lives are being absolutely obliterated by a problem that doesn’t actually exist. But once you accept that you’ve bought into a false story about your ability to sleep, you WILL sleep again.

This has been a great read. It focuses on the nature of sleep, sleep habits, sleep disorders. Very sarcastic sense of humor is included. Some of the sleep education is a bit overwhelming but it's important to understand it. I've been working with a sleep neurologist, who recommended this book to me, for about a year now and have seen improvements in my sleep but it's still somewhat fragmented. This book is really helped me understand why it may still be fragmented. Highly recommend for anybody that has sleep issues.

Great book. Easy read. My partner has significant sleep struggles and this book was helpful for us. It gave us some additional tools.

I had suffered from hard insomnia for a better half of a decade and by the time I came by this book I was at my wit's end. I already tried everything - seeing doctors, reading a dozen other books on sleep, acupuncture, meditation, herbal concoctions, you name it - and still, even thinking of going to bed (and having another sleepless torture of a night) was enough to get an anxiety attack.And after all hope of alleviating this condition was gone, I tried this book - and it changed everything. It’s been two months now, and I haven’t slept that well in years!To me, it is superbly written, as it mixes cutting edge science, tons of clinical experience of the author, with heaps of irreverent humor. You read that right- this book is FUNNY! And to me, that was the crucial element. I was so tortured by the experience of constant sleeplessness that at first reading a book which told me it wasn’t such a big deal, felt odd, but that was exactly what I needed to hear!The author convinced me to his arguments on an intellectual level, but then (and this was the hard part) made me live it on an emotional one, in large part thanks to the humorous approach. Nothing breaks through anxiety as good as a good laugh - and I was chuckling throughout most of this book.As it turns out, I didn’t need any new ‘information’ per se. If you have troubles sleeping (and would you be reading this review if you didn’t?) you probably already read a dozen other books and articles on sleep and heard all the Jeopardy-ready tidbits elsewhere. What is unique here is an author who was able to build trust with me and then sort of ‘flip the switch’ inside my brain that allowed me to sleep again. It allowed me to embrace the message that was not such a big deal - and it made my insomnia a thing of the past.When you go through sleepless hell, and you hear somebody say your insomnia is not a big deal you feel like driving up wherever the author is dwelling and dealing a hard on the head, but as it turns out - he was right. All my sleepless nightmare was self-made, and I had the power to let it go all that time, the only thing I needed was a trusted guide to get me through this, and to me, the author of this book was that guide.I went through the book twice - first on an Audible audiobook and then on a Kindle e-book. I was listening to it by night (to avoid light) and then reread the same chapters by day (to make it stick). What I found significant is that I read it on holidays, so my hotel bedroom was clear of bad memories of sleepless nights, and I was not burdened by work stressors, and during that break, I was able to build enough sleep-confidence that upon returning home the good sleep pattern came back with me. (I was afraid the first couple of nights that the improved sleep was just thanks to the holidays, and it won’t last, but it did!)Couldn’t be happier with this book!

I have been struggling with insomnia for 30 years. The older I got the more difficult it became to ignore, forcing me to finally seek treatment. I recommend beginning with a sleep study. I grudgingly had a sleep study done on the advice of my PCP that revealed I have mild sleep apnea. Being 5’6” and 125 pounds I wasn't the typical image of someone you would imagine having sleep apnea. Unfortunately, wearing a CPAP did not improve my sleeping. It was still taking me on average an hour and a half to fall asleep, waking up 6 – 8 times between midnight and my final waking time of 3:00 a.m. Continuing to complain to any doctor who would listen, I finally agreed to attend Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-I). Again, I was skeptical but decided to give the treatment an honest try out of sheer desperation. I’m sorry to say there is not a quick fix. I have been diligently working on my insomnia for the past year, but can honestly say I have had some improvement. I typically fall asleep in about 20 minutes and average about 5 hours of sleep a night which I will happily take as opposed to the 2 – 3 hours I was getting before. I would highly recommend this book because it touches on a lot of the points I learned from CBT-I and believe it will also help you look at your sleep, or lack of it, with a new perspective.

The author spends a lot of time trying to be funny. The jokes aren't even good and they end up obscuring key information.