Since everybody on earth sleeps at least once every twenty-four hours, we should all be sleep experts. Knowledge about sleep, just like knowledge about nutrition and exercise, is essential to your life for happiness, productivity, and general health.

Everyone should know how much sleep he or she requires to feel awake, dynamic, and energetic all day long. Everyone should know the strategies and techniques for achieving quality performance. And everyone should know how to cope with sleep deprivation when it does occur.

Sleep is a necessity, not a luxury. It determines the quality of our waking life. If you are getting less than the right amount of sleep for your mind and body to perform well during the day, you are sleep deprived. For most people, the right amount of sleep is eight hours per night.

According to experts 70% of the population is sleep deprived. We're not spending quality time in the important stages of deep sleep. These stages are essential to heal and repair the human body, as well as the mind, for peak performance the next day. You need to stop depriving yourself of the quality sleep you need, and you'll wake up refreshed and rejuvenated.

You might not know if you're sleep deprived. Following is a sleep quiz. If you answer "yes" to 3 of these questions, you are sleep deprived:

• Need an alarm clock to wake up?
• Struggle to get out of bed in the morning?
• Hit the snooze button weekday mornings?
• Tired, irritable and stressed out at work?
• Trouble concentrating and remembering?
• Slow critical thinking, problem solving, creativity?
• Often fall asleep watching TV?
• Fall asleep in boring meetings, lectures, warm rooms?
• Fall asleep after heavy meals or low doses of alcohol?
• Often fall asleep when relaxing after dinner?
• Fall asleep within 5 minutes of going to bed?
• Often feel drowsy when driving?
• Sleep extra hours on weekend mornings?
• Often need a nap to get through the day?

Not getting an adequate amount of sleep can lead to cardiovascular disease, obesity and diabetes. If you average less than 6 hours of sleep per night, your resistance to viral infection is lowered by about 50% over those getting 8 or more hours.* Expect more colds and flu and respiratory tract infections. Luckily, the process is quickly reversible. Even if you didn't get enough sleep on a given night, the immune system will be back in action as soon as you repay that sleep.

Your body goes through cycles of sleep every night. During each cycle, the time you spend in each of the 4 stages of sleep changes. This cycle repeats itself every 90 minutes until you wake up. Depending on the length of time you sleep, you will travel through four to five cycles during the night. Sleep becomes lighter as we approach morning and dreams become longer. During the last quartile of an 8 hour night, Stages 2 sleep and REM or Rapid Eye Movement Sleep, wherein most dreams occur predominate. These stages play a major role in organizing and reorganizing the mind, concentration, mood, productivity, creativity and critical problem solving, and athletic ability.

When it comes to sleep, quantity and quality are important. Remember that you should spend 1/3 of your life asleep. It's vital you make the most of it. Sleep experts agree: Most people need 8 hours of sleep, but even 6 hours of continuous sleep is more restorative than 8 hours of interrupted sleep. So stop depriving yourself and get some rest.

Simmons® Bedding Company provides you with two solutions to help you achieve a higher quality of sleep, the Simmons® Beautyrest® and Simmons® BackCare® sleep systems.

Simmons® Beautyrest® is the key to achieving a quality, undisturbed night's sleep. Its patented Pocketed Coil® technology reduces the transfer of motion from one sleeping partner to another.

If you sleep on a Simmons® Beautyrest®, your partner is less likely to disturb you. This is essential considering the fact that on average, your partner tosses and turns 40-60 times a night. Simmons® Beautyrest® delivers on a promise of undisturbed sleep.

Every Simmons® BackCare® mattress is anatomically designed to provide better support, enhance comfort, and promote more restful sleep. Our powerful combination of special features helps restore the body, so you wake up ready to get up and go. The BackCare® Gradient Support system consists of five unique zones that recreate a natural, healthy standing posture in an innovative sleep surface. Three Comfort Zones reduce pressure on the body and cradle the body for individualized support. Two Support Zones help maintain the spine's natural alignment.

*Sleep health and behavior statistics and sleep tips from Power Sleep: The Revolutionary Program That Prepares Your Mind for Peak Performance, by Dr. James B. Maas, Ph.D., Megan L.Wherry, David J. Axelrod, Barbara R. Hogan, and Jennifer A. Blumin, HarperPerennial-A Division of HarperCollinsPublishers, 1999.