The Power of the Downstate

Recharge Your Life Using Your Body's Own Restorative Systems

By: Sara C. Mednick PhD

Narrated by: Sara C. Mednick PhD

Length: 12 hrs and 4 mins

Publisher's summary

Leverage your built-in rhythms of Upstates and Downstates to enhance energy, sharpen thinking, balance moods, fuel fitness, and more.

If you’re like most people, the relentless daily grind of go-go-go, do-do-do, can run down your energy and deplete your resources. While most of us find our lives full of “Upstate” moments that rev up our stress engines, it doesn’t have to be this way. World-renowned sleep researcher Sara C. Mednick, PhD, shows us how we can access the most replenishing and repairing aspects of sleep through activities and moments that happen during our day by diving into our “Downstate”. Dr. Mednick shows that bringing ourselves back to the Downstate is critical for our health, well-being, and cognitive longevity.

Drawing on her original findings—and those of others across many fields of medicine—Dr. Mednick creates a comprehensive picture of the Upstate/Downstate rhythms that orchestrate all of our bodies’ vital systems, along with a novel theory that aging is caused by spending less and less time in Downstate activities. The Power of the Downstate offers practical evidence-based insight into how we can all enable those systems to work together in better harmony. You’ll learn:

• How our bodies and minds are guided by a natural Upstate/Downstate rhythm—and how our modern lifestyles disrupt these rhythms to our detriment;
• How our vital organs and systems benefit from spending more time in the Downstate—which decreases the risk for Alzheimer’s disease, chronic illness, and early death;
• How we can activate the Downstate through rethinking how to breathe, eat, sleep and exercise; and
• The practical four-week Downstate RecoveryPlus Plan.

Get ready to be more alert, productive, and cognitively sharp during the day, feel greater intimacy and affection, and enjoy consolidated, restorative sleep at night...not to mention expand your years of mental and physical vitality.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2022 Sara C. Mednick, PhD (P)2022 Hachette Go

Critic reviews

“Full of dazzling insights. Dr. Mednick presents a new way of understanding chronic diseases and offers a bounty of easy, free, and scientifically validated tips we can adopt to reset ourselves for a better, healthier future.” (James Nestor, author of the New York Times best-selling Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art)

"Dr. Sara Mednick is known for her pristine sleep research work on napping, and I have quoted her work consistently throughout my career in lectures and books. Her latest work, The Power of the Downstate, is at the top of my reading list, and should be at the top of yours as well. Recognizing the Downstates and Upstates in your life will help you find the balance we are all looking for, all the time. As a sleep specialist, I hate to admit it, but I may stay up late just to keep reading it!" (Dr. Michael Breus, PhD, author of The Power of When and Energize)

“The world is in crisis, and people are stressed out and burned out. Sara Mednick has a remedy. First she brought us the new and improved nap. Now she brings us the Downstate, a science-backed system for reclaiming balance and vitality at the physical, cognitive, and emotional level. We need this new take on rest and renewal now more than ever.” (Arianna Huffington, founder and CEO, Thrive Global)

Game Changer

Great research and science explained well for the any listener. Recommending this book to my patients who are inquisitive and interested in their health enough to make changes in their life. Thank you Sara!

loved it!

this book is greatly useful to have a better life. it offers ways through daily life, and via our own biology and body, fir living a better life. I practiced all the recommendations and I hope we all take a moment and learn how to enjoy our Downstate to taste the joy of of life.

Science based and helpful, but too cutesy

I really wanted the information, so I hung in there through the whole book.

It felt to me that the author was trying too hard to be “relatable” or “with it” or funny. I found the cutesy terminology and sometimes edgy humor to be distracting.