Yelo the start up I worked for this summer in NYC, is on a roll ! Here is the first New York Times article, in the Style section of the 1st of February edition...

Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times

 

FORTY WINKS At Yelo in New York, Marilyne Neuchat indulges in a nap while Kendall Eaton gives her a hand reflexology treatment.

Yelo consists of seven private chambers that can be rented for 20- to 40-minute naps. Each hexagonal pod has a beige leather recliner, dimmed lighting, a soporific soundtrack and a blanket of Nepalese cashmere. Clients may also book reflexology treatments, designed to lull the body to sleep, for their hands or feet starting at $65.

On a recent Thursday, Mr. Otto lounged on a bench in Yelo’s lobby, waiting for a sleeping pod to become available. He was hoping that a nap in a cubicle far from the distractions of home would help balance his chaotic college life. He often forgoes sleep in favor of studying, meeting friends and looking for part-time work, he said.

“I’m going out tonight to meet someone about a job,” said Mr. Otto, who was visiting a friend nearby and had dropped in for a 20-minute nap. Cost: $12. “The nap will help refocus me.”

Sleep is the new bottled water. Although it can be had free, it is increasingly being marketed as an upscale amenity. Nationwide, sales of prescription sleeping medications reached about $3 billion in the first nine months of last year, according to IMS Health, a healthcare research firm. That does not include the more than $20 billion spent on nocturnal accouterments like pillowtop mattresses, adjustable beds, hypoallergenic pillows, white-noise machines and monogrammed cashmere pajamas.

And now, at a time when spas are treating everything from acne to smoking addiction, sleep is becoming a province of the wellness industry. Spa Finder, a company that compiles spa directories and publishes Luxury Spa Finder magazine, is forecasting sleep as a top spa trend for 2007.

“More clients are talking about it and more spas are offering treatments,” said Susie Ellis, the president of Spa Finder. “We are starting to see some spas doing sleep medicine or sleep education programs while others are creating sleep environments with enhanced bedding and wake-up systems that don’t involve loud alarm clocks.”

But do Americans truly need more sleep? An often-quoted estimate from the National Center on Sleep Disorders Research of the National Institute of Health said that up to 70 million Americans — almost one out of three adults — have some kind of sleep problem.

But the Center for the Advancement of Health, a nonprofit group in Washington that advocates using science as a basis for making health decisions, has criticized the statistic in its newsletter, saying that it is based more on extrapolation than on hard epidemiological data.

Jessie Gruman, the president of the center, likened the occasional sleepless night to adolescence, menopause and balding, calling them all “normal human conditions that have become medicalized.”

“Now when people can’t sleep for a couple of nights, they think they are part of a national sleep epidemic and there should be something to fix it,” Ms. Gruman said. “You can buy sexual arousal, a new shape for your face, a skinnier silhouette, so why shouldn’t you be able to buy sleep?”

According to TNS Media Intelligence, pharmaceutical companies spent almost $362 million in the first nine months of last year on advertisements for the most popular sleeping pills, marketing the idea that interrupted sleep or the lack of instantaneous sleep are alarming conditions that require intervention.

Sleep is the top concern among her clientele of hypercompetitive stockbrokers, time-pressed mothers and overworked students, said Abby Fazio, the chief pharmacist and an owner of New London Pharmacy on Eighth Avenue in Chelsea.

“The No. 1 question I get is: ‘How can I fall asleep without a prescription?’ ” said Ms. Fazio, who counsels clients in a small frosted-glass room behind shelves stocked with homeopathic remedies. “Back when I started working here as a student in the 1970s, only the elderly were on sleeping aids, but now it’s everybody ages 25 to 40.”

There are no end of products to treat self-diagnosed sleep problems. Ms. Fazio recommends nonprescription melatonin pills as well as herbal items that contain lavender or chamomile and are meant to induce calm before bedtime, leading to a more restful sleep, she said.

Well-known cosmetics and toiletry brands have also starting selling sleep. Dove has introduced Calming Night, a line of honey-infused products like soap and body wash. And Boots, the brand from the British chemist that Target sells, has created Sleep, an aromatherapy line that includes a lavender bath milk and a balm to be rubbed on the hands or temples.

But such products may provide more of a Proustian experience than quantifiably improved sleep.

“If your grandmother used lavender and you associate it with feeling safe, calm, loved and ready to go to sleep, then a lavender product will be fantastic for you,” said Sandra Cox, a formulation scientist at Boots. “But proving how the essential oils work on the brain is very difficult to do in clinical studies.”

Spas, too, have found a growing market.

Canyon Ranch was a pioneer in the field, introducing a sleep program in 1995. The company’s spas in Tucson and Lenox, Mass., offer work-ups with a doctor to determine the cause of sleep disturbances. Treatments include therapy to change sleep patterns, and breathing, meditation or visualization exercises to help reduce anxiety. The spas also offer treatments like aromatherapy massages.

“Counting sheep works for some people, lavender works for other people, and other people respond to breathing techniques,” said Dr. Karen Koffler, a specialist in integrative medicine who is the medical director at Canyon Ranch Living, Miami Beach, a residential property scheduled to open later this year. “The thing is to find the method that works for you.”

Other spas concentrate on nighttime pampering.

Lake Austin Spa Resort, for example, offers a “Texas Starry Night” treatment, an evening massage using lavender oil. Tracy York, the general manager, said the spa is developing a facial to be called “Night Night” and is considering issuing clients chamomile teabags to put over their eyes before sleep or aromatherapy “sleep patches” for the skin.

And now, for urbanites unable to travel to a remote lakeside spa for beauty sleep, there is the Yelo salon in Midtown where a reflexology treatment for the hands followed by a 20-minute nap costs $77.

Just don’t call it a sleep spa.

“It’s a corporate wellness center,” said Nicolas Ronco, the entrepreneur who opened Yelo in early January. “For people who are overstressed and overworked, for lawyers or brokers who abuse themselves, a power nap is a way to recharge naturally without caffeine.”

Yelo is designed for the harried, BlackBerry-toting, Bluetooth-connected executive in search of high-tech hibernation. It is not the first place where an urban animal can cuddle up and doze off. In Manhattan, a sleep salon called MetroNaps, with chairs encased in spherical hoods, opened in the Empire State Building in 2004, followed by a second location downtown. Some offices also provide places for employees to doze off.

On Yelo’s Web site, heloyelo.com, and in its salon window, a display charts the minutes until the next “YeloCab” (napping booth) is available. Clients pay for a time slot and are then escorted to a private pod for a relaxation treatment or a quick nap.

Inside the pods, clients can electronically adjust the angle of the leather recliners; Mr. Ronco recommended raising the leg rest above the head to slow one’s heart rate. When time runs out, ceiling lights gradually brighten, an awakening prompt meant to mimic dawn.

Mr. Ronco predicted that Yelo would appeal to commuters who want to stay in Manhattan for a late dinner and to club-goers seeking respite before a night out.

“I see 25 Yelo centers in New York, and then in every crazy low-quality-of-life city where people lack space,” Mr. Ronco said. “I see this in airports, malls, corporate offices and train stations.”

But are naps the best way for the sleep-challenged to catch up?

Dr. William C. Dement, the founder of the Stanford University sleep research center, thinks so, recommending them as a way to treat sleep deprivation, according to his book “The Promise of Sleep.”

Dr. Gerard T. Lombardo, the director of the sleep center at New York Methodist Hospital in Brooklyn, however, counsels against naps because they may disrupt the normal nighttime sleep cycle. Daytime exercise would be a better way to improve sleep, he said.

Dr. Koffler of Canyon Ranch cautioned that people beset by chronic sleep problems should see a doctor. For those who have the occasional sleepless night and are seeking relaxation, though, a salon nap or a massage could be soothing, she said.

“If it allows someone to move from a busy outer life to a calm inner one, I’m all for it,” Dr. Koffler said.

Ms. Gruman of the Center for the Advancement of Health said the idea of paying for a nap amounts to “cognitive dissonance.”

“I can’t believe people think there is magic in the pods or the cashmere blanket,” Ms. Gruman said