Celebrities may not seem like real people in a lot of respects but apparently they are - and some of them even have trouble sleeping from time to time. Or so says Gwyneth Paltrow in her latest GOOP mail any road.

Good job then that the hugely knowledgeable and talented Dr Frank Lipman is on hand with some tips for how to nip insomnia in the bud. For some people, says Dr Frank, the causes of sleeplessness can require specific clinical treatment. However, for a great many, following a few simple rules could have dramatically positive effects on our sleeping. I know this for a fact because I’m a case in point. Having been a sometime insomniac for more than 10 years, I read Frank’s book Spent (now called Revive: Stop Feeling Spent and Start Living Again ) and I tried the pre-bed yoga relaxation, eye patch and ’switching-off’ suggestions as well as following his recommendations for sorting out a struggling digestive system (a common cause of sleeplessness apparently) and pretty soon I was feeling the benefit. Not only was I getting to sleep more easily but the sleep I get now feels much more restful.

Anyway, don’t just take my word for it. Check out Dr Frank’s top tips in the latest GOOP letter. Gwynnie’s included some tips for how to make your boudoir super sleep-friendly and all… Nighty night.

She may be a macrobiotic goddess, eating only organic food and using only organic skin care (we’re not sure she’s a SOPHYTO devotee just yet but believe she will be soon!), but even successful actress/earth mother du jour Gwyneth Paltrow gets SPENT - or so she says on her website, GOOP.

Luckily, she’s got Dr. Frank Lipman on speed dial, so she can pop down to his surgery in New York whenever she’s over. Now she’s got his book SPENT, too, and like us she thinks it’s awesome.

Check out the interview she conducted with Frank recently on GOOP… He talks through the essential elements of the book, so it might be a good place to start if you are thinking about investing in a copy… (Plus there’s always www.drfranklipman.com for more info as well.)

Pssst, if you’re a UK dweller, the wait for Dr. Frank Lipman’s amazing new tome, Spent: End Exhaustion and Feel Great Again - the book that will in fact change your life and potentially make you very popular with any friends, family and total strangers you choose to bestow it upon - is almost over.

And, lest you forget/have no time to trundle down to a book shop, why not register to reserve a copy now on Cult Beauty. That way, you’ll get it before everyone else and, more importantly, they’ll do the leg work!

Check out the fancy pea-green cover that’s just for special British people. Nice, huh?

Falling asleep on the job is at best frowned upon and at worst grounds for sacking. But, it looks like, as with most other aspects of our lives, we have become too far removed from natural, organic life cycles, for our own good. We always mock the Mediterraneans for their lax attitudes to afternoon work but according to new sleep research, they have it spot on.

Just look at animals. They don’t sleep for 8 hours and then stay up for 16 hours straight. They prowl around a bit, eat a bit, sleep a bit, and onto the next prowl. So, why do we think our bodies want to do something completely different? It’s just like restorative exercise (as pointed out by Dr. Frank Lipman in Spent): like other animals, we are designed to expend energy and then rest before we expend any more. And, real rest - ie. sleep - actually recharges our brains making us more productive than if we power on through until nighttime.

Contrary to popular belief, sleepiness in the early afternoon is not related to eating a big lunch, but rather our natural circadian rhythms kicking in. We are programmed to feel most sleep between 2am and 4am and between 1pm and 3pm and we lose reaction time, memory, coordination, mood and alertness during those periods.

However, there is more to napping than just putting your head down, apparently. Sleep too much - and at the worng time for your physiology - and you could wake feeling worse than before, like you’ve been drugged. But get it right and you’ll improve your concentration and memory skills, as well as your mood and you are less likely to pile on the pounds - not getting enough sleep is a sure fire way to weight gain because it triggers the release of Grehlin, an appetite-stimulating hormone, released mostly by the stomach.

Check out the Guardian article to find out what kind of nap you should be having.

Dr. Lipman with Lauren Bush and Ellen Gustafson, and with his daughter Alison and friend, Karen Sinclair Drake, Paul Drake and wife Janice, while Donna Karan meets Angelique Kidjo

Having Donna Karan as a friend must come in super handy when you’ve got a book launch (not that she’s not lovely all the rest of the time too, I’m sure!). So, when she offered to host the launch of Dr. Frank Lipman’s new book Spent at her Urban Zen centre in New York this week, he jumped at the chance, naturally. Guests included model Lauren Bush, not to mention Grammy Award winning Beninese singer/songwriter Angelique Kidjo, as well as Burcu Bimantes, Ludwig Kuttner, Nina Thurman, Peter Som, Andres Levin, Heidi Krupp, Ellen Gustafson, Oswald Mendez, Mark Gompertz… and, of course, SOPHYTO Organics founders Paul Drake and Karen Sinclair Drake, two of Frank’s biggest fans.

As well as getting copies of the miraculous red book, guests were also treated to little healthy chocolate cupcakes, which went down very well with an avo smoothie or two, I’m told…

Click here and here to see more pics and thoughts about the event.

If you’ve already given up on the New Year’s pledge to exercise more because it’s so damn cold and all you want to do at the end of the day is head home and get warm, fret not - there is another way! A little bird just told me that last week she joined an online yoga centre and it’s totally changed her life.

Myyogaonline.com is an assortment of yoga, pilates and meditation classes taken by different instructors, for all manner of ages and abilities. You join up for a small monthly fee - $9.95 (or 33 cents a day!) - and then you can log on as much as you want and join in all the classes, as and when you wish.

Unlike regular exercise videos, with myyogaonline.com there are so many classes to choose from, you can literally do a different one every day and not repeat any of them for months! So you’re less likely to get bored and slack off. Clever, huh?

As Dr. Frank Lipman says in his new book Spent, simple yoga poses and meditations are the perfect kinds of ‘restorative exercise’ that can not only reduce pain and stiffness, but also help maintain constant levels of energy, without wearing us out and draining our resources like slogging away on a treadmill every day might do.

Myyogaonline.com - check it out. It’s much cheaper than gym membership and you can do it in the comfort of your own home without anyone showing you up! Plus, there are loads of instructional videos to make sure you are doing the postures correctly. You can ask experts for their advice on all manner of health/exercise-related topics and if you’re not yet convinced, why not sign up for the free newsletter and get a taster class to see if it might be your bag…?

Are you feeling tired more often than not these days? Too lethargic to do any exercise? Or to socialise with people? Do you get irritated more easily than you used to or space out when you’re supposed to be concentrating? Or find that certain foods don’t agree with you any more? Have you talked to your local GP but found no answers to your questions? If all, or any, of these ring a bell with you, perhaps you, like soooooo many people in the modern world, are SPENT.

With everything people have going on these days, exhaustion may seem like an inevitable part of life. But Dr. Frank Lipman doesn’t think it should be. A pioneering New York physician and dynamic healer, Dr. Lipman blends Western and eastern approaches to develop programmes that suit his clients’ lifestyles. Having treated the likes of David Letterman and Donna Karen, he has formulated a prescription that will help everyone, whether they think they need it or not.

SPENT: End Exhaustion and Feel Great Again is a 6-week whole-life makeover, packed with dozens of daily tips on topics that range from preparing fast, nutrient-rich meals, to restoring a natural sleep rhythm that conquers insomnia, to maximizing your physical activity without punishing your body. At the heart of Dr. Lipman’s message is the concept of harmonious living, restoring balance and wellness by tuning in to natural patterns of daylight, seasons, productivity, and rest.

For example, to get the best possible sleep, it is sensible to avoid all electrical stimulation (computers, TV etc) for an hour before bed and trying to get your body into a regular sleep pattern, so that you wake up at the same time every morning without an alarm clock, will help you heal faster.

For fatigued people (like me) Spent is a godsend. The exercises are easy and really help and the dietary advice is invaluable for those with difficult digestive systems… or just plain good sense for everyone else.

Plus, Dr Lipman, like us, believes that what you put on or near your body is just as important as what you put in it so he’s recommended SOPHYTO Organic Skin care in the book.

Learn how to recharge and refocus your life… by yourself with SPENT. The book is available now in the US and from April 2009 in the UK.

One of Gwyneth's GOOP-y concoctions

If you’re like me, or in fact practically everyone I know, the chances are you’ve been overindulging a little in the past couple of weeks (read: eating until your shirt buttons were close to giving up). So, now you’re back at work and full of good intentions about eating healthy and doing more exercise to shift the holiday pounds. Everywhere we go in January, people are chirping “Not for me!”, “No, I won’t thank you…” and lauding their particular methods of detox over anyone who dares to stick with the sweet and/or fatty stuff now that the celebrations are all over for another year.

There are so many products and treatments claiming to “detox” you, almost without you doing much of anything, it seems. Foot pads that suck the toxins out of you, face scrubs that leech them out of your skin… but determining which, if any of them, actually offer any benefit, is far more complex. In fact, it’s a total minefield for consumers, as marketing bods have a field day, littering their product copy with the words ‘detox’ and ‘cleansing’ all over the shop.

In anticipation of the post-Christmas rush to the pharmacy, a group of scientific researchers for charitable trust Sense About Science has reviewed 15 so-called “detox” products, and found that not only does every brand have a different definition of detox, but that, according to the BBC report, “in the majority of cases, producers and retailers were forced to admit that they had simply renamed processes like cleaning or brushing, as detox.”

For instance, a Garnier face wash that claimed to remove toxins, actually removed nothing more than the normal dirt and make up that all face washes are expected to remove.

The researchers also slammed a 5-day detox supplement programme available from Boots chemists. The pack claims that consumers will see added benefit from following a healthy eating regime during the programme. But, according to the biologists working on the study, it is simply the healthy eating and not the supplements that has the potential to offer any health benefits.

So, probably best to avoid the craftily-worded hype from the Big Brands and stick to working out a more natural approach to lightening the load.

Even Gwyneth Paltrow’s got some advice on the subject, offering Detox recipes and Tips on her curiously named website, GOOP. Together with one of her many ’sages’ or ‘gurus’, celebrity raw food activist (and cardiologist) Dr. Alejando Junger, she basically advocates cutting out all dairy, meat (although there is a Chicken Teriyaki recipe in there…?), wheat, alcohol and anything else that’s difficult to digest in favour of soups and smoothies. The idea being that if you take the burden off your liver and other digestive organs by eliminating the obviously toxic foods from your diet, they can recover and get back to performing at tip-top levels, leaving your skin and hair glowing and your energy levels soaring… supposedly.

So far so good… if you are a typically healthy person anyway and your body can cope with lots of raw food. But, for those of who are not quite so robust, juices and crudites are just as unfriendly as fried cheese and pudding. If this is you, check out the works and words of naturopathic physician Dr. Frank Lipman. Not only does Frank give a big thumbs up to using SOPHYTO organic skin care, but he has also spent many years helping people with toxic overload (ie. fatigued, stressed, types with low immunity) get back to health, with simple dietary changes and gentle exercises.

Watch this space for more info on Dr. Lipman’s amazing soon-to-be-released book SPENT coming later this week. We’ve managed to get an advanced copy and can’t wait to tell you more…