Matthew Walker is a sleep researcher who shares his findings about sleep in Why We Sleep. Many sleep studies show sleep rejuvenates our immune system. One chapter in Why We Sleep begins: “Bad sleep, bad heart.” The connection between poor sleep and heart problems is strong. People with cancer find their disease metastasizes faster if they don’t get the necessary eight hours of sleep per day.
Walker also discusses sleep’s effects on mental health, dementia, and Alzheimer’s. The chapters on improving sleep present several suggestions for a better night in the Land of Nod. Why We Sleep is clearly written and full of timely information. Highly recommended! How is your sleep? GRADE: A
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Part 1 This Thing Called Sleep
Chapter 1 To Sleep … 3
Chapter 2 Caffeine, Jet Lag, and Melatonin: Losing and Gaining Control of Your Sleep Rhythm 13
Chapter 3 Defining and Generating Sleep: Time Dilation and What We Learned from a Baby in 1952 38
Chapter 4 Ape Beds, Dinosaurs, and Napping with Half a Brain: Who Sleeps, How Do We Sleep, and How Much? 56
Chapter 5 Changes in Sleep Across the Life Span 78
Part 2 Why Should You Sleep?
Chapter 6 Your Mother and Shakespeare Knew: The Benefits of Sleep for the Brain 107
Chapter 7 Too Extreme for the Guinness Book of World Records: Sleep Deprivation and the Brain 133
Chapter 8 Cancer, Heart Attacks, and a Shorter Life: Sleep Deprivation and the Body 164
Part 3 How and Why We Dream
Chapter 9 Routinely Psychotic: REM-Sleep Dreaming 193
Chapter 10 Dreaming as Overnight Therapy 206
Chapter 11 Dream Creativity and Dream Control 219
Part 4 From Sleeping Pills to Society Transformed
Chapter 12 Things That Go Bump in the Night: Sleep Disorders and Death Caused by No Sleep 237
Chapter 13 iPads, Factory Whistles, and Nightcaps: What’s Stopping You from Sleeping? 265
Chapter 14 Hurting and Helping Your Sleep: Pills vs. Therapy 282
Chapter 15 Sleep and Society: What Medicine and Education Are Doing Wrong; What Google and NASA Are Doing Right 296
Chapter 16 A New Vision for Sleep in the Twenty-First Century 324
Conclusion: To Sleep or Not to Sleep 340
Appendix: Twelve Tips for Healthy Sleep 341
Illustration Permissions 343
On a normal workday, I have to be up at 4:30 am, so I can usually fall asleep around 8:30 pm with no problem. But if I wake up in the middle of the night, getting BACK to sleep can be a problem. My sovereign remedy used to be to get up and watch tv or fire up my laptop, but now I just try to drift back to sleep and avoid knocking my sleep cycle out of rhythm.
Deb, Matthew Walker suggests reading a book or magazine in order to fall back to sleep. Walker discourages using anything electronic (TV, computer, iPhone, etc.) because they’re too stimulating.
Back in the Stone Age, when I first starting working for newspapers, I would type my dreams as I slept: images of type-written copy flowed through my brain rather than images of…whatever. Lately, those type-written dreams have come back. Don’t know why. At least in those dreams, then and now, I don’t have my notorious fumble fingers.
Jerry, even though I’ve been retired for almost a year, I still experience “School Dreams.”
Good. It drives Jackie – who has insomnia – nuts that I can go to bed and be asleep within five minutes most nights. Also, I sleep soundly, so if it starts raining or there are loud noises outside, the odds are that I will never know it. Like Deb, though, there are times I wake up and it can take me up to an hour to get back to sleep. Sometimes it depends on what time I wake up The earlier in the night it is, the easier I find it to get back to sleep. After 4 am or so, it can be a problem sometimes.
As I get older, I sleep less, and it varies how long it takes me to get to sleep. I usually fall asleep while saying my prayers, though.
Getting back to sleep after getting up in the night (most nights at least twice) is hard as well. If it goes on a long time,, I do get up to read, which often helps.
I’ve also started taking Melatonin, and it seems like it works every other night.
I know they say don’t use electronics before bed, but how many of us fall asleep in front of the tv.
Maggie, it’s not falling asleep that electronics disturbs, it’s the sleep cycle: REM and non-REM sleep.
Horrible and always has been. Typically I get 5-6 hours a night. And I am always tired.
Patti, WHY WE SLEEP might help you. Walker provides 12 suggestions for better sleep.
A Psych 101 professor in college addressed this subject once, and he said that after years of lecturing, he had concluded that Sleep is the natural state for homo sapiens, and we only awaken when acted upon by some outside stimulus.
Dan, your professor had an interesting theory!
Those interested in the topic should read The Book about sleep physiology, William Dement’s The Promise of Sleep. Dement, a physician & professor at Stanford, essentially invented Sleep Medicine as a specialty, and has evangelized for decades to get the medical profession to take sleep seriously. And like another hero of mine, Terry Teachout, he was a jazz bass player!
Art, I have read William Dement’s THE PROMISE OF SLEEP. He was an early researcher who connected sleep and the immune system. Fortunately, with my CPAP I get good sleep almost every night! And, I used to play trumpet.
I couldn’t survive without my CPAP machine, used to snore like hell!
But I have another problem now:
Have to go to the loo after two or three hours – and then returning to bed it depends, sometimes I fally asleep quickly, sometimes it takes half an hour or more …
But being retired in the end I get my 8 hours in bed at least 6 or 7 of which I’m asleep.
And some crazy dreams:
Like George I sometimes dream of doing a course – but: in front of unknown people or even on a subject that I know nothing about! 🙂
Mostother dreams I forget – thoughI know there was something …
Wolf, my School Dreams usually involve me looking for the right classroom in a maze-like building.
I’m 43rd in line for 3 copies
Maggie, well worth the wait!
I have heard all the things you should do or not do to sleep. Do not watch TV in bed. (Never have) Do not drink caffeine after noon. Do not do electronic stuff. Make you bedroom only about sleep (and sex). Exercise early in the day. Establish a routine. Do not lie in bed more than 20 minutes before reading. (Have to go somewhere else to read though. My problem is I cannot empty my mind. Been that way since age 7. I take drugs now and I still wake up at four almost every day. Trump and cancer has made it much worse.
Patti, Matthew Walker maintains that no sleeping pill will help you sleep. They will sedate you, but they are useless for improving your sleep. You’re likely to wake up feeling more tired if you take “sleep aides.”
I fall asleep in front of the TV or computer every day! I sleep like a baby when I get to bed, once I fall asleep! I’ve slept through a train wreck and mortar attacks! I would also sleep through this book!
Bob, I hope you didn’t sleep during the Atlanta Falcons vs. Seattle Seahawks game!