Why We Sleep: The New Science of Sleep and Dreams

This amazing book begins with an excellent introduction, explaining all the reasons and benefits that we are now learning about the value and importance of sleep, which can take up to a third of our life and over 25 years of existence, to learn why this is such an essential and important thing. We know more about reproduction and other medical factors and their importance and particularly around the main drivers of our life how we eat and how we reproduce but not about why we sleep. Walker explains all the things that we know sleep: - “Routinely sleeping less than six or seven hours a night demolishes your immune system, more than doubling your risk of cancer. Insufficient sleep is a key lifestyle factor determining whether you will develop Alzheimer’s disease. Inadequate sleep—even moderate reductions for just one week—disrupts blood sugar levels so profoundly that you would be classified as pre-diabetic. Short sleeping increases the likelihood of your coronary arteries becoming blocked and brittle, setting you on a path toward cardiovascular disease, stroke, and congestive heart failure. Sleep disruption further contributes to all major psychiatric conditions, including depression, anxiety, and suicidality.” - DEMENTIA: Walker originally came upon the importance of sleep when he was doing studies on different types of dementia. People had different, disordered sleep patterns would indicate which type of dementia and he then realised that the role of sleep could indicate what type of dementia somebody might present. - The cyclical rhythms that we have that give us a time function throughout the day and control a whole range of things like when we sleep or the amount of urine we produce. Cyclical cycles exist in every animal that lives for over seven days, but it also exists in plants and is an essential function to how we live and exist. Interestingly, enough in experiments carried out on the cyclical time factor in our own body cover a 25-hour cycle rather than a 24-hour cycle and this cycle will occur whether we have a plant or a human in a dark place so long as they've already learned these cycles through daylight. - STAGES: Although there is only one stage to being awake, and that is wakefulness, there are four stages to sleep, of which one of those stages is known as REM. which is when you are most prone to dreaming, and whilst you're in the stage, your body is paralysed and unable to move. Things such as breathing remain active. - All animals, including things such as bacteria require sleep and yet animals require different amounts of sleep so that an elephant only requires four hours sleep, half as much as humans whereas tigers and lions devour 15 hours of sleep. - All mammals have REM sleep. Having such a large and sufficient REM sleep allows our brains to rationalise emotions and emotional responses and allows us to recognise and make appropriate decisions. Lack of sleep will impact on your ability to rationalism and use appropriate emotions. - MEMORY: There is some fascinating research around memory and how sleep can help improve skills such as motor skills. Once a task is done and looking at people mastering taps in certain sequences on a typewriter, and when they were asked to repeat the test - the amount of sleep you have corrected errors in tapping skills, so that motor memory would improve, but needed sleep to master this skills more effectively. This can be transferred to learning a musical instrument. - Good sleep did not just help motor memory, but it can also help repair and increase sports ability and connections required for plasticity in repairing a brain after stroke, but all of these are requiring sleep both before and after something has been acquired. - LEARNING: Sleep also helps to support creativity and it's as if our brains are given a real work out at night even though we think we're sleeping, it supports making new connections regarding learning and supporting and maintaining a healthy brain. - “Growing scientific evidence now supports the wisdom of later school start times. One longitudinal study tracked more than 5,000 Japanese schoolchildren and discovered that those individuals who were sleeping longer obtained better grades across the board. Controlled sleep laboratory studies in smaller samples show that children with longer total sleep times develop superior IQ, with brighter children having consistently slept forty to fifty minutes more than those who went on to develop a lower IQ.” - DRIVING: Sleep deprivation is one of the most significant causes of accidents in car fatalities, and it's far more prevalent in causing car accidents than drugs and alcohol combined. - An interesting fact about sleep deprivation is that people who become tired, are no longer functioning to their full potential and reduced capacity, and yet the sleep deprived do not seem to be aware that they are incapacitated by the sleep deprivation. However, tests show they have changed in the baseline and ability to perform mental task. - Experiments have shown different stages of sleep deprivation regarding 2 hours, 4 hours and 7 hours and then tests compared to people in stimulated car machines when driving a car when drunk and with lack of sleep. People who are drunk might be late at braking, but people who are sleep deprived begin to have micro sleep and fall asleep at the wheel. This will occur every 30 minutes and in America there will be a car crash due to somebody with sleep deprivation, and in fact, the numbers are even worse than if you drink and drive, although both are seriously bad to be doing. - MENTAL HEALTH: There is no mental health disorder (this includes schizophrenia, bipolar disorder conditions, ADHD, and autism), that doesn’t seem to show that sleep deprivation will always occurs in these conditions. - Conditions like bipolar disorder formally known as manic-depressive has been shown that sleep deprivation will trigger psychiatric element of manic disorder. The author does not make the claim that sleep deprivation is the cause of these conditions but is a factor in what might trigger psychiatric episodes. - AUTISM: There are possible issues around correlation between REM, lack of sleep and autism. In experiments, when rats’ brains have reduced REM sleep, they do become socially aloof and distance from the other rats. - DEMENTIA: There is also an important link between sleep deprivation or lack of sleep and Alzheimer's disease. We know that amyloid plaque build-up occurs in the brain and if you have a full night deep sleep, these are washed away by cerebrospinal fluid and this allows the brain to function properly, but lack of sleep will impact on the cleaning operation where the brain is flushed several times during the night to promote healthy brains and reduce the risk of Alzheimer's. Sleep deprivation has been looked at both in assessment and diagnosis in supporting those in reducing the risk of Alzheimer's. We have at least 4 to 6 cycles of deep sleep in a full night’s sleep. - HUNGER: Sleep deprivation impacts on a hunger hormone, as well as increasing blood pressure and forming increased risk of diabetes. When we are hungry, we have hormones called ghrelin, which will impact on helping us to feel hungry and leptin hormone, which let the brain know that our body is full. But when sleep deprivation occurs, these hormones become altered and ineffective in regulating the metabolic state of the body so that when we are sleep deprived, we also tend to eat more type of carbohydrate type foods, junk food and confectionery. - When we are tired, we tend to eat more carbohydrate and rich sugary-based foods than when we are fully rested from the good night sleep. MRI studies have shown that there are parts of the brain that switch off and we only want protein-based foods and sleep deprivation is a perfect cause of increasing obesity, as we will eat more rubbish-based foods and the brain areas that would want you to eat more healthy based foods are switched off so that you want to eat richer, sugar-based foods. - Although lack of sleep is not the only factor in weight gain, it has been shown that lack of sleep does correlate with increased weight. - OBESITY: Children aged 3 who sleep less than 10 ½ hours or less have a 45% increased risk of being obese by age seven than those who get twelve hours of sleep a night. “Short sleep will increase hunger and appetite, compromise impulse control within the brain, increase food consumption, decrease feelings of food satisfaction after eating and prevent effective weight loss when dieting.” - MICROBIOME AND GUT HEALTH: Lack of sleep also impacts on the microbiome which is so important in our bodies in making sure we're able to absorb the right types of food, but when sleep deprivation occurs, the Microbiome is impacted on this and works less effectively. It has been shown that there is a two-way correlation between the Microbiome and sleep disorders, but currently we do not have robust evidence. - REPRODUCTION: Lack of sleep impacts on the hormone testosterone which we require for reproduction and for staying alert. Reductions in testosterone amounts leads has a significant impact on how well we can reproduce and the people with less sleep have reduced testosterone. Poor sleep of less than 5 hours in healthy males will reduce from baseline, will have a 29% lower sperm count and the sperm themselves will have deformities. - IMMUNE SYSTEM: Another important factor is how sleep strengthens the immune system. When you are ill, you need to sleep, and that is what sleep does in repairing the body and helping it to fight infection. Lack of sleep has been shown to reduce the effectiveness of the immune system, which then impacts on the growth of cancerous cells. Nightshift workers and people who do jobs which disrupt sleep how far greater risk of illness and cancer and has even been cited as the world health organisation (WHO). To be stronger and better we need to sleep. - REM: REM sleep in which we dream appears to be a by-product of neuronal activity as our brain becomes very active during REM sleep, although we are also left paralysed, and it also reduces adrenaline and noradrenaline - which raise heart rates. Adrenaline which often causes anxiety when we're awake but becomes reduced and stopped during REM sleep so that we might be able to work through emotional issues while sleeping. Tests seem to support this. - PTSD: People with post-traumatic stress disorder who were having recurring nightmares that the neuro adrenaline hormone was not being suppressed and thought that if you gave medication that reduces adrenaline, they might stop having post-traumatic stress disorder, nightmares and the same time somebody was prescribing medication which activated on reducing blood pressure but also suppressed noradrenaline and these people stop having nightmares. It's now become a form of treatment in treating post-traumatic stress disorder. - CREATIVITY: REM sleep can make us creative. If you have a difficulty, it is worth dreaming on it or falling asleep because REM sleep will help us to have better periods of creativity. The adage that if you have a problem, sleeping on it can help. - MELATONIN: Melatonin is a hormone to help with sleep but becomes disrupted by staying up late and particularly blue light that you might find in iPads if you read them for an hour or two before you go to bed will impact on your sleep. - ALCOHOL: Alcohol will impact on your ability to learn and disrupt REM sleep, which is so important for learning and emotional control. Alcohol and drugs impact so abstinence is important if you want to have dreams and proper sleep. - CANCER: Sleep deprivation which has been assessed in rats and other animals shows that if you do not sleep, you will die and there are conditions that cause people not to sleep and they will suffer horrible health issues. They're immune system no longer functions properly, and they become ill and die due to diseases such as sepsis that would be otherwise minimal in somebody with healthy sleep. - SLEEPING PILLS: In America in the last month there would've been 10 million people taking prescription sleeping pills and yet these medications are harmful and shouldn't really be used. They are more sedatives than pills to support proper sleep. Walker suggests that the first line of appropriate treatment is cognitive behavioural therapy, which include things like reducing the amount of caffeine and sleep in a regular time. - HOW SLEEP HAS CHANGED: Data over the last century shows that only 2% of Americans were sleeping less than six hours a night and now it is currently almost 30% adult asleep in less than six hours every night. The book looks at how society and sleep are working and interacting. This is having a massive effect on people’s health and well-being and mood. Many people who run businesses will often send-off emails early in the morning and work late, but and this is almost seen as a piece of bravado, but actually the cost to companies where employees are working late and having a less sleep is costing billions to the workplace and the current economies and is actually counterproductive. Companies devalue the importance and they need to start to value sleep. - CHILDREN: Research is shown time and time again that in studies where children start school at later times. There is much higher score points in terms of all subjects and exam examination scores. - ADHD: Children with ADHD are irritable and moodier, The same symptoms that you would see in a child who had a lack of sleep as the same as you would see in a child with ADHD so if children aren't sleeping, they will present with a similar diagnosis or presentation, and if you tell the doctor all the symptoms and you don't mention that the child is having problems with sleep or not sleeping enough, then it may well be that the doctor will diagnose that child as having ADHD. - “The state of chronic sleep deprivation builds over time, the child will look ever more ADHD-like in temperament, cognitively, emotionally, and academically. Those children who are fortunate to have the sleep disorder recognized, and who have their tonsils removed, often prove that they do not have ADHD. In the weeks after the operation, a child’s sleep recovers, and with it, normative psychological and mental functioning in the months ahead. Based on recent surveys and clinical evaluations, we estimate that more than 50 percent of all children with an ADHD diagnosis actually have a sleep disorder, yet a small fraction know of their sleep condition and its ramifications.” - ADHD MEDICATION: “Most people know the name of the common ADHD medications: Adderall and Ritalin. But few know what these drugs are. Adderall is amphetamine with certain salts mixed in, and Ritalin is a similar stimulant, called methylphenidate. Amphetamine and methylphenidate are two of the most powerful drugs we know of to prevent sleep and keep the brain of an adult (or a child, in this case) wide awake. That is the very last thing that such a child needs. Dr. Charles Czeisler, has noted, there are people sitting in prison cells, and have been for decades, because they were caught selling amphetamines to minors on the street. However, we seem to have no problem at all in allowing pharmaceutical companies to broadcast prime-time commercials highlighting ADHD and promoting the sale of amphetamine-based drugs (e.g., Adderall, Ritalin). To a cynic, this seems like little more than an uptown version of a downtown drug pusher.” - Children who have apnoea where they have problems with sleeping and it's causing them to wake and when surgery is used to correct this procedure and reduce lack of sleep in episode, these children symptoms of ADHD disappear. - The book argues that up to 50% of children who might have been presented with the symptoms of ADHD, have actually got sleep disorders or don’t sleep sufficient amount and they're having blue light on before they go to bed from their iPads and that's causing them to sleep yet. Many parents are unaware of this regarding ADHD. - Someone who has impaired sleep can have a similar level of behaviour as someone who is drunk and doctors and particularly new junior doctors who to do excessive amounts of training without sleep and do long 13 hours straight. Many doctors are after finishing long shift are 168% more likely to be involved in a car crash than others who aren't. - The effectiveness of a vaccine such as a flu vaccine is dramatically reduced because we need to sleep to help the vaccine work at its most effective and efficient rate. Some of the ideas to support sleep do include analogy that allows us to maximise the effectiveness of sleeping patterns in individuals and society. - Most children have had some form of education, around diets, the importance of exercise, the importance of vaccines and diet, but almost, no one has had any education or been provided information around the importance of sleep, excise, the food we eat, etc. and this needs to change. - PAIN: Another interesting fact that sleep deprivation is it when this occurs you will feel increased amount of pain and you would otherwise feel if you had a full night sleep. - NEONATES: A good night sleep can act like an anaesthetic in the same way as morphine and actually target the areas in the brain that such sedatives also impact on, but without all the harmful side-effects that you would associate with the kind of medicine such as morphine. And yet in hospitals, it's one of the most ineffective places to get sleep due to the constant beeping and noise levels and yet here we are once again causing more harm on individuals and reducing their ability to manage pain through reduced sleep patterns that are clearly associated with hospital stays. - END: Who would've thought that a book about sleep could be so eye-opening, and that a book about sleep could keep you awake with so many extraordinary facts and information about how important sleep is in so many ways, both in supporting our health, stopping us from feeling ill, impacts on our ability to think or concentrate or learn and the importance of something that takes up a third of our lives is only now being realised. This is a remarkable book.

This is a fantastic book about sleep and all connected to it. It spent about a year on my bedside table because every evening when I opened it while in the bed, after 1-2 pages I realised that it was better to put it back and fall asleep as soon as I could, rather then read it. What an irony. The book is extremely well-reseached. The author - being a leading scientist in the field - explores every side of our lives such as health, education, efficiency at work, mental health, emotional state, length of lives etc and how they are impacted by sleep and by lack of it. The book starts with 30-50 pages of scientific information about sleep - different stages, brainwaves, sleep of animals etc etc. For less scientifically curious it can be a boring bit but if they manage through, they will be rewarded with absolutely solid knowledge. I am - as many of us - a bit of sleep-deprived for many reasons: children, technology, early mornings to be at work, and silly habit of trying to read books in the bed. It is not a secret that sleep is good for us but we still play games with it. Reading this book convinced me that sleep is crucial for all aspects of my life, and of my children and family. We often see some celebrities or executives on TV who insist that their 4 hours of sleep a night is enough for them. After reading this book I don't believe them any more. No more I am surprised and impressed by them - I rather pity them and their families and subordinates. I strongly disagree with reviewers who say that the book doesn’t have advice what to do. The advice is simple and one doesn’t need to read a book of 300 pages: give yourself a favour and sleep more. We all know details: cut on caffeine, don’t drink alcohol, keep your bedroom filled with fresh air etc etc. The use of this book for me is not that pieces of advice but understanding why it is so important to sleep enough. And, by the way, author gives a lot of advice through the book, and as a summary at the end. Very useful and life-changing book. But don’t expect magic advice like “if you don’t sleep enough, try doing this instead”. There is no shortcuts for good sleep. Good night!

Why We Sleep is a good book. Matthew Walker has attained mastery in the field of sleep due to his intense love and studying of the subject for so many years, and his depth and quality of knowledge is apparent. One thing I learned was about adenosine. Adenosine is a chemical that builds up throughout the day that makes you sleepy. If you have enough sleep, your adenosine levels plummet and go back to zero upon awaking. If you don’t, you carry this ‘sleep debt’ over into the next day, which is a not a good way to start your day for muultiple reasons. Also, you never actually recover lost sleep. Another thing that will stay with me forever is the post-prandial dip in alertness, which is the dip in energy levels mid-afternoon. This is something all humans experience, which for someone who lives a healthy lifestyle consisting of a good diet and daily exercise, soothed some of my frustrations as to why I still experienced this. A way to combat this is a nap before the onset of the energy dip. Some of the largest companies in the world such as Nike, Google and NASA recognise and incorporate this, and so will I. A good quality and quantity of sleep is also important for effective weight management. If you’re trying to lose weight, sleep well, and you lose more fat and keep more lean muscle. Sleep poorly, you lose less fat and lose more muscle. However, as I progressed through the book, I found it harder to stay focused, as it was mainly Part 1 and 2 that I was interested in. Overall, the core message of the book is that sleep is SO important, in more ways than you can possibly comprehend.

I first heard about this study on BBC Radio 5live, when Phil Williams interviewed the author. I was so impressed by his approach & the way he described how the study was first designed & then developed & expanded that I read the book feeling, for the first time, that I was reading genuine findings & not someone’s unproven opinions. So without scepticism I felt able to completely embrace it as fact & I found it absolutely eye-opening! There are some incredible points that leapt out at me, such as: until this study scientists didn’t understand WHY we need to sleep - hence the title! With all the science we have available you would have thought we’d have known this long ago but it took this ‘proper’ investment to reach that knowledge & understanding. And another is WHEN; without this information the human race has set some ridiculous parameters around when we should sleep & decided they should apply to everyone. Worse, we’ve decided along the way that anyone who won’t or can’t live up to them is lazy or uncaring. We have designed our modern society around a set of non-scientific, irrelevant & sometimes even harmful ‘rules’, such as ‘working 9-5’ & ‘early start & early finish school times’. We believe all babies & small children should go to bed early. We go to great lengths to stop children napping, to get the sleep they need (possibly because they’ve had to get up some time before they were ready!), so that we can put them to bed early & enable parents to have an evening without them! The book shows us clearly that some babies & children won’t be able to go to sleep early (& stay asleep!) no matter how hard their parents try! One of the critical learning points is the necessity of sleep to our overall health, wellbeing & even life expectancy! I’ll never forget this & obviously we should be adopting it - as we are a first world society - now that we finally understand it! It’s ludicrous to ignore this knowledge just because we’ve got it wrong previously! I think anyone reading this book will end up with much better developed sleep strategies for themselves & their families. It’s really well written & interesting. Unsurprisingly it’s quite ‘meaty’ content & I found I tended to read a bit & then have to stop & have a think about it! But the key learning points are certainly sticking with me. I definitely think everyone can learn something from reading this book & I definitely recommend it!

First I listened to Mathew Walker on various podcasts’ channels. I loved reading the book, it was packed with tons of interesting info, but honestly… it made me a bit paranoid and turned me into a horrible selfish partner obsessed with chasing the perfect anti-aging healing sleep. Especially so when paired with an Apple Watch! Every morning when I saw interruptions in my sleep (there were tons, because of course: loo visits, my partner arriving late from work, going to bed with his phone and in the darkness using his screen as a light pointed towards sleeping me to find the bed, his phone not silenced, starting work super early but his alarm so loud it would wake up a dead person and gave me heart palpitations etc) Of course the Apple Watch showed the erratic sleeping line in the morning and I was even more upset. We have two beds now btw. I am 44yrs old now but I always liked to sleep at night. Going to bed early, waking up naturally, feeling amazing. When you are single you can work with your sleep a bit easier. OR you blame only yourself for bad sleep. When you get into a relationship forget about your previous good habits! And then you start a family so forget about the sleep altogether. I packed that idea so childless and still chasing the perfection. This book makes you aware how important is sleep for all parts of your being. But sometimes ignorance is bliss. You might drive yourself to degradation and early death but at least you can feel somewhat ok about it if you don’t have all the stats. I got rid off Apple Watch and wear Whoop now which is a little easier on waking times during the night and works with other metrics regarding sleep/so it puts it all into perspective with other markers and it’s not as depressive. Although… I highly recommend the book to anyone who doesn’t take sleep and recharge seriously (sadly I wasn’t successful to push it on my boyfriend). I do not recommend the book to people who are perfectionists or chase the perfection.

I wish this book had been available 50 years ago. I would have discovered the importance of quantity and quality of sleep, which has been the cinderalla compared to nutritional and physical exercise research and publicity. I would have discovered that anyone who claims that they function optimally on less than 8 hours per night, every night is fooling themselves. I would have realised the consequences of alcohol, caffeine, regular sleep patterns, medication, temperature and light on my ability to achieve ideal sleep. I would have realised that Simon and Garfunkel’s lyrics in the Sounds of Silence about greeting their old friend darkness (sleep), and “the vision that was planted in my brain, still remains” was insightful in highlighting the the key role of sleep in learning and memory. But this is not a self help book although it does have an appendix with 12 tips for healthy sleep. This monumental book encompasses a lifetime of research and a harvest of studies from around the world and it is brimming with theories and ideas and stories. Fascinating reading. What is sleep, why you should sleep, how and why we dream and from sleeping pills to society transformed are the four parts. Sounds simple. But that belies the depth of investigations that have gone into scientific analysis of the brain, of the role and mechanism of non rapid eye movement and rapid eye movement sleep and of the consequences of sleep deprivation. Matthew Walker does not flinch from elucidating the catastrophic effects of consistently not getting enough sleep. The evidence of lack of ability to learn, remember, make sound decisions and the onset of diabetes, heart disease, cancer, dementia and the destruction of your immune system are all attributed to less than 8 hours sleep per night. And the science is quoted to substantiate the dramatic claims. The fact that Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan both died from alkzeimers is attributed to leading lives with less than 6 hours of regular sleep. The Guiness Book of Records allows free falling from 30,000 ft but now excludes sleep deprivation records as too dangerous. What I could have been if only I had known!

If I were to create a syllabus of books that all people should read to understand their bodies and wellbeing - this book would make top of the pile. I had a burnout several years ago and it was only then that I finally realised that I have to take rest and my health seriously, and to listen to my body better. The first and most valuable thing that has helped me to heal is getting plenty of sleep. To address the criticism in some of the reviews around how much research and repetition there is in the message of the book - it's a sign of how much convincing our society and many work cultures need around this topic. We live in an era where many people value working and productivity over rest and wellbeing — I certainly felt that pressure for much of my life which is how I ended up in burnout. I used to feel guilty about resting and sleeping, even when I was sick, because all my life I heard messages around me about it being a sign of laziness, or "I'll sleep when I'm dead", all that kind of nonsense. So understanding the latest research has really empowered me to take ownership of my own needs for sleep and to honour my health over external pressures. I'm sure the research on sleep will continue to evolve, but we can take what is presented in this book. and adapt it for our own lives and learn what works best for us. I now work with a lot of people who also experience burnout, fatigue and other health issues they do not understand - I always recommend this book as a starting point because anyone who is at risk of burnout also tends to be the exact kind of person who need convincing - to give themselves permission to sleep and rest. I found this book to be a great mix of research to appease the curious (or skeptical) mind, and useful, practical advice to implement immediately in your life. I highly recommend it to anyone who would like to understand why and how it is so valuable.

This is a fascinating book and it is worth a read. However I do implore everyone who reads the book to be aware of, and peruse, scientific reviews and criticisms of some of Walker's sloppy, and in some chapters non-existent, citations for some of the biggest claims he makes about the benefits of sleep and dangers of sleep deprivation. While Part 1 of the book is largely unaffected by Walker's penchant for hyperbole and misrepresentation of scientific literature. Part 2 is riddled was some glaring falsehoods and outright untruths as to be unethical (for example, the false claim that sleep deprivation is bad in all cases when it has been shown to be a successful treatment for depression) I would advise skipping chapters 8 & 12 altogether as very few of his claims comes with any citation or scientific backing. And this chapter, in particular, is where most critics focus their ire. However, I would not disregard the book entirely since, as I mentioned, Parts 1, 3 & 4 contain fewer errors that do not significantly damage what Walker is trying to teach the reader. However, because the study of sleep, why we do it, it's benefits and dangers of sleep deprivation are still a field of science that is influx and not fully understood - like a lot of our understanding of the brain and it's functions - the book should still be read with a sceptical and cynical mind

I can't say anything about the book yet, I'm sure it's good... But I was upset by the condition it arrived in. It's sticky and scratched. It looks as if it's already been read, and it's unpleasant to hold. The price was ok, otherwise I would return it straight away

Lettura estremamente interessante ed educativa: esaustiva, dettagliata, con decine di studi scientifici a supporto degli argomenti trattati. Descritto così sembra quasi si tratti di un libro universitario, ma non lo è affatto! L'autore, professore di Neuroscienza e Psicologia e direttore di un laboratorio di ricerca su sonno e neuroimaging, è riuscito a mettere a terra l'argomento in maniera da rendere la lettura interessante, piacevole, e soprattutto di facile comprensione. Sicuramente consigliato a chi, come me, è sempre stato incuriosito dal sonno e voglia saperne di più. Tra gli argomenti più interessanti in mia opinione: cos'è il sonno e dove ha origine, a che cosa serve, come cambia nel corso della vita, quali possono essere gli innumerevoli effetti del dormire poco (ad esempio su apprendimento ed emotività), a cosa servono i sogni, e come sia possibile migliorare il proprio sonno senza ricorrere a farmaci.

Que gran libro, si tienes problemas de insomnio o quieres informarte con lo mejor en los estudios del sueño es un libro ideal

This book compiles a lot of scientific findings about sleep. Sleep is essential for our mental and physical health. A lack of sleep can cause many serious problems. I have changed my recognition of sleep entirely. I want to recommend everyone who engages in health care.

I can easily say that Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker, a neuroscientist, is one of the most important books that I've ever read. Modern humans have always taken their sleep for granted. It's always something that we can catch up on. And we have been dead wrong about this. Everything in our life is affected by the quality and quantity of our sleep. Almost everything that we do is enhanced/spoiled by our sleeping decision. Humans are not sleeping the way nature intended them to. The number of sleep periods, the duration of sleep, and when sleep occurs has all been distorted by the modern life. Human beings are the only species that deliberately deprive themselves of sleep to their detriment for petty activities. Even moderate reductions for just one week in our sleep disrupts the blood sugar levels so much that we would be classified as pre-diabetic. A few things that stood out for me: • Sleep is divided into non-REM sleep (early night) and REM sleep (mostly later night) • Sleep enhances our capacity to learn, remember and make logical decisions. • It configures our emotions, guards our immune system, takes care of our metabolism and keeps our weight in check. • Its deficiency is the leading cause of road accidents. • “The shorter you sleep, the shorter your life span.” • Inadequate sleep is associated with higher rates of mental disorders, heart diseases, cancer, dementia, etc. • Sleeping pills are no match for natural sleep. • Alcohol is one of the most powerful suppressors of REM sleep that we know of. • Sleep deprivation vastly increases your likelihood of getting infections. • REM sleep is what stands between rationality and insanity. • Many people walk through their lives sleep-deprived and never realize it. • Regularity is the key to good sleep - going to bed at the same time, waking up at the same time no matter what. There is so much in this book which should not be summarized. It has to be read and felt. This incomparable book should be compulsory reading for everyone.