Why We Sleep: Summary and Review

Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams by Matthew Walker

Review

My favourite excerpt from this book which sums it up: AMAZING BREAKTHROUGH! Scientists have discovered a revolutionary new treatment that makes you live longer. It enhances your memory and makes you more creative. It makes you look more attractive. It keeps you slim and lowers food cravings. It protects you from cancer and dementia. It wards off colds and the flu. It lowers your risk of heart attacks and stroke, not to mention diabetes. You’ll even feel happier, less depressed, and less anxious. Are you interested?

Summary

Twelve Tips for Healthy Sleep

Stick to a sleep schedule. Go to bed and wake up at the same time each day. As creatures of habit, people have a hard time adjusting to changes in sleep patterns. Sleeping later on weekends won’t fully make up for a lack of sleep during the week and will make it harder to wake up early on Monday morning. Set an alarm for bedtime. Often we set an alarm for when it’s time to wake up but fail to do so for when it’s time to go to sleep. If there is only one piece of advice you remember and take from these twelve tips, this should be it.
Exercise is great, but not too late in the day. Try to exercise at least thirty minutes on most days but not later than two to three hours before your bedtime.
Avoid caffeine and nicotine. Coffee, colas, certain teas, and chocolate contain the stimulant caffeine, and its effects can take as long as eight hours to wear off fully. Therefore, a cup of coffee in the late afternoon can make it hard for you to fall asleep at night. Nicotine is also a stimulant, often causing smokers to sleep only very lightly. In addition, smokers often wake up too early in the morning because of nicotine withdrawal.
Avoid alcoholic drinks before bed. Having a nightcap or alcoholic beverage before sleep may help you relax, but heavy use robs you of REM sleep, keeping you in the lighter stages of sleep. Heavy alcohol ingestion also may contribute to impairment in breathing at night. You also tend to wake up in the middle of the night when the effects of the alcohol have worn off.
Avoid large meals and beverages late at night. A light snack is okay, but a large meal can cause indigestion, which interferes with sleep. Drinking too many fluids at night can cause frequent awakenings to urinate.
If possible, avoid medicines that delay or disrupt your sleep. Some commonly prescribed heart, blood pressure, or asthma medications, as well as some over-the-counter and herbal remedies for coughs, colds, or allergies, can disrupt sleep patterns. If you have trouble sleeping, talk to your health care provider or pharmacist to see whether any drugs you’re taking might be contributing to your insomnia and ask whether they can be taken at other times during the day or early in the evening.
Don’t take naps after 3 p.m. Naps can help make up for lost sleep, but late afternoon naps can make it harder to fall asleep at night.
Relax before bed. Don’t overschedule your day so that no time is left for unwinding. A relaxing activity, such as reading or listening to music, should be part of your bedtime ritual.
Take a hot bath before bed. The drop in body temperature after getting out of the bath may help you feel sleepy, and the bath can help you relax and slow down so you’re more ready to sleep.
Dark bedroom, cool bedroom, gadget-free bedroom. Get rid of anything in your bedroom that might distract you from sleep, such as noises, bright lights, an uncomfortable bed, or warm temperatures. You sleep better if the temperature in the room is kept on the cool side. A TV, cell phone, or computer in the bedroom can be a distraction and deprive you of needed sleep. Having a comfortable mattress and pillow can help promote a good night’s sleep. Individuals who have insomnia often watch the clock. Turn the clock’s face out of view so you don’t worry about the time while trying to fall asleep.
Have the right sunlight exposure. Daylight is key to regulating daily sleep patterns. Try to get outside in natural sunlight for at least thirty minutes each day. If possible, wake up with the sun or use very bright lights in the morning. Sleep experts recommend that, if you have problems falling asleep, you should get an hour of exposure to morning sunlight and turn down the lights before bedtime.
Don’t lie in bed awake. If you find yourself still awake after staying in bed for more than twenty minutes or if you are starting to feel anxious or worried, get up and do some relaxing activity until you feel sleepy. The anxiety of not being able to sleep can make it harder to fall asleep.

Selected Quotes

“Power Nap” used for macho nomenclature to appeal to pilots, CEOs, and military executives

When Dinges and Rosekind reported their findings to the FAA, they recommended that “prophylactic naps”—naps taken early during long-haul flights—should be instituted as policy among pilots, as many other aviation authorities around the world now permit. The FAA, while believing the findings, was not convinced by the nomenclature. They believed the term “prophylactic” was ripe for many a snide joke among pilots. Dinges suggested the alternative of “planned napping.” The FAA didn’t like this, either, feeling it to be too “management-like.” Their suggestion was “power napping,” which they believed was more fitting with leadership- or dominance-based job positions, others being CEOs or military executives. And so the “power nap” was born.

The problem, however, is that people, especially those in such positions, came to erroneously believe that a twenty-minute power nap was all you needed to survive and function with perfect, or even acceptable, acumen. Brief power naps have become synonymous with the inaccurate assumption that they allow an individual to forgo sufficient sleep, night after night, especially when combined with the liberal use of caffeine.

Sleep Deprivation used for torture in Guantánamo Bay, allowing prisoners to sleep for only 4 hours every 24 hours.

Several US federal courts hold a similarly damning view of these practices, ruling that sleep deprivation violates both the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution regarding protection from cruel and inhuman punishment. Their rationale was sound and impenetrable: “sleep,” it was stated, must be considered a “basic life necessity,” which it clearly is.

the US Department of Defense subverted this ruling, authorizing twenty-hour interrogations of detainees in Guantánamo Bay between 2003 and 2004. Such treatment remains permissible to this day of writing, as the revised US Army Field Manual states, in appendix M, that detainees can be limited to just four hours of sleep every twenty-four hours, for up to four weeks.

Early start times for teenagers

Could you concentrate and learn much of anything when you had woken up so early? Keep in mind that 5:15 a.m. to a teenager is not the same as 5:15 a.m. to an adult. Previously, we noted that the circadian rhythm of teenagers shifts forward dramatically by one to three hours. So really the question I should ask you, if you are an adult, is this: Could you concentrate and learn anything after having forcefully been woken up at 3:15 a.m., day after day after day? Would you be in a cheerful mood? Would you find it easy to get along with your coworkers and conduct yourself with grace, tolerance, respect, and a pleasant demeanor?

Doctors and Nurses and underslept because of institutional inertia.

The term “residency” came from Halsted’s belief that doctors must live in the hospital for much of their training, allowing them to be truly committed in their learning of surgical skills and medical knowledge. Fledgling residents had to suffer long, consecutive work shifts, day and night. To Halsted, sleep was a dispensable luxury that detracted from the ability to work and learn. Halsted’s mentality was difficult to argue with, since he himself practiced what he preached, being renowned for a seemingly superhuman ability to stay awake for apparently days on end without any fatigue.

But Halsted had a dirty secret that only came to light years after his death, and helped explain both the maniacal structure of his residency program and his ability to forgo sleep. Halsted was a cocaine addict. It was a sad and apparently accidental habit, one that started years before his arrival at Johns Hopkins.