I recently listened to “Why we sleep” by “Matthew Walker, Ph.D.”, it simply change my view towards sleep and my life. For the bigger part of my life I thought the amount of sleep we get is not of such importance and people who sleep very much are generally lazy, I would always attribute part of the sleeping hours to genetics but apart from that I would think people actually some of my exes to be lazy! (But that’s not why they are my exes now.).
Let me give you the modern tl;dr; version of this text: “Sleep as much you need, it’s really good for you”. But if you would like more details, bear with me, and if you would like a lot more details, go read the book yourself, totally worth it. I’m going to cheat a little bit here, since I know I almost have no audience, I’m gonna change this text over time, you see I still haven’t finished the book but I’ve already made my mind about it! trust me, I will change my writing if I get a change of heart.

The highlights of the book for me are the following concepts:

  1. Circadian rhythm[1], and sleep pressure caused by adenosine build-up in the brain.
  2. NREM sleep helps consolidating the memories and learnings.
  3. Caffeine binds to adenosine receptors in brain so we don’t feel the sleep pressure.
  4. Alcohol screws with your sleep, you will not get deep sleep with it.
  5. Older adults experience less NREM and deep sleep, but that doesn’t mean they don’t need it, they should try to get more and more deep sleep to improve their memory and brain function.
  6. Sleep is extremely important during early stages of the life up to adulthood, mess with sleep you will mess with brain development.
  7. Mothers who drink, are screwing with their children’s brains, at least, up until they are breast feeding their babies.
  8. You can enhance learning by supercharging the brain! (not the same words used in the book) With the right electrical or acoustic signals, timed properly during the NREM sleep you can improve learning.
  9. Sleep deficiency damages white cells and immune system, even over one night.
  10. If you have cancer, sleep deficiency helps it grow and metastasize and if you don’t you’ll have higher chance of getting it.
  11. You will look more attractive and healthy after a good night sleep.
  12. If you want to lose weight, assuming you reduce your calory intake, you will lose more, and higher portion of your fat tissue if you are well rested, in case of sleep deficiency you will lose more of your lean muscle tissue.
  13. When sleep deprived, two hormones that control us feeling hungry and the one that tells us we have to stop eating, will be compromised, and we tend to eat more and end up gaining weight.
  14. When sleep deprived, we lose our self control and tend to eat more of complex carbs such as chips and other unhealthy fatty snacks.
  15. Lack of sleep increases blood pressure and risk of heart attack and related diseases.
  16. Lack of sleep hinders the way body handles glucose, to the extend the body will seem to be on pre-diabetic state.
  17. Sleep deprivation leads to mood swings and acting irrational.
  18. Best sleep is obtained in around 20 C.

I will update this post as I read on, and probably a final polish in the end.

References

  1. Circadian rhythm