Not so long ago, lack of sleep was worn with pride like a badge since you had more time to ‘burn the midnight oil’ and get more stuff done at work. You were tough. You were committed. Not so today. Sleep has become an oft-mentioned solution to not only better health, but better cognitive performance.
We saw some talks on TED and read articles or even books broaching parts of the subject. With Matthew Walker’s best-seller, you now have a whole book devoted to the mysteries of sleep, why it’s so important to us, its benefits as well as it’s ramifications if we don’t get enough.
Right from the outset, ‘Why We Sleep’ lays out the negative effects of sleep neglect with a no-nonsense introduction, raising alarming health statistics about the trend in sleep deprivation and noting that humans are the only species who deliberately deprive themselves of sleep. Walker cites research showing that one accident occurs every hour due to fatigue. Accident-related deaths from fatigue even exceed deaths from alcohol and drugs combined.
In the next 16 chapters, Walker then outlines the benefits of sleep and how we can improve our minds and bodily health with more and better quality sleep. Granted, his book can delve into too much science (he devotes extensive coverage to REM and NREM types of sleep, which stand for rapid eye movement and non-rapid eye movement respectively). But it's a perfect set-up to explain what happens during sleep and why compromising these two can adversely affect your health.
He also addresses sleep from an anthropological perspective as well as an evolutionary perspective, at one stage, making a stunning hypothesis that the discovery of fire allowed humans to move out of the safety of trees and to spend more time on ground. This (for reasons he explains) then promoted the development of more NREM sleep, which allowed humans to become the most advanced species on Earth. He illustrates how the invention of electricity allowed humans to cheat their physiological instincts to sleep later, when we should’ve been winding down at dusk like our ancestors did. And we all know that LED seems instinctively bad for us and he lays out the science behind its ill effects.
Through extensive investigations of clinical studies, Walker unearths great nuggets of information too. One of the insights is that decaffeinated doesn’t necessarily mean caffeine-free and the one of the keys to avoiding insomnia is not only to cut back on caffeine intake during the day, but caffeine sources like dark chocolate too. He tells us which parts of sleep deprivation (late night sleep versus early morning rise) is more damaging and why. For the Dads, he explains why teenagers sleep late and sleep in (basically they have no say in it too). He dispels common myths about sleep aids (no, alcohol does not make you sleep better) and offers a range of recommendations.
Walker’s book is exceedingly well-written and often humorously entertaining. What’s missing are succinct, healthy tips that we can adopt straight away into our daytime routines. A daily cheat-sheet, so to speak. But we opine that since Dr Walker is no medical doctor nor nutritionist, he wants the reader to take that responsibility from the facts he lays out. Still, we wished he tried.
By the end of this book, we at TBR felt devastated but more optimistic at the same time. Like the sad exposes of unhealthy food, the facts have always been in plain sight; it’s just that no one bothered to call it out. This serves as a wake-up call (if you pardon the pun). The take-away for all male executives is even clearer. If you’re taking sleep for granted, it actually makes you less productive in the end, not more. So kindly get your act together and order this from Amazon immediately. This will hold up to be one of the seminal books for mankind over the generations to come.
Summary
Readability: 8/10
Relevance: 10/10
Applicability: 10/10