📣 Curious Quotes from the Author
“The best bridge between despair and hope is a good night’s sleep.”
“Practice does not make perfect. It is practice, followed by a night of sleep, that leads to perfection.”
“After thirty years of intensive research, we can now answer many of the questions posed earlier. The recycle rate of a human being is around sixteen hours. After sixteen hours of being awake, the brain begins to fail. Humans need more than seven hours of sleep each night to maintain cognitive performance. After ten days of just seven hours of sleep, the brain is as dysfunctional as it would be after going without sleep for twenty-four hours. Three full nights of recovery sleep (i.e., more nights than a weekend) are insufficient to restore performance back to normal levels after a week of short sleeping. Finally, the human mind cannot accurately sense how sleep-deprived it is when sleep-deprived.”
“Inadequate sleep—even moderate reductions for just one week—disrupts blood sugar levels so profoundly that you would be classified as pre-diabetic.”
“Humans are not sleeping the way nature intended. The number of sleep bouts, the duration of sleep, and when sleep occurs has all been comprehensively distorted by modernity.”
“the shorter your sleep, the shorter your life. The leading causes of disease and death in developed nations—diseases that are crippling health-care systems, such as heart disease, obesity, dementia, diabetes, and cancer—all have recognized causal links to a lack of sleep.”
“Sleep is the single most effective thing we can do to reset our brain and body health each day -- Mother Nature's best effort yet at contra-death.”
“After all, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”
“if you don’t sleep the very first night after learning, you lose the chance to consolidate those memories, even if you get lots of “catch-up” sleep thereafter. In terms of memory, then, sleep is not like the bank. You cannot accumulate a debt and hope to pay it off at a later point in time. Sleep for memory consolidation is an all-or-nothing event.”
“Routinely sleeping less than six or seven hours a night demolishes your immune system, more than doubling your risk of cancer.”
“It is disquieting to learn that vehicular accidents caused by drowsy driving exceed those caused by alcohol and drugs combined.”
“Caffeine has an average half-life of five to seven hours. Let’s say that you have a cup of coffee after your evening dinner, around 7:30 p.m. This means that by 1:30 a.m., 50 percent of that caffeine may still be active and circulating throughout your brain tissue. In other words, by 1:30 a.m., you’re only halfway to completing the job of cleansing your brain of the caffeine you drank after dinner.”
📚 Cognition of the Book’s Big Idea
Matthew Walker's book "Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams" provides a thorough analysis of the vital role sleep plays in our lives. Walker, a neurologist and sleep specialist, describes the importance of sleep for maintaining good mental, physical, and cognitive health. He describes the many sleep phases, such as REM and non-REM sleep, and how they specifically affect recovery from physical injuries, memory loss, and emotional control. In addition to highlighting the detrimental effects of sleep deprivation on one's health—such as increased risk of Alzheimer's, cancer, diabetes, and weakened immune system—the book also stresses the emotional and cognitive advantages of getting enough sleep, including improved learning, increased creativity, and improved emotional stability.
Walker addresses the wider societal ramifications of sleep deprivation, such as decreased productivity, an increase in mistakes and accidents, and financial expenses, in addition to the effects on an individual's health. He dispels many misconceptions about sleep, such as the notion that you may catch up on sleep on the weekends, and offers helpful suggestions for enhancing the quality of your sleep with proper sleep hygiene. Walker advocates for workplace rules that promote healthy sleep habits and later school start hours for teenagers in an effort to shift society's perception of sleep as a top priority. In the end, the book emphasizes how critical sleep is to general health and wellbeing.
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