Siddartha Pilla

Why We Sleep – Dr.Matthew Walker is a fantastic book that focuses on one of the most under appreciated and overlooked antidepressants – Sleep.

Notes:

In this book, the author talks about the entire gamut of topics under the sun regarding the idea of Sleep – 

1. How Sleep is initiated – The two factors influencing sleep are the Circadian Rhythm and Melatonin content 
2. The things we regularly consume – Caffeine, Alcohol, however small content you think they are – have an impact on the regular functioning of your brain and also the mega-scale impacts they might have in the long run
3. How ignoring sleep, even the smallest quanta of it, can have dire consequences – be it on mental capacity(memory and creativity impediment, loss of concentration levels) or physical 
4. How the society the corporate culture lauds the lack of sleep in an individual as a hard worker or a diligent individual

The most fascinating part of the book for me was the stages of sleep – and how each stage impacts a specific aspect of the brain activity, especially the REM(Rapid Eye Movement) and NREM stages. The author identifies the NREM stage of the sleep cycle as the one that stores the regular ephemeral data in the permanent data storage space; REM sleep is the creative stage of sleep – which helps in the most bizarre connections and interconnected of the thoughts; and this is just a part of what these stages help us achieve. 

This book really breaks a lot of misconceptions about the idea of dreams and everything around it. How and when do we dream – Is dreaming a good sign of brain activity? Why do we dream of the most random things? And the likewise queries were answered to a reasonable extent scientifically. 

The author makes scientific statements about most of the topics and questions in his experiment; I am a little dubious about the causality relations he draws in some of the experiments. My assumption is that there are other confounding variables that we just might not be aware of. 

Key takeaways:

Nevertheless, a few key takeaways from the book for me are as follows: 

1. Everyone needs 7-8 hours of Sleep on a daily basis – and NO, you cannot sleep it off during the weekends to average it out. 
2. Naps, Coffee, and nicotine after 3 PM are not ideal for a ‘good night’s sleep’; they distort your regular sleep pattern. So does the alcohol before sleep. It suppresses the REM Sleep
3. Stick to scheduled sleep timings; I mean, really stick to it.
4. LED Lights(even bed lights), however low intensity, can push your sleep time ahead, distorting the regular pattern; hence, No TV, Laptop etc., post 10 PM. Use a blue light filter if you have to. Also, have enough(~ 30 – 60 min) of natural light exposure daily
5. Do not exercise 2 – 3 hours before Bedtime   

Quotes:

As Dr. Matthew Walker says, “Sleep is the state we must enter in order to fix that which has been upset by wake.”