“All of these situations are ones in which inappropriate anger and hostility are dealt out by tired, sleep-deprived individuals.” “ ’I just snapped and ‘… those words are often part of an unfolding tragedy as a soldier irrationally responds to a provocative civilian, a physician to an entitled patient or a parent to a misbehaving child,” Walker writes. The book also explains the power of circadian rhythms, the therapeutic importance of Rapid Eye Movement (REM) dream sleep, and how alcohol, caffeine, pharmaceutical stimulants and sedatives disrupt sleep cycles and degrade the quality of brain waves that promote the rich slumber that wards off illness.Ĭumulatively, he argues, the cognitive, emotional and physiological stresses of too few hours of sleep take a toll on such frontline personnel as military fighters, first responders, commercial airline pilots and long-haul truck drivers, leading to vehicular accidents, botched surgeries and fatalities, and, in the case of exhausted parents, child neglect and abuse. He describes how the overtired brain and body make us vulnerable to cancer, Alzheimer’s, depression, anxiety, obesity, stroke, chronic pain, diabetes and heart attacks, among other medical conditions. In Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams, published by Scribner and released earlier this month, Walker guides readers through decades of sleep research. “The silent sleep loss epidemic is one of the greatest public health challenges we face in the 21 st century,” says Walker, who has served as a sleep consultant to the NBA, NFL and Pixar Animation Studios, among other Fortune 500 enterprises. Walker, 43, a native of Liverpool, U.K., is dead serious about the dangers of sleep deprivation - now more than ever, perhaps, as bedrooms everywhere glow from the screens of round-the-clock technology consumption. “It was a striking demonstration of the emotional and personality impact of insufficient sleep,” marvels Walker, a UC Berkeley professor of neuroscience and psychology and leading sleep evangelist. ![]() Their makeup had been slapped on by two similarly sleep-deprived female students. By morning, the two were grinning maniacally with lipstick and mascara smeared across their faces. There was that time, for instance, when two straitlaced football players stayed up all night in his campus lab for a memory experiment. And they never connect the dots, which is perhaps it was the glass of red wine I had before bed and it was the multiple awakenings that I had throughout the night that makes me feel this sluggish and underslept the next day.UC Berkeley neuroscientist Matthew Walker and his new book, Why We Sleep (Courtesy of Matthew Walker) So they wake up the next morning and feel unrefreshed and not particularly chipper. Those awakenings tend to be quite brief and many people don't commit them to memory. You will wake up many more times a night than if you weren't drinking. Dream sleep has a whole collection of functions for the brain and the body. If you consume alcohol six to eight hours before bed, the first thing that alcohol is very good at doing is blocking your REM sleep, your dream sleep. Sedation is not sleep - it doesn't come with the same restorative benefits. ![]() There is a misunderstanding that alcohol helps you fall asleep. Q: How about that post-work cocktail or nightly wine habit? So those people who say, "I can fall asleep just fine," it still doesn't mean they're safe and clear from the reaching arm of caffeine into their sleep. ![]() The slightly more nefarious aspect of caffeine is that maybe you can fall asleep, but we know that the depth of deep sleep you're getting if caffeine is still in your system is severely less. The gross demonstration of caffeine is that it prevents you from falling asleep. Q: What happens when you drink caffeine late in the day? And if you feel like you need caffeine in the morning, then you're probably self-medicating your state of sleep deprivation.
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