Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams in Pick-a-Shelf

Nov 30, 2017 Joanna rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: audiobooks, nonfiction, 2017-read

This book turned me into that annoying person who reads a book, then insists on telling everyone around all the things she learned from the book. That so rarely happens, but this book was just that interesting and full of information that I didn't know.

I know that sleep is important, and I have personal experiential evidence that I am not fully functional if I haven't been getting enough sleep. But I hadn't really absorbed just how completely important sleep (and sufficient sleep) is to overall This book turned me into that annoying person who reads a book, then insists on telling everyone around all the things she learned from the book. That so rarely happens, but this book was just that interesting and full of information that I didn't know.

I know that sleep is important, and I have personal experiential evidence that I am not fully functional if I haven't been getting enough sleep. But I hadn't really absorbed just how completely important sleep (and sufficient sleep) is to overall health.

Like the author's students, I sort of don't want to know this information. I'd like to think that having a drink or two in the evening is not a big deal. Spoiler alert: Walker says that even one glass of wine any time in the evening is enough to interfere with sleep enough that he strongly recommends against drinking any alcohol within many hours of going to sleep. This seriously interferes with my enjoyment of a nice cocktail or some wine at the end of a long day. How infuriating.

Similarly, I've been really working hard to get to the gym regularly, which means sometimes getting up in the morning when I really don't want to and doing it anyway. But what this book points out is that what I really need to be doing is setting an alarm for bedtime that focuses on making sure that I have 7-9 hours of "sleep opportunity" before getting up. And I think Walker would argue that if I went to bed late, I should skip the gym rather than skip the extra hour of sleep. Or that I should skip something else other than sleep to get to the gym. But that's pretty hard to organize when you have to go to work.

Overall, the book could properly be categorized as horror. The author makes convincing arguments about the amount of societal harm we are experiencing because of widespread sleep deprivation. I'd like to think that policy makers and employers could be educated on this and come up with ways to help (some of which Walker suggests in the book), but I'm doubtful that we'll get a cultural shift on this issue.

Highly recommended. Everyone should read this book. And prepare to be horrified. And forced to think hard about one's personal choices. ...more

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Sep 02, 2019 Chris C rated it it was amazing

Probably the most informative and revealing book I've read in the past year. The author writes with an academic's eye to detail but his writing is not obscure or smacks of pedanticism. I enjoyed the scholarly paper footnotes along with the ease of explaining how this experiment or that has revealed the importance of sleep to our daily lives. It truly is the little things in life that matter and the one great public health crisis not revealed to us is something we have had opportunity to change f ...more

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Feb 03, 2018 LynnB rated it it was amazing

Shelves: non-fiction, health, science, 2018-reads

A book everyone should read! Sleep affects our lives in so many more ways than we normally think. This book is fascinating while at the same time it is almost terrifying to think what we are doing (or neglecting to do) for our health.

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