Why We Sleep: The New Science of Sleep and Dreams

by Matthew Walker

An adult’s owlness or larkness, also known as their chronotype, is strongly determined by genetics. If you are a night owl, it’s likely that one (or both) of your parents is a night owl. Sadly, society treats night owls rather unfairly on two counts. First is the label of being lazy, based on a night owl’s wont to wake up later in the day, due to the fact that they did not fall asleep until the early-morning hours. Others (usually morning larks) will chastise night owls on the erroneous assumption that such preferences are a choice, and if they were not so slovenly, they could easily wake up early. However, night owls are not owls by choice.

Caffeine—which is not only prevalent in coffee, certain teas, and many energy drinks, but also foods such as dark chocolate and ice cream, as well as drugs such as weight-loss pills and pain relievers—is a common culprit that keeps people from falling asleep easily and sleeping soundly thereafter, typically masquerading as insomnia, an actual medical condition.

In the event it helps, I have provided a link to a questionnaire that has been developed by sleep researchers that will allow you to determine your degree of sleep fulfillment.fn11 Called SATED, it is easy to complete, and contains only five simple questions.

Here, also, there are universal indicators that offer a convincing conclusion of sleep—two, in fact. First is the loss of external awareness—you stop perceiving the outside world. You are no longer conscious of all that surrounds you, at least not explicitly. In actual fact, your ears are still “hearing”; your eyes, though closed, are still capable of “seeing.” This is similarly true for the other sensory organs of the nose (smell), the tongue (taste), and the skin (touch).

Sixty years of scientific research prevent me from accepting anyone who tells me that he or she can “get by on just four or five hours of sleep a night just fine.”

Beyond increasing your risk for developing Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, depression, obesity, hypertension, and cardiovascular disease, chronic sleep loss can erode the very essence of biological life itself: your genetic code and the structures that encapsulate it.

If there is a red-thread narrative that runs from our waking lives into our dreaming lives, it is that of emotional concerns.

Stick to a sleep schedule. Go to bed and wake up at the same time each day. As creatures of habit, people have a hard time adjusting to changes in sleep patterns. Sleeping later on weekends won’t fully make up for a lack of sleep during the week and will make it harder to wake up early on Monday morning.

Therefore, a cup of coffee in the late afternoon can make it hard for you to fall asleep at night.

Dark bedroom, cool bedroom, gadget-free bedroom. Get