Why We Sleep Quotes

“The gift of split-brain deep NREM sleep is not entirely unique to aquatic mammals. Birds can do it, too. However, there is a somewhat different, though equally life-preserving, reason: it allows them to keep an eye on things, quite literally. When birds are alone, one half of the brain and its corresponding (opposite-side) eye must stay awake, maintaining vigilance to environmental threats. As it does so, the other eye closes, allowing its corresponding half of the brain to sleep.”
― Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams

“This experiment has now been performed many times on numerous species of birds and mammals, humans included. There are two clear outcomes. First, and of little surprise, sleep duration is far longer on the recovery night (ten or even twelve hours in humans) than during a standard night without prior deprivation (eight hours for us). Responding to the debt, we are essentially trying to “sleep it off,” the technical term for which is a sleep rebound. Second, NREM sleep rebounds harder. The brain will consume a larger portion of deep NREM sleep than of REM sleep on the first night after total sleep deprivation, expressing a lopsided hunger. Despite both sleep types being on offer at the finger buffet of recovery sleep, the brain opts to heap much more deep NREM sleep onto its plate. In the battle of importance, NREM sleep therefore wins. Or does it? Not quite. Should you keep recording sleep across a second, third, and even fourth recovery night, there’s a reversal. Now REM sleep becomes the primary dish of choice with each returning visit to the recovery buffet table, with a side of NREM sleep added. Both sleep stages are therefore essential.”
― Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams

“When it comes to information processing, think of the wake state principally as reception (experiencing and constantly learning the world around you), NREM sleep as reflection (storing and strengthening those raw ingredients of new facts and skills), and REM sleep as integration (interconnecting these raw ingredients with each other, with all past experiences, and, in doing so, building an ever more accurate model of how the world works, including innovative insights and problem-solving abilities).”
― Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams

“While a clinical sleep assessment is needed to thoroughly address this issue, an easy rule of thumb is to answer two simple questions. First, after waking up in the morning, could you fall back asleep at ten or eleven a.m.? If the answer is “yes,” you are likely not getting sufficient sleep quantity and/or quality. Second, can you function optimally without caffeine before noon? If the answer is “no,” then you are most likely self-medicating your state of chronic sleep deprivation.”
― Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams

“即使把其他控制因子考慮進去，如身體質量指數（BMI）、性別、種族、是否吸菸、多常運動、是否長期服藥等，只要年長者的睡眠效率分數較低，他們的死亡風險就會較高、身體健康程度較差、更可能發生憂鬱症、覺得自己缺乏活力、認知功能較低（典型的症狀是記憶力變差）。”
― Matthew Walker, 為什麼要睡覺？：睡出健康與學習力、夢出創意的新科學

“YOU DO NOT KNOW HOW SLEEP-DEPRIVED YOU ARE WHEN YOU ARE SLEEP-DEPRIVED”
― Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams

“For these reasons, melatonin is not a powerful sleeping aid in and of itself, at least not for healthy, non-jet-lagged individuals (we’ll explore jet lag—and how melatonin can be helpful—in a moment). There may be little, if any, quality melatonin in the pill. That said, there is a significant sleep placebo effect of melatonin, which should not be underestimated: the placebo effect is, after all, the most reliable effect in all of pharmacology. Equally important to realize is the fact that over-the-counter melatonin is not commonly regulated by governing bodies around”
― Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams

“Melatonin corrals these sleep-generating regions of the brain to the starting line of bedtime. Melatonin simply provides the official instruction to commence the event of sleep, but does not participate in the sleep race itself.”
― Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams

“Routinely sleeping less than six hours a night weakens your immune system, substantially increasing your risk of certain forms of cancer. Insufficient sleep appears to be a key lifestyle factor linked to your risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease. Inadequate sleep—even moderate reductions for just one week—disrupts blood sugar levels so profoundly that you would be classified as pre-diabetic. Short sleeping increases the likelihood of your coronary arteries becoming blocked and brittle, setting you on a path toward cardiovascular disease, stroke, and congestive heart failure.”
― Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams

“if you are drowsy while driving, please, please stop. It is lethal. To carry the burden of another’s death on your shoulders is a terrible thing. Don’t be misled by the many ineffective tactics people will tell you can battle back against drowsiness while driving.fn2 Many of us think we can overcome drowsiness through sheer force of will, but, sadly, this is not true. To assume otherwise can jeopardize your life, the lives of your family or friends in the car with you, and the lives of other road users. Some people only get one chance to fall asleep at the wheel before losing their life. If you notice yourself feeling drowsy while driving, or actually falling asleep at the wheel, stop for the night. If you really must keep going—and you have made that judgment in the life-threatening context it genuinely poses—then pull off the road into a safe layby for a short time. Take a brief nap (twenty to thirty minutes). When you wake up, do not start driving. You will be suffering from sleep inertia—the carryover effects of sleep into wakefulness. Wait for another twenty to thirty minutes, perhaps after having a cup of coffee if you really must, and only then start driving again. This, however, will only get you so far down the road before you need another such recharge, and the returns are diminishing. Ultimately, it is just not worth the (life) cost.”
― Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep: The New Science of Sleep and Dreams

“sleep is the single most effective thing we can do to reset our brain and body health each day”
― Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep: The New Science of Sleep and Dreams

“sleeping less than six hours a night weakens your immune system, substantially increasing your risk of certain forms of cancer.”
― Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep: The New Science of Sleep and Dreams

“relative to the recommended seven to nine hours, the shorter your sleep, the shorter your life span. The old maxim “I’ll sleep when I’m dead” is therefore unfortunate.”
― Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams

“Melatonin simply provides the official instruction to commence the event of sleep, but does not participate in the sleep race itself. For these reasons, melatonin is not a powerful sleeping aid in and of itself, at least not for healthy, non-jet-lagged individuals”
― Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams

“absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”
― Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams

“For me, answers were simply a way to get to the next question.”
― Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams

“The encouraging news is that getting enough sleep will help you control body weight. We found that a full night of sleep repairs the communication pathway between deep-brain areas that unleash hedonic desires and higher-order brain regions whose job it is to rein in these cravings. Ample sleep can therefore restore a system of impulse control within your brain, putting the appropriate brakes on potentially excessive eating.”
― Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams

“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.”
― Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams

“why”
― Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams

“quality of day-to-day life for narcoleptic patients”
― Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep: The New Science of Sleep and Dreams

“de Mairan’s heliotrope”
― Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams

“Many of the explanations for why we sleep circle around a common, and perhaps erroneous, idea: sleep is the state we must enter in order to fix that which has been upset by wake. But what if we turned this argument on its head? What if sleep is so useful—so physiologically beneficial to every aspect of our being—that the real question is: Why did life ever bother to wake up? Considering how biologically damaging the state of wakefulness can often be, that is the true evolutionary puzzle here, not sleep. Adopt this perspective, and we can pose a very different theory: sleep was the first state of life on this planet, and it was from sleep that wakefulness emerged. It may be a preposterous hypothesis, but personally I do not think it to be entirely unreasonable.”
― Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams

“Grame de somn duc la kilograme de rezultate în afaceri.”
― Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams

“Biologia noastră circadiană și obligațiile interminabile pe care le avem de îndeplinit dimineața devreme în cursul acestui stil de viață postindustrial ne refuză somnul de care avem nevoie în mod vital.”
― Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams

“Din moment ce experiența vieții este mereu schimbătoare, solicitând ca registrul memoriei noastre să fie actualizat la infinit, sculptarea autobiografică pe care o facem la nivelul experiențelor stocate nu se termină niciodată.”
― Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams

“«Si el sueño no cumple una función absolutamente vital, entonces es el mayor error que el proceso evolutivo haya cometido nunca».[3]”
― Matthew Walker, Por qué dormimos: La nueva ciencia del sueño

“Both you and the meeting attendees are falling prey to an evolutionarily imprinted lull in wakefulness that favors an afternoon nap, called the post-prandial alertness dip (from the Latin prandium, “meal”). This brief descent from high-degree wakefulness to low-level alertness reflects an innate drive to be asleep and napping in the afternoon, and not working. It appears to be a normal part of the daily rhythm of life. Should you ever have to give a presentation at work, for your own sake—and that of the conscious state of your listeners—if you can, avoid the midafternoon slot.”
― Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep: The New Science of Sleep and Dreams

“The lower the quality of sleep that the supervisor reported getting from one night to the next accurately predicted poor self-control and a more abusive nature toward employees the following day, as reported by the employees themselves.”
― Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams

“There are many things that I hope readers take away from this book. This is one of the most important: if you are drowsy while driving, please, please stop. It is lethal. To carry the burden of another’s death on your shoulders is a terrible thing.”
― Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams

“the problem became part of the solution.”
― Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams