Why We Sleep Quotes

“Most worrying from a societal perspective were the individuals in the group who obtained six hours of sleep a night—something that may sound familiar to many of you. Ten days of six hours of sleep a night was all it took to become as impaired in performance as going without sleep for twenty-four hours straight.”
― Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams

“Every hour, someone dies in a traffic accident in the US due to a fatigue-related error.”
― Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams

“if you don’t snooze, you lose.”
― Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams

“Slow rocking increased the depth of deep sleep, boosted the quality of slow brainwaves, and more”
― Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams

“Relative to a control group that slept but had no synchronous auditory chimes at night, the auditory stimulation increased the power of the slow brainwaves and returned an impressive 40 percent memory enhancement the next morning.”
― Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams

“Only stimulation during NREM sleep, in synchronous time with the brain’s own slow mantra rhythm, leveraged a memory improvement.”
― Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams

“Macbeth, act two, scene two, where Shakespeare prophetically states that sleep is “the chief nourisher in life’s feast.”I Perhaps, with less highfalutin language, your mother offered”
― Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams

“Through this platinum-grade nocturnal service, better REM-sleep quality at night provided superior comprehension of the social world the next day.”
― Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep: The New Science of Sleep and Dreams

“Confirming the importance of the dream state, the better the quality of REM sleep from one individual to the next across that rested night, the more precise the tuning within the emotional decoding networks of the brain the next day.”
― Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep: The New Science of Sleep and Dreams

“As with countless Greek tragedies, the end result was heartbreaking, but here in the most serious, literal way. None of the individuals had a history of coronary heart disease or stroke at the start of the study, indicating the absence of cardiovascular ill health. However, those that abandoned regular siestas went on to suffer a 37 percent increased risk of death from heart disease across the six-year period, relative to those who maintained regular daytime naps. The effect was especially strong in workingmen, where the ensuing mortality risk of not napping increased by well over 60 percent.”
― Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams

“Elephants need half as much sleep as humans, requiring just four hours of slumber each day. Tigers and lions devour fifteen hours of daily sleep. The brown bat outperforms all other mammals, being awake for just five hours each day while sleeping nineteen hours. Total amount of time is one of the most conspicuous differences in how organisms sleep.”
― Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams

“If sleep does not serve an absolutely vital function, then it is the biggest mistake the evolutionary process has ever made.”
― Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams

“(1) excessive daytime sleepiness, (2) sleep paralysis, and (3) cataplexy.”
― Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams

“Every time I watch this stunning act of neural synchrony occurring at night in my own research laboratory, I am humbled: sleep is truly an object of awe.”
― Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams

“For every day you are in a different timezone, your suprachiasmatic nucleus can only readjust by about one hour.”
― Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams

“The natural peak of the human circadian rhythm is in the early afternoon.”
― Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams

“Hard problems care little about what motivates their interrogators; they meter out their lessons of difficulty all the same.”
― Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep: The New Science of Sleep and Dreams

“Three-year-olds sleeping just ten and a half hours or less have a 45 percent increased risk of being obese by age seven than those who get twelve hours of sleep a night.”
― Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams

“It is an unintended by-product of the operation, not the true function. Heat is an epiphenomenon in this case.”
― Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams

“The adaptive benefits conferred by complex emotional processing are truly monumental, and so often overlooked.”
― Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams

“Only then did scientists realize the rather profound conclusions of the experiment: REM sleep is what stands between rationality and insanity.”
― Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams

“Interestingly, participants in the above studies do not perceive themselves as applying less effort to the work challenge, or being less effective, when they were sleep-deprived, despite both being true. They seemed unaware of their poorer work effort and performance—a theme of subjective misperception of ability when sleep-deprived that we have touched upon previously in this book.”
― Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams

“For those of us who are not suffering from insomnia or another sleep disorder, there is much we can do to secure a far better night of sleep using what we call good “sleep hygiene” practices, for which a list of twelve key tips can be found at the National Institutes of Health website; also offered in the appendix of this book.X All twelve suggestions are superb advice, but if you can only adhere to one of these each and every day, make it: going to bed and waking up at the same time of day no matter what. It is perhaps the single most”
― Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams

“You can find more resources on CBT-I, and a list of qualified therapists, from the National Sleep Foundation’s website.IX If you have, or think you have, insomnia, please make use of these resources before turning to sleeping pills.”
― Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams

“Progressively shorter sleep was associated with a 45 percent increased risk of developing and/or dying from coronary heart disease within seven to twenty-five years from the start of the study. A similar relationship was observed in a Japanese study of over 4,000 male workers. Over a fourteen-year period, those sleeping six hours or less were 400 to 500 percent more likely to suffer one or more cardiac arrests than those sleeping more than six hours.”
― Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams

“head office of the brain’s prefrontal cortex.V Relevant from a prevention standpoint, insufficient sleep during childhood significantly predicts early onset of drug and alcohol use in that same child during their later adolescent years, even when controlling for other high-risk traits, such as anxiety, attention deficits, and parental history of drug use.”
― Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams

“I, on the other hand, remained in the auditorium, realizing that this gentleman had just told me something that violated the most repeated and entrusted teaching edict: practice makes perfect. Not so, it seemed. Perhaps it was practice, with sleep, that makes perfect?”
― Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams

“sleep is the single most effective thing we can do to reset our brain and body health each day—Mother Nature’s best effort yet at contra-death.”
― Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams

“Dreaming provides a unique suite of benefits to all species fortunate enough to experience it, humans included.”
― Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams

“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 one of the most common culprits that keep people from falling asleep easily and sleeping soundly thereafter, typically masquerading as insomnia, an actual medical condition. Also be aware that de-caffeinated does not mean non-caffeinated. One cup of decaf usually contains 15 to 30 percent of the dose of a regular cup of coffee, which is far from caffeine-free. Should you drink three to four cups of decaf in the evening, it is just as damaging to your sleep as one regular cup of coffee.”
― Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams