I wanted to share my learning on the book “ Why we sleep” by Matthew Walker.

Before I read this book, I know sleeping is good for health. But I did not give importance of sleep and did not take care of myself by sleeping.

This book was an eye opener for me and I’m sure it will be an eye opener for many of you as well.

This book is divided into 4 parts,

1. Demystifying sleep: what is sleep, how human beings should sleep ( but they are not), and how sleep changes across your lifespan.

2. Sleep Details: Exploring the astonishing benefits of sleep for brain and for body and also what happens if due to lack for sleep.

3. Dreams: Why we are dreaming and what are its benefits.

4. Sleep Disorders: Talks about different sleep disorders, details on sleeping pills, sleep in education.

Let’s explore all the topics at the high level,

Demystifying Sleep:

There are two cycles which regulates sleep for the human beings, one is circadian rhythm and other one is sleep pressure. They are two distinct and separate systems that are ignorant of each other.

Circadian rhythm(C): Think it as a wake cycle, which will be active during the day and reduces during the night.

Sleep pressure (S): It would be a sleep cycle, which will be active during the night and reduces during the day.

When you look at the above image, ‘C’ wave is starting at 7AM and goes to peak during afternoon and reduces around 11pm and ‘S’ wave is an exact opposite where it will be high during the night and reduces during the day.

Have you pulled an “ all-nighter” – forgoing sleep and remaining awake throughout the following day? Once you pull off the night sleep, in the morning the Circadian cycle again starts which will make you awake. Even though you have not slept, you will feel alert and energetic in the morning.

As the day progresses, you will be very tired because circadian cycle fades out and sleep pressure will be increasing.

Every sleep has two stages, REM and NREM, both will pull battle for brain domination across the night. The cerebral war between the two is won and lost every 90 minutes.

REM sleep – Will help you to dream, which will act as a fuel to your creativity.

NREM sleep – Helps transfer of newly learnt information into long term storage sites in the brain.

Sleep Details:

Sleep for the brain: Sleep is not the absence of wakefulness. Numerous functions of the brain are restored during the sleep. No one type of sleep accomplishes all, each stage of sleep, light NREM sleep, deep NREM sleep, and REM sleep offers different brain benefits at the different times in night.

Losing out on any one of these types of sleep will cause brain impairment.

Memory is one of the main advantages of sleep.

Sleep before Learning: Sleep before learning refreshes our ability to make new memories. It does each and every night. When we are awake, our brain constantly acquires new information. This information are stored in the temporary storage site called hippocampus. Unfortunately, the hippocampus has a limited storage capacity.

Only during the sleep, the new learnings are transferred from the temporary storage site to permanent storage sites. This will help us to learn new things next day morning.

Sleep After Learning: Another benefit of sleep comes after the learning, one that effectively clicks the ‘save’ button on those newly created files. In doing so, sleep protects newly acquired information, affording immunity against forgetting.

if you don’t sleep the very first night after learning, you lose the chance to consolidate those memories, even if you get lots of “catch up” sleep thereafter. In terms of memory, then, sleep is not like the bank. You cannot accumulate debt and hope to pay it off at a later point in time. Sleep for memory consolidation is an all or nothing event. It is a concerning result in our 24/7.

Lack of sleep mainly contributes to Alzheimer disease, cancer , heart attacks, depression , obesity and a shorter life.

So do not wait to sleep, have 8 hours of sleep every day to take care of your health.

Dreams:

REM sleep primarily attributes our dreams, during that state there is a strong activation of visual, motor, emotional, and autobiographical memory regions in the brain and region which control the rational thought will be deactivated.

Two major benefits of dreams,

1. Emotional and mental health.

2. Problem solving and creativity.

Emotional and Mental Health: As the old saying goes that time heals all the wounds, REM sleep offers a form of overnight therapy. That is, REM sleep dreaming takes the painful sting out of difficult, even traumatic, emotional episodes you have experienced during the day and offering emotional resolution when you wake the next morning.

Problem solving and creativity. Ever wondered that you found a solution to a problem after you wake up in the morning? That is primary due to the action took place when you were sleeping.

The primary objective of NREM sleep is to strengthen individual memories but REM sleep is the one which offers the benefit of fusing and blending those ingredients together.

During the dream state, our brain will make a connection of the new acquired knowledge with the existing knowledge. When we wake up in the morning, we will wake up with a revised memory which is capable of divining solutions to the previous difficult problems.

Sleep Disorders:

Generally, doctors will prescribe sleeping pills when we have sleep trouble. But it may not be a right approach.

Natural deep sleep will helps cement new memory traces within the brain to make new memory circuit, but the drug induced sleep will affect the basic sleep functionality.

Sleeping pills will sedate you like alcohol which will not help you to sleep naturally.

Sleep in Education: This is the part where I was eager to write as this impacts all our kids,

As we saw how sleep is important to create memory function both emotionally and problem solving. If we don’t have our kids sleep for atleast 8-10 hours every day they would be losing the most valuable part of their development.

At the young age, they will learn new things and explore their imagination. Without proper sleep, all their learnings will not be stored efficiently.

If they have a good quality sleep, they would be effectively learning and develop all the important skills to face the world.

Key takeaway:

The one take away after reading this book for me to sleep 7-8 hours sleep everyday including weekends and have the kids sleep for atleast 8-10 hours every day. This will help us to live a healthy life.

The effective way to create a sleep pattern is to set a sleep schedule, we often set a schedule to wake up but not to sleep. If we sleep regularly at the same time every day and wake up it would become a habit.

I hope my learning would help someone who is reading this.

Thanks for reading!