Why we sleep (book)

I am currently reading this fascinating book, that is described as follows: Neuroscientist and sleep expert Matthew Walker provides a revolutionary exploration of sleep, examining how it affects every aspect of our physical and mental well-being. Charting the most cutting-edge scientific breakthroughs, and marshalling his decades of research and clinical practice, Walker explains how we can harness sleep to improve learning, mood and energy levels, regulate hormones, prevent cancer, Alzheimer's and diabetes, slow the effects of aging, and increase longevity. He also provides actionable steps towards getting a better night's sleep every night.

I am seriously considering preparing a talk based on this book for the English speakers OAP group on the kibbutz (for whom I delivered a talk about British folk songs). In fact, every time that I meet the group's organiser, she asks when I am going to give another talk. I was considering doing something along the lines of music synthesis, but talking about the value of sleep is much better. I can also add my experience of sleep disorders.

Today I came across this sentence, that extols the value of REM sleep: We can awake the next morning with new solutions to previously intractable problems or even be infused with radically new and original ideas. Yes! This almost exactly describes what I wrote a few days ago, about waking up with 'revelations'.

If I do decide to give a talk on this subject, then I'll have to read it closely and make notes, which is not my normal style of reading. On the other hand, I could use the informative Wiki page about the book, that also notes criticisms of the ideas, and especially data, that are presented in the book. Well, I'm not going to be giving a scientific talk but something much more general. 

I'm in the middle of chapter 4, so I haven't come across much contentious material yet, although Walker does hypothesize about how REM sleep started - he suggests that the tree-to-ground reengineering of sleep was a key trigger that rocketed Homo sapiens to the top of evolution’s lofty pyramid. This is only an idea, a hypothesis that can't really be tested. A salient fact about REM sleep that is completely accepted is that muscles loose their tone when people are in REM sleep; other sources say that 'bodies are paralysed'. It is hypothesised that this is so that people are unable to act out what they are dreaming. The point about hominids moving from sleeping in trees to sleeping on the ground is that they were very likely to fall out of the trees where they were sleeping when they entered REM sleep!

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
216	03/12/2009	Swedish Fly Girls	Sandy Denny
781	03/12/2014	My army service - part three	Israel, Personal
1363	03/12/2020	Train journey	Personal, Trains, Covid-19