Sleep science

Without necessarily knowing the science behind it, we all know how unpleasant it is to have a bad night’s sleep. You might also know that poor sleep is unhealthy, but by reading Matthew Walker’s book you’ll discover new things about how sleep patterns will affect things as deep as your gene expression and telomeres, involved in aging and many diseases. Moreover, you will learn fascinating things about dreams and how they heal us while we’re sleeping, especially during the REM sleep phase. Therefore, there is a theory of ‘nocturnal therapy’ stating that the REM sleep is in charge of 2 major things:

• sleeping to “remember” things that we’ve learned during the day from our essential experiences
• sleeping to “forget” things that are emotionally painful, related to our past experiences and memories 

What’s more, dreams can also be an incubator for creativity.

You’ll also learn from the book that even small amounts of sleep deprivation are very detrimental to our health and well-being and that it can be risky to think we can afford to sleep less in the long term because we will ‘catch up’ on our sleep.

To improve the chances of a good night’s sleep, there are a few things you can do: 

• having no light in the bedroom (to promote your melatonin production)
• stay cool- ideally, with the bedroom temperature around 19°C
• avoid working late and blue light screens several hours before going to bed
• avoid alcohol (it is a stimulant)

Enjoy the book and sleep well!