Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams. by Matthew Walker

 Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams.

Written by Professor Matthew Walker.

I challenge anyone to convince me of a more fascinating element of the human condition than dreaming. While in a state of apparent coma, each one of us will spend one third of our lives, transported to a realm rich in hallucinations and delusions. Forget longing to explore the ends of space for a moment, and understand we are routinely strapped to a rocket and launched headfirst into another bizarre reality, that feels just as real. Night after night. For better or for worse. Often, stricken with nostalgia, we won’t have a notion that it just happened. And, what little we do remember, we struggle to accurately articulate.

  
For most of my life I’ve endured some form of sleep disturbance (love that for me) and became somewhat obsessed with the subject of dreams. Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams by Professor Matthew Walker is the most easily read, informative and impactful book I’ve come across yet. However, this book falls short of its title. It does not directly answer why we sleep but rather details the effects of the disruption and lack of sleep causes on both our physical and psychological wellbeing.

If you’ve read anything by Romanian-French philosopher Emil Cioran (a true pessimist, and a father of Existentialism), you’ll have an idea of his torturous relationship with insomnia, something I heavily relate to. He makes many observations on his condition, most complimentary of which is a degree of higher lucidity in sufferers. More importantly, Cioran suggests “the importance of insomnia is so colossal that I am tempted to define man as the animal who cannot sleep. Why call him a rational animal when other animals are equally reasonable? But there is not another animal in the entire creation that wants to sleep yet cannot”. Walker explains how sleep, particularly our intense degree of REM sleep and the purpose of dreams, has been the defining factor that separated homo sapiens from the rest of the primates. Which became a core component in our degree of sociocultural complexity, and our cognitive intelligence. Allowing us to negative our way through the complex tapestry of socioemotional signals that any civilised society delicately hangs itself on. A vital tool in understanding and regulating our emotions, in the absence of which, we shift to a more primitive pattern of brain activity without deliberate control. Things The Chimp Paradox by Professor Steve Peters stresses, as well as the fundamental part of Professor Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence: Why it can matter more than IQ (great book). 

Analysis of dreams is no longer guess work, nor has it been left up to Freud (Thank God!). Neuroscientists can, with an impressive degree of accuracy, narrate to you what you’ve dreamt about without you saying a thing. That is both incredible and unsettling. Tell me where mind reading stops and starts there? It’s been proven these fragrantly psychotic episodes are no biproduct of sleep, but are crucial to understanding everything we seek to learn. Yet, being somewhat reasonable, we bargain with ourselves that any sleep sacrificed in the name of deadlines, we’ll catch up on. This is a myth. You cannot put the restorative effects of sleep on hold. Likewise, time spent in REM sleep is of paramount importance and non-negotiable for processing everything we experience. Explaining why sleep disturbance after traumatic events is so damaging especially for sufferers of PTSD, where the dreams themselves only perpetuate the problem. Even more ridiculous, when pushed, the mind will allow hallucinations and delusions reserved for the dreaming state of REM sleep to overflow into the waking persons reality. Exploiting fears of a psychotic break. Scary. Now add a cultural history of gaslighting, systematic mistrust, and toxic relationships to an already sleep deprived society. 

Creating fire for a light source marked an important first step of humanities independence from being enslaved by the planets 24hour light dark cycle. Yet, the modern-day LED light bulb has developed into a leading cause of sleep deprivation. Besides that, our ability to generate sufficient REM sleep has been chipped away on many parts. Not least by demanding start times fighting against our innate circadian rhythms and the abolishment of siestas by industrialised society. The elderly, for the most part, have the poorest sleep length to sleep quality ratio. Considering the impacts of sleep on processing memories, learning and emotional regulation, I’m tempted to wonder if this may help explain why older generations can be so stuck in their ways. You can’t (or will struggle to) teach an old dog new tricks and that.  

On top, the masses have also managed to confuse sedation with sleep, something the night cap is guilty of. And as a result, we’ve found ourselves in a chronically sleep deprived state, with some of the “elite” parading 4 hours of sleep as some weird status symbol. In the words of Dr. Thomas Roth, of the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, “The number of people who can survive on five hours of sleep or less without impairment, and rounded to a whole number, is zero.” It would suggest to me these people are more likely displaying a complex ego trip rather than boasting a legitimate rare genetic advantage. But then again, I’m sure there are drugs to bridge the gap.   

Walker details sleep disorders and many medical and psychiatric conditions linked to poor sleep. To name a few: obesity, cancer, and infertility, to depression, schizophrenia, and dementia. Conditions Big Pharma is only too happy to profit from. Amongst genetic sleep disorders, the most unsettling was Fatal Familial Insomnia (FFI), look it up if you want to get freaked out.  

Regardless, anyone could tell you sleep is important. But Walker stresses the physical and mental impairments caused by one night of bad sleep dwarf those caused by an equivalent absence of food and exercise. It appears to me that Emil Cioran is right in suggesting life is bearable only thanks to sleep. Although, at stages I was sceptical of exaggeration on Walkers part (bear in mind I know little of the subject), the desired effect of prompting you to analyse your own sleeping habits and thus, improving your sleep quality is still the same. Walker suggests some simple (not necessarily easy) ways to improve your overall sleep quality and life. Bar the 7 to 8-hour non-negotiable, his advice generally follows this; ditch the night cap, don’t confuse decaffeinated with not caffeinated, have a routine and stick to it on weekends, cool down, try CBT before pills, don’t lay awake in bed and instead do something until sleepy, mentally deescalate, and (provided you don’t have regular difficulty getting to sleep) bring back siestas.
 
You could audio book Why We Sleep, but a kindle or hardback version will allow you to study it easier.

Kat :)