xWhy We Sleep summary

Diet, exercise and sleep: the author used to tell people that these three things were the pillars of good health. Now he goes one step further and says that sleep is the foundation on which all the other pillars stand.

This is especially the case for cardiovascular health.

Did you know that sharks never close their eyes? These killers of the deep literally get no shut-eye whatsoever. But that doesn’t mean that, as was long believed, they don’t sleep; they simply have no eyelids.

In fact, we have yet to discover an animal that doesn’t need sleep. And, although the need for sleep is universal, the amount needed varies wildly.

People do crazy things for fame, and a long list of these wild feats can be found in The Guinness Book of World Records. However, some categories that the book used to monitor either proved so dangerous or so reprehensible that they’re no longer recorded. One of those categories? Sleep deprivation.

Depriving yourself of sleep is certainly bad for you personally – but it can also make you a threat to society, especially if you regularly operate a motor vehicle.

One night in 1987, a Canadian man named Kenneth Parks walked to his car, shoeless, and drove 14 miles to the house of his wife’s parents. He then entered the house, took a knife from the kitchen and stabbed his mother-in-law to death. While driving back home, Parks had what must have been a terrible experience: he woke up.

Yes, Parks committed murder while completely asleep, and it’s cases such as his that prompt the author to assert that few other medical fields come with as surprising a range of disorders as sleep studies. It’s a bold claim – but it seems less outrageous when you consider homicidal sleepwalkers such as Parks.

Most of us don’t get eight hours’ sleep. Or, if we do, the sleep isn’t exactly high-quality. We toss and turn; we wake up in the middle of the night. Our minds are constantly on, thinking about unanswered emails, approaching deadlines and the constant chatter of social media.

Well, the author has some tips that’ll help us all get a nightly eight hours of deep, rejuvenating sleep.