5,0 av 5 stjärnor
A must read because...
Recenserad i Indien 🇮🇳 den 6 januari 2022
There is a new pandemic in town, and this time it's not COVID. Seriously. I can't stop talking about stuff I've been reading in this book with people around me. Sleep is as universal as concepts get - and yet, it's crazy how little we know about something we spend 1/3 of our lives doing.
Here's a little something about me. I've had a peculiar sleep schedule for the past couple years, staying awake almost all the way through the night. And sleeping an average of 6 hours. Now, if you'd ask someone, they would point to the former as the unnatural pattern. Early to bed and early to rise is the mantra, is it not? And 6 hours doesn't seem TOO bad for a night of sleep, right?
Turns out, both of the things couldn't be more wrong. By sleeping any less than 8 hours a day, I was potentially shaving 10 years off my life, of what would have would have been a relatively unhealthier one anyway. That's how much impact sleep has. While I would still highly recommend reading the book, since cliff notes don't do the message justice - I saw how sleep deficiency was linked to Cancer, Alzheimer's, Diabetes, Cardiovascular diseases, high blood pressure, mood swings, depression, anxiety, retention, and just a general sense of well being, to name a few things. Nothing, and I mean NOTHING is going to convince me to sacrifice sleep anymore.
Secondly, I learned how sleeping later in the night isn't exactly something which is as terrible as so many people had been trying to convince me of. We keep seeing examples thrown around of CEOs waking up at 5AM in the morning, since the first ones to get up are the first ones to get started on doing great things in the world. But that, too, only has partial truth to it. Some of us are natural early birds and some night owls. And forcing one to comply with another can have a huge impact on how they perform at their workplace, school, or just in general. And I'm just gonna let you guess which of the two suffer here from the general rules widely accepted by society.
Another interesting revelation to me, which had been out there in plain sight anyway, was how circadian rhythms are affected depending on age. Someone still in their formative years will have theirs shifted a little ahead, hence folks in their teens and early 20s go to sleep late and tend to wake up late. Unless, of course, they're forced out of bed, and asked to go about their schooling or job at a time the world functions in. And on the other hand, older people have their rhythms shift back, making them wake up as early as 4 AM, leading to drowsiness by late evening. If there's anything all the above shows us, it's that society should be much more forthcoming to people with their own individual sleep schedules, and encourage them to get all the sleep they need.
And that brings me to what usually is encouraged. It's no news how getting less sleep is almost a fact people flaunt to show how hard they've been working, and I certainly have been guilty of it more times than one. What I am thankful to learn, now, is that the work you do when sleep deprived is not only less productive, but most likely counterintuitive. And it's only made worse by the cycle of consuming caffeine everyday, which leads to worse sleep, which leads to more caffeine, and the cycle continues.
Please ask your doctor how long they've slept if they are to perform a surgery, as they're almost twice as likely to make a fatal mistake if they're not well-rested. Please ask your driver how much sleep they got. Because sleep deprivation has a HIGHER chance of causing a car accident, than even alcohol consumption, depending on the extent of both, of course. Why; you ask? Because alcohol makes you spaced out, or drowsy, or lose control. But lack of sleep will literally turn you off for a couple of seconds every now and then, into little microsleeps where you will lose complete control of what's happening. And those seconds are more than enough to put you into a death-assuring situation.
Reading SO much about how lack of sleep can be life-ruining can certainly be very taxing to go through, for over 300 pages too, but this book also taught me a lot more about the brain through these tidbits. About research that revealed much more than simply sleep. About people. And knowing all this equips you, the reader, to protect yourself and the people around you from the sleep deprivation epidemic. This is a must-read book, even if you get 8 hours of sleep, and especially if you don't.
16 människor tyckte detta var till hjälp
