Matthew Walker Quotes
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Sleep is the Swiss army knife of health. When sleep is deficient, there is sickness and disease. And when sleep is abundant, there is vitality and health.
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No aspect of our biology is left unscathed by sleep deprivation. It sinks down into every possible nook and cranny. And yet no one is doing anything about it.
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Stay away from screens, especially those LED screens. Those blue-light emitting devices fool your brain into thinking that it's still daytime, even though it's night-time and you want to get to sleep.
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Do you tend to sleep in during the weekends? That usually signals that you're trying to sleep off a debt you've accumulated during the week.
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I think we perhaps are, with sleep, where we were with smoking about 50 years ago, in that we had all of the science, and it was right there for the public discussion, but it's not yet adequately sort of percolated out into policy or even just public wisdom.
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That short-sleeping that we're now suffering is a consequence of our lifestyle. It's not a consequence of evolutionary habituation.
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I just tell people I'm a dolphin trainer. It's better for everyone.
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The amount of sleep - the total amount of sleep that you get - starts to decrease the older that we get. I think one of the myths out there is that we simply need less sleep as we age, and that's not true, in fact.
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If you were not to set an alarm clock, would you sleep past it? If the answer is yes, then there is clearly more sleep that is needed.
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You should not actually stay in bed for very long awake, because your brain is this remarkably associative device, and it quickly learns that the bed is about being awake. So you should go to another room - a room that's dim. Just read a book - no screens, no phones - and, only when you're sleepy, return to the bed.
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Below seven hours of sleep, there are objective impairments in the body. Eight hours are recommended.
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Dream sleep provides a fascinating neurochemical soothing balm. It is during dream sleep and only during dream sleep when our brain shuts off a stress-related neurochemical called noradrenalin.
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It's simply that older adults don't seem to be able to generate sleep efficiently, and that's why they're not getting it.
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It's not clear whether the brain actually is designed to have nightmares or whether this is actually the process going awry.
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What is dreaming, and what happens, and are there any real benefits to dreaming? Well, to take a step back, I think it's important to note that dreaming essentially is a time when we all become flagrantly psychotic.
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If we didn't need eight hours of sleep and could survive on six, Mother Nature would have done away with 25 percent of our sleep time millions of years ago. Because when you think about it, sleep is an idiotic thing to do.
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People dramatically underestimate how much sleep is linked to all the diseases killing us. We know a lack of sleep is linked to numerous forms of cancer - bowel, prostate, breast cancer.
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Sleep is Mother Nature's best effort yet to counter death.
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By keeping patients awake for longer, we build up a strong sleep pressure.
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I think the first general point to make from epidemiological studies across millions of people is the following - that short sleep predicts a shorter life. It predicts all cause mortality.
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I have long been puzzled by the entrenched mentality, and often enforced practice, of longer work hours and less sleep. Innumerable policies exist within the workplace regarding smoking, substance abuse, ethical behaviour, and injury and disease prevention.
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When I give lectures, people will wait behind until there is no one around and then tell me quietly, 'I seem to be one of those people who need eight or nine hours' sleep.' It's embarrassing to say it in public.
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Deep non-REM sleep almost hits the save button on those recently acquired informational pieces so that when you wake up the next morning, you have remembering rather than forgetting.
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Human beings are the only species that deliberately deprive themselves of sleep for no apparent gain. Many people walk through their lives in an underslept state, not realizing it.