There are few things I find more disgusting than an employer that expects their employee to sign their entire life over to the enterprise, who respects quantity of hours over quality of work. This is an especially virulent attitude in the legal industry, depending as it does on the billable hour, which is padded and unreasonably inflated to cover the overhead of failing, or deceptive organizations, which most law firms (and corporations generally) are. It is not a good idea to inquire about work-life balance in an interview because the employer will automatically single you out as a lazy worker, a slacker, and eliminate you from the candidate pool.
I often have such thoughts while thinking about this most recent iteration of the "9-5 experience" and the lack of good jobs open to me, yet what would an employer think--if upon asking a candidate about their hobbies and interests, what they liked to do in their free time--the candidate answered "sleep?"
They should love that, because many employers think it is reasonable to expect their worker to stay until 9 PM, go home, have something to eat, and go to bed by midnight, get a full 8 hours of sleep, and get back to the office by 9 the next morning. Many people think it is normal to expect to work more than 40 hours a week. Many people will think you are weak if you only want to work 40 hours a week. And okay, I'll admit, 50 hours a week is not totally unreasonable. 60 hours a week, though, should not be the standard, unless one lives (and sleeps) at the office. They should also love that, because a well-rested worker is the best and most efficient type of worker. A worker that is forever living in a sleep deficit will suffer impairments in memory and retention, reaction time, recovery time, and a variety of other bodily issues and functions. But they probably want someone that sleeps as little as they do, that stays in the office until 4 AM trying to finish some very important filing right at the deadline, never mind about their mental and physical health. And they certainly would never encourage napping at work.
It is just these sorts of misaligned expectations which have made life intolerable for many of us. I cannot tell you how many nights I suffered insomnia that was heightened by the anxiety that comes with needing to be up by 6:00, or 6:30, or 7. My solution was to get zolpidem tartrate (ambien), so I could fall asleep as quickly as possible. After about five or six years of this, I got off it, because eventually, I couldn't sleep without it.
Why We Sleep recognizes the insanity of this situation, and what many other classes of individuals must also face: unrealistic expectations about the number of hours a human being may work healthily. Why We Sleep hones in on this issue near its ending, when discussing required, consecutive shifts by medical residents, generally at 30-hour stretches. Sometimes they are able to sleep, and sometimes they may work 16 hours or more straight. After dissecting an array of research studies, Walker proposes a maximum 12 hour day for medical residents (and one presumes, all workers). While he sometimes comes off as the nutty scientist who just loves sleep and everything about it, no sane person could disagree with his manifold assertions, bolstered as they are by powerful and persuasive evidence.
And yet that is my only problem with this book. For all of its revelatory observations, validations, discoveries and reflections, I would say approximately 50% of it involves analyses of sleep studies, and of course, 95%+ of them validate the authors' hypotheses. As I passed the halfway point, I began to skim through such sections and paragraphs--no matter how Walker attempts to enliven such dry stretches of scientific writing, the prose is clinical; this may be unavoidable when discussing highly specific and discrete experiments. Apart from that, the book is a total pleasure, and even with the caveat of dreaded "science" in a book of prose, it should be essential reading, particularly for those that say things like "I'll sleep when I'm dead," or "sleep is for the weak," or even "I'm fine on 6 hours of sleep."
The fact is, the less you sleep, the sooner you die. You're more likely to develop cancer, cardiovascular disease, or other illnesses and ailments if you lack sufficient sleep. The longer you sleep, the longer you live. That may sound like a dumb oversimplification, but Walker provides mountains of evidence in support of this fact-- almost too much. While as noted, 50% of the prose is deadened, the other 50% is vibrant, humorous and profound.
Now then, I came to this book in the autumn of 2019, after seeing a clip of Thom Yorke on a Late Night talk show. He said that he had been reading Why We Sleep, and after hearing just a couple things he said about the book, I decided I had to read it. So I took it out of the library, read through a bit of it, and decided that it was a book to own rather than borrow. So I got it for Christmas, and more than a year later, here we are. That it took me so long to finish should not be construed as a slight. Many other library books demanded my attention, and I read regrettably little during those empty and open days of home quarantine. There is a great deal to love about this book, and the introduction is one of its best parts. Walker acknowledges that much of the material may be dry, and he encourages the reader not to read it in a linear fashion (which I did). Rather, he suggests skipping around to the chapters you might find most interesting. And he ends with another more humorous encouragement:
"In closing, I offer a disclaimer. Should you feel drowsy and fall asleep while reading the book, unlike most authors, I will not be disheartened. Indeed, based on the topic and content of this book, I am actively going to encourage that kind of behavior from you. Knowing what I know about the relationship between sleep and memory, it is the greatest form of flattery for me to know that you, the reader, cannot resist the urge to strengthen and thus remember what I am telling you by falling asleep. So please, feel free to ebb and flow into and out of consciousness during this entire book. I will take absolutely no offense. On the contrary, I would be delighted." (11-12)
In Chapter 4, one of the more fascinating section of the book, Walker surveys the broader array of living organisms and their general sleep practices:
"Without exception, every animal species studied to date sleeps, or engages in something remarkably like it. This includes insects, such as flies, bees, cockroaches, and scorpions; fish, from small perch to the largest sharks; amphibians, such as frogs; and reptiles, such as turtles, Komodo dragons, and chameleons. All have bona fide sleep. Ascend the evolutionary ladder further and we find that all types of birds and mammals sleep: from shrews to parrots, kangaroos, polar bears, bats, and, of course, we humans. Sleep is universal.
Even invertebrates, such as primordial mollusks and echinoderms, and even very primitive worms, enjoy periods of slumber. In these phases, affectionately termed "lethargus," they, like humans, become unresponsive to external stimuli. And just as we fall asleep faster and sleep more soundly when sleep-deprived, so, too, do worms, defined by their degree of insensitivity to prods from experimenters.
How 'old' does this make sleep? Worms emerged during the Cambrian explosion: at least 500 million years ago. That is, worms (and sleep by association) predate all vertebrate life. This includes dinosaurs, which, by inference, are likely to have slept. Imagine diplodocuses and triceratopses all comfortably settling in for a night of repose!" (56-57)
His passion for the subject matter is palpable, and the message he wants to give to readers everywhere is an urgent one. The negative health effects are easy for people to brush aside, to convince themselves that they are healthy enough if they get six hours of sleep, that they cannot accomplish everything they hope to in a day if they spend 1/3 (or more) of it asleep. Walker anticipates this and warns the reader when he is about to discuss another scary finding about the negative health effects of insufficient sleep. It would be intriguing perhaps to highlight my guess as to the most dire statistic. But there are too many. Likely, the scariest section is on Fatal Familial Insomnia (FFI), which is extremely rare but 100% fatal within 10 months. More often he aims for comic relief:
"Take a group of lean, healthy young males in their mid-twenties and limit them to five hours of sleep for one week, as a research group did at the University of Chicago. Sample the hormone levels circulating in the blood of these tired participants and you will find a marked drop in testosterone relative to to their own baselines levels of testosterone when fully rested. The size of the hormonal blunting is so large that it effectively "ages" a man by ten to fifteen years in terms of testosterone virility. The experimental results support the finding that men suffering from sleep disorders, especially sleep apnea associated with snoring, have significantly lower levels of testosterone than those of similar age and backgrounds but who do not suffer from a sleep condition.
Uttering the results of such studies will often quell any vocal (alpha) males that I occasionally come across when giving public lectures. As you may imagine, their ardent, antisleep stance becomes a little wobbly upon receiving such information With a genuine lack of malice, I proceed to inform them that men who report sleeping too little--or having poor-quality sleep--have a 29 percent lower sperm count than those obtaining a full and restful night of sleep, and the sperm themselves have more deformities. I usually conclude my response with a parenthetical low blow, noting that these under-slept men also have significantly smaller testicles than well-rested counterparts." (178-179)
So, sleep is beneficial for virility, cardiovascular health, cancer prevention, weight loss, mental acuity, and creativity. The last is ensconced in the world of dreams, and Walker sets aside Part 3 to discuss How and Why We Dream. Now, dreams have always been the most fascinating element of sleep for me. It was unfortunate that this section did not give me many new answers on the subject. Waking Life has been a favorite film of mine and I recommend that more highly than this if one seeks to delve deeply into dreams. The material here, however, provides a strong corollary to that film, to dispel some of its more fantastical notions, particularly with lucid dreaming. Very few people can do this and the film seems to suggest that anyone can do it if they properly train themselves. I was hoping that this section would provide some form of "how to" for that, but it merely acknowledges and verifies the phenomenon and considers an alternative interpretation:
"There could be no question. Scientists had gained objective, brain-based proof that lucid dreamers can control when and what they dream while they are dreaming. Other studies using similar eye movement communication designs have further shown that individuals can deliberately bring themselves to timed orgasm during lucid dreaming, an outcome that, especially in males, can be objectively verified using physiological measures by (brave) scientists.
It remains unclear whether lucid dreaming is beneficial or detrimental, since well over 80 percent of the general population are not natural lucid dreamers. If gaining voluntary dream control were so useful, surely Mother Nature would have imbued the masses with such a skill.
However, this argument makes the erroneous assumption that we have stopped evolving. It is possible that lucid dreams represent the next iteration in Homo sapiens' evolution. Will these individuals be preferentially selected for in the future, in part on the basis of this unusual dreaming ability--one that may allow them to turn the creative problem-solving spotlight of dreaming on the waking challenges faced by themselves or the human race, and advantageously harness its power more deliberately?" (233-234)
While I didn't learn everything I hoped to about dreams, the examples of Dmitri Mendeleev and Thomas Edison are quite illuminating. Mendeleev had worked on his Periodic Table for years, and could not crack the proper organizing principle. It finally came to him in a dream, and only in one place did a correction seem necessary.
He briefly mentions Paul McCartney, and how he wrote "Yesterday" in a dream. After acknowledging that he is from Liverpool and is more partial to the Beatles, he counters with Keith Richards coming up with the melody for "Satisfaction" in a dream.
Finally, his description of "short sleep" via another invention by Edison, for his own personal use, could perhaps be replicated today, should you desire to try:
"Edison would allegedly position a chair with armrests at the side of his study desk, on top of which he would place a pad of paper and a pen. Then he would take a metal saucepan and turn it upside down, carefully positioning it on the floor directly below the right-side armrest of the chair. If that were not strange enough, he would pick up two or three steel ball bearings in his right hand. Finally, Edison would settle himself down into the chair, right hand supported by the armrest, grasping the ball bearings. Only then would Edison ease back and allow sleep to consume him whole. At the moment he began to dream, his muscle tone would relax and he would release the ball bearings, which would crash upon the metal saucepan below, waking him up. He would then write down all of the creative ideas that were flooding his dreaming mind. Genius, wouldn't you agree?" (232)
Before we come to the close of this review, it is perhaps worth noting that sleep is an underrated performance enhancing drug for athletes. While here he writes about Usain Bolt and Andre Iguodala (then currently of his home team, the Golden State Warriors), I would like to commission a Ted Talk interview between Walker and Justin Verlander, pitcher for the Houston Astros. This article https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/09/sports/baseball/justin-verlander-all-star-sleep.html is absolutely worth reading for its entertainment value alone, and I recommend the comments as well (particularly the one that says, "this is just a collection of anecdotes"). Verlander routinely sleeps 10 hours a night, and sometimes 11 or 12. Alex Bregman laughed at him until he started following his practice, then developed into an all-star caliber player. The article also includes mention of Tom Brady and Lebron James as heavy sleepers.
If there is anyway to fix our sleep epidemic, we have to set back school times, allow teenagers to sleep later as their circadian rhythms dictate, and remind them that Lebron sleeps 10 hours a night. People want to be like their favorite athlete. What would be better is a round-table discussion with Verlander, Brady and James. Certainly all three are Hall-of-Famers, and two of them flirt with G.O.A.T. rumblings on a daily basis. Verlander has generally been a sturdy player, but last year he suffered a season-long injury on that very late opening day. I am sure that the coronavirus situation altered his training regimen. As noted in the book, sleep is extremely helpful for injury prevention and injury recovery. I would be interested to know why Verlander thinks it happened to him--and more generally, if he read this book, and loved it as much as I would expect.
Sleep is not a silver bullet cure for everything, but if there is any single takeaway from Walker's research, it is this: sleep is a healthful necessity that we should consider as important as diet and exercise (if not more so). If nothing else, this book should help to dispel the unfair and false generalization that sleep is for the lazy.
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