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Eight Books for Getting a Better Night’s Rest
Sleep matters. Modest sleep loss impairs cognition, mood and immune system. Total deprivation is lethal.
Despite that, we devalue sleep culturally. We valorize those who push through sleep deprivation — even though many cognitive tests show that twenty-four hours without rest impairs us as much as being legally drunk.
Sleep is much more than simple unconsciousness. Our brain is highly active when we sleep. Spindle events transfer memories from the hippocampus to the cortex. Glial cells shrink allowing cerebrospinal fluid to rinse the brain and remove waste products. Dreams occur throughout sleep with the most vivid and bizarre occurring during REM sleep toward the end of the night, although we remember few of them because circuits for memory are actively suppressed.
Our need to sleep is driven by two processes. The first, Process S, accumulates sleep pressure throughout the day. It is probably regulated through adenosine. The other, Process C, cycles between day and night. Process C is signaled with melatonin and requires daily doses of bright light during the day and darkness at night to calibrate.
Ideally, these two processes synchronize to make you sleepy at night and awake during the day. But caffeine (which temporarily blocks adenosine receptors) and indoor lighting can mess with these…
