Why We Sleep Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams

In his book Why We Sleep, the neuroscientist Matthew Walker halfjokes that dreams are a time when everyone on Earth becomes flagrantly psychotic, experiencing hallucinations, delusions, disorientation, emotional lability, and amnesia.

We just recorded a six episode series that will be aired later this year with the one and only Mighty Matt Walker, who wrote the marvelous book, Why We Sleep.

And then you explained how to define those needs.

And you beautifully described in-depth protocols for, let's call it, optimizing one's sleep.

And then you beautifully described the literature and actionable tools for connecting sleep to emotional health and mental health, as well as the relationship between lack of sleep and certain mental health challenges or conditions.

And I know there's a lot of interest in lucid dreaming. That is, one dreaming while being aware that one is dreaming.

And I'm really excited to dive into this topic since it's something that I've been fascinated by, and I know many people are fascinated by.

The best bridge between despair and hope is a good night of sleep.

In that 20 years of research, we have not been able to discover a single psychiatric condition in which sleep is normal.

It was a splendid pleasure to be back on the show. Thank you for having me.

The book "Why We Sleep" was written by Dr. Matthew Walker, a professor of neuroscience and psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. It discusses the relationship between sleep and learning, memory, and creativity.

The average school start time is somewhere around 7:30, 7:45.

That difference is non-trivial and it will change exactly where those individuals will go to university in terms of the tier of the university and likely change the trajectory of their lives.

We've got very consistent data. When you start school times later, academic grades improve, psychological and psychiatric problems decrease, truancy rates decrease.

The great Matt Walker who wrote the great book Why We Sleep.

And by the way, we have a sleep series with The Mighty Matt Walker coming out later this year.

He says, and I hope I'm getting this right, he says you need to warm up to cool down to go to sleep or to fall. Warm up to cool down to fall asleep. Stay cool to stay asleep. Warm up to wake up.

That's a straight bite out of Matt Walker's mouth, so he deserves that citation, not me.

To learn more about Dr. Walker's research and to learn more about his book and his social media handles please see the links in our show note captions

When I was researching data for my books some years ago, I did look into meditation and I wasn't a meditator.

But time and again I read paper after paper and the data was very strong and it was coming from research groups that I respected very much indeed.

He is also the author of the best-selling book, Why We Sleep.

And I think it's fair to say, I know it's fair to say that the cautionary notes that you spoke about in those early TED talks and in your book, Why We Sleep, while they may have stimulated some anxiety for some people, they absolutely had and have a net positive effect in the sense that they cued people to the importance of this thing called sleep because prior to you doing that or those things, it was the case that it was the, I'll sleep when I'm dead mentality.

and episode guest episode with the great Matthew Walker who wrote the book why you why we sleep incredibly important book all of those as well as our toolkit for sleep describe ways to improve your sleep so you can refer to those episodes if you're having challenges with sleep and want to improve on sleep

He will remind us and I'll remind you now that the quarter life of caffeine is 12 hours I mentioned this earlier but I'm going to repeat it again and that means that if you ingest caffeine at noon 25% of its effects more or less okay I'm using broad stroke here to talk about quarter life 25% of that is still going to be bioactive at midnight that night which will disrupt the early phase of your night the amount of slow wave sleep which then in turn will disrupt.

He's been on this podcast many other podcasts talking about the importance of sleep.

Dr. Walker told me and it's certainly supported by lots and lots of quality peer reviewed studies in animals and in humans that when alcohol is present in the brain and blood stream that the architecture sleep is disrupted slow wave sleep deep sleep and rapid I move in sleep all of which are essential for getting a restorative night sleep or all disrupted so for those of you that are drinking a glass or two wine or having a hard liquor drink or a beer in order to fall asleep the sleep you're getting is simply not.

Thanks to the great work of Professor Matt Walker at University of California Berkeley and the wonderful book that he wrote, Why We Sleep.

whose name I'm sure most of you are familiar with, wrote this wonderful book, Why We Sleep.

and he was also surprised to see these new data and I was surprised to see these new data that emphasized that if you get a poor night's sleep or if you're up late the previous night for good reasons, many people feel like they just want to go to bed early the next night but it turns out that's not the best thing to do for your immediate and long-term health.

Matt Walker's book Why We Sleep. Matt of course is a professor at UC Berkeley and why we sleep is a terrific book about why we sleep the science of sleeping and things you can do to improve your sleep.

also check out Matt Walker's triffit book while we sleep.

These studies just to remind you are structured the following way. An individual is brought into a laboratory does a spatial memory task.

They did this in different stages of sleep, non-rem sleep and rapid eye movement sleep, REM sleep.

What this means that you can cue the subconscious brain, the asleep brain to learn particular things better and faster.

It's remarkable because it really shows that sleep is an extension of the waking state.

he deserves such a token of praise for that because prior to that there was this oh I'll sleep when I'm dead mentality

I think people knew sleep was important but they didn't really understand and he had to come out as kind of the kind of a downer message like listen you know this is serious stuff you better sleep

Matt Walker, UC Berkeley, with the book, why we sleep transformed what we now understand.

Matthew Walker in his great book on sleep, one of my favorite things about it is he really emphasizes this point, that quality sleep isn't just about eight hours. It isn't just duration. It's getting quality sleep. And the timing of your sleep is every bit as important as the duration.

I do think that books like Matt Walker's, you know, Why We Sleep, et cetera, came out, although that book focused more on the bad things that happen if you don't sleep enough.

Matt Walker also talks about some of these studies done by others in his book, Why We Sleep.

If we didn't need eight hours of sleep and we could survive on six, Mother Nature would have done away with 25% of our sleep time millions of years ago.

Because when you think about it, sleep is an idiotic thing to do.

Matthew Walker is a professor of neuroscience and psychology at the University of California at Berkeley. He studies sleep, and he's the author of the book, Why We Sleep.

And I do hope you sleep well tonight.

I hope you have sweet dreams tonight.

If sleep does not provide a remarkable set of benefits, then it's the biggest mistake the evolutionary process has ever made.

Matthew Walker is a professor of neuroscience and psychology at the University of California at Berkeley. He studies sleep and he's the author of the book, Why We Sleep.

Matthew Walker is a professor of neuroscience and psychology at the University of California at Berkeley. He studies sleep and he's the author of the book, Why We Sleep.

You know, sleep is the Swiss Army knife of health.

You know, when sleep is deficient, there is sickness and disease. And when sleep is abundant, there is vitality and health.

Matthew Walker calls himself a sleep diplomat. He spent more than 20 years studying the topic, and he's written a book titled, Why We Sleep.

If you remember nothing, if you remember nothing else that you get from your talks, from your books, from your interviews, it's that you need regularity.

Sleep is your life support system. I think it's mother nature's best effort yet at immortality.

I want to remind everybody that if they want to listen, they can hear you on the Matt Walker podcast which is about sleep among other things and you can buy his international bestseller Why We Sleep or you can enroll at UCAL Berkeley and take one of his classes in neuroscience and psychology.

Essentially sleep is the very best health insurance policy that you could ever wish for and it's there for you to take and repeat prescription every single night.

The best bridge between despair and hope is a good night of sleep.

Matthew Walker's book Why We Sleep came out a few years ago. And I think society had a big awakening. Excuse the pun. At that point around sleep.

According to the sleep expert Matthew Walker, who's a professor of neuroscience and psychology at UC Berkeley and the author of the New York Times bestseller Why We Sleep, one out of three of us is chronically underslept.

did you see was it Matthew Walker's book the percentage of doctors or surgeons who work particularly extended shifts and then get in their car to drive home and drive back at the same hospital having just been in an accident it's like a non insignificant number of doctors and surgeons it was Matthew Walker also talked about how they were able to predict when lost percentages in basketball games based on looking at the sleep schedule not knowing the teams just looking at when they were doing back to back east coast west coast travel and just looking at who was going to lose the most sleep they had like a 78% win loss accurate guess and I think that at least as I understand it from the study is that that prompted maybe it was LeBron at the time to go into the players union and say look we need to fix this it was like four games in five days and they were east coast west coast and stuff like that was increasing injury risk

There's a great book called why, uh, why we sleep, which is amazing.

Matthew Walker is a guy that wrote Why We Sleep... I've heard a lot of criticisms of Matthew Walker's book and I don't know why.

Caffeine has a quarter life of somewhere between 10 to 12 hours. So if you have a cup of coffee at noon at midday, a quarter of that caffeine is still in your brain at midnight.

Caffeine will actually race into your brain and it will latch on to the adenosine receptors, the welcome sites in your brain. And it has very sharp elbows and it will force away the adenosine from those receptors and it will hijack those receptors.

it will strip away your deep sleep by about somewhere between 15 to 30%

deep sleep is critical for regulating your cardiovascular system. It's the time when we do replenish the immune system. It also regulates your metabolic system.

I am not here to tell anyone how to live their life. I have no right to tell anyone how to live the life. I'm just a scientist.

Dr Matthew Walker ... is a bestselling author of 'Why We Sleep: The New Science of Sleep and Dreams'.

I remember when you first went on Joe Rogan's show, the amount of my friends that sent me that episode and then sent me your book was just staggering.

Matthew Walker's book, Why We Sleep, has played a huge part in that.

There's a great book called their circadian code by dr. Sachin Panda Great be a great guest for you But nonetheless, I mean he talks about how it's really important for us a Matthew Walker to for his book Why we sleep?

Oh, yeah I actually read about half of that book. Oh Joe Rogan, I think yeah Yeah

This book that I love called Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker. He's a neuroscientist. In it, he talks about sleep and dreams. It's very scientific, but then it's also very beautiful in the way that he speaks about dreaming and the idea of when we sleep, what's happening in our brains.

But also it gets to some of the workaholism culture also that pervaded, and also, you know, a grind set. Now, I don't think grind set is always bad, but I think it was profoundly bad whenever it was impacting people's sleep.

I'm getting a lot of this from Matthew Walker, by the way, if anybody's interested. He's got a great book, and also he's been on several podcasts.

There's some supporting statement from a neuroscientist Matthew Walker. He wrote this quite beautiful book why we sleep maybe some five years ago and he only relegates about three pages to lucid dreaming, but the fact that he says anything is amazing.

He wrote a bestselling book called Why We Sleep?

I was writing this book on sleep I was no I was sleep why we sleep yes and you don't have to read the book you just have to buy it that's all that's all I ask you to do

And author of the bestseller, Why We Sleep? Unlocking the Powers of Sleep Plus Dream.

there's a really amazing book I highly recommend you go get it it's called Why We Sleep by Dr. Matthew Walker and it goes in it's 25 years of a high level high um highly respected university professor again Dr. Matthew Walker talking about the negative impact of not getting sleep and and he even says we still don't know like what what is the difference like all like the best the best ideas you get right now are just the very standard kind of sleep routines right

there's a two billion dollar sleep aid quote unquote sleep aid industry it's prescription drugs and and they are not good for you they uh you wake up after taking those and you feel like you don't need sleep which would obviously be incredibly refreshing if you spent days and days of feeling like you always need sleep and to wake up and feel like you don't need sleep is refreshing the problem is those drugs um those those sleep aids quote sleep aids negatively impact your rim and your in-rim sleep and so you're not getting the healing and restorative sleep

I read the book before we actually did the show so I was I was like so glad that we got them on.

The shorter your sleep, the shorter your life.

Firstly, we know that a lack of sleep and fatigue causes more accidents on our roads than drugs and alcohol combined.

...if you haven't slept for 16 hours or whatever, which is like a normal day, and then you try to drive...

After 20 hours of no sleep...you are as cognitively impaired as you would be if you were legally drunk.

...the link between a lack of sleep and cancer is now so strong that recently the World Health Organization decided to classify any form of nighttime shift work as a probable carcinogen...working overnight will give you cancer.

I read the book before we actually did the show so I was I was like so glad that we got them on.

The shorter your sleep, the shorter your life.

I think the book was biased towards maybe...it wasn't skirmongering because I don't overemphasize, I don't exaggerate the science.

it was so frightening that it's actually now keeping me up at night doing the opposite.

Firstly, we know that a lack of sleep and fatigue causes more accidents on our roads than drugs and alcohol combined.

road traffic accidents are a lot more deathly when they're caused by insufficient sleep than either drugs or alcohol.

I read the book before we actually did the show so I was I was like so glad that we got them on.

The shorter your sleep, the shorter your life.

We know that short sleep predicts all cause mortality. It's a simple fact the shorter your sleep the shorter your life.

if you're trying to survive or regularly getting five hours of sleep or less, you have a 65% risk of dying at any moment in time increased risk relative to people who are getting seven hours or more.

Every major physiological system in your body and every operation of the mind is incredibly dependent on sleep, wonderfully enhanced when you get it and markedly impaired when you don't get it.

...recently the World Health Organization decided to classify any form of nighttime shift work as a probable carcinogen...working overnight will give you cancer, period.

I actually read that book Why We Sleep...and I...and that's like there's the percentage of people who can actually do that is staggeringly low

I saw that I actually read that book, Why We Sleep, the author right, and I and I and that's like there's the percentage of people who can actually do that is staggeringly low.