Category: Matthew Walker

In the spring, when we lose an hour of sleep due to daylight savings time, heart attacks on the following day substantially increase. In the fall, when we gain an hour of sleep, heart attacks fall. This is just one example of how sleep affects our health.

Early school start times is one good example of how children’s health is harmed in our society. Other examples of harm to the health of children are rampant ADHD and psychiatric drugging, transsexual brainwashing, and excessive out-of-control vaccination.

Given the critical importance of sleep for our overall health as well as for brain health, we need to adopt daily habits that allow us to get enough sleep. And we don’t need to deprive children of sleep by starting school at an inappropriately early time.

Every process in the brain and every system in the body benefits from sleep and is also greatly impaired by too little sleep. Sleep is as essential to the brain and body as eating and breathing since you will eventually get sick and die from a lack of it.

Many use alcohol as a sleep aid since it helps to put you to sleep, but this is sedation, not natural, healthy sleep. It also interferes with sleep quality by fragmenting sleep and suppressing REM sleep. This is a very compelling reason to avoid using it.

If you have a health problem that needs to be corrected, one of the first things you should think about, in addition to diet, is correcting your sleep. We often forget how vitally important sleep is and what a profound influence it can have on our health.

Prescription sleep medications may seem to provide a solution for insomnia, but over the long term these drugs will make sleep problems and health in general worse, not better. The so-called sleep they provide is sedation, not natural and healthful sleep.

If you have an unresolved mental or physical health problem, an important lifestyle factor that you need to examine is the quantity and quality of the sleep that you’re getting. You need about 8 hours of sleep each day in order to maintain optimal health.

Since sleep both before and after learning is essential for learning and memory, it stands to reason that chronic sleep deprivation may play a role in contributing to cognitive decline and dementia. As we age, our sleep quality often tends to deteriorate.

Problem solving ability is vastly enhanced by sleep since the mind is more efficient after a good night’s sleep, but problems may also be mysteriously and miraculously solved while sleeping as well. Unfortunately, many people today don’t get enough sleep.