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heather667's review against another edition
4.0
Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Death, Torture, and Medical content
Moderate: Alcoholism, Chronic illness, Mental illness, Self harm, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Terminal illness, Violence, Dementia, Grief, Car accident, Suicide attempt, and Pregnancy
Minor: Ableism, Cancer, Gun violence, Sexual assault, Police brutality, and Schizophrenia/Psychosis
chsm8's review against another edition
4.75
Moderate: Chronic illness, Death, and Medical content
Minor: Addiction, Cancer, Drug use, Eating disorder, Infertility, Mental illness, Panic attacks/disorders, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Torture, Dementia, Car accident, Murder, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , and Alcohol
sosua_z's review against another edition
4.0
Graphic: Car accident
Moderate: Medical content
Minor: Cancer, Chronic illness, Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Dementia, and Alcohol
erebus53's review against another edition
2.25
First of all.. as a nerdy, Autistic parent, of Neurodivergent kids, who comes from a family of teachers and who home educated my children for several years, I already know a bit about brain chemistry, education, and have well established biases against many values of modern society that a majority of people don't challenge. As such, about 60% of this book was telling me "facts" I already knew.
And peppered through these facts were a bunch of the author's best guesses, dressed up as facts.
My biggest issues were:
- although the author frequently reminded readers that "correlation is not causation" he steadfastly dodged the point that contribution is not the same as attribution. Many of the claims that he made about the positive effects of sleep, while literally true, were bolstered by other factors that were never mentioned (for example, the author says that S.A.T. scores went up at a school that changed its start time to 45 minutes later, and this was attributed to "sleeping in".. whereas there are a lot of positive outcomes that one gets from having more time and less urgency in their morning routine)
- every single time the author suggested a humanitarian change in the practices of society, education, business, or health, he had to bring it back to money. Fine.. I don't live in the "real world" but clearly the target audience for this book is CEOs and politicians, rather than civilians. I want people to have improved health and quality of life, rather than focusing on lowering their insurance premiums. You want people to have better attentiveness and health so they can be more productive and bolster the economy. *rolleyes* Oh and it's important to point out that we shouldn't torture people because it's ineffective... or we could just stop.. for yknow.. moral reasons? Dude comes across as a bit of an edge-lord. OK I'll acknowledge that he said that eugenics is bad. He's not a complete monster.
- Matthew Walker, your opinions about Autism and ADHD are not based in scientific research, and are just your personal guesses. Please stop now. While I agree that many children are wrongly diagnosed, with ADHD, and I have indeed ranted about it, and I know people who have been misdiagnosed with it and mis-medicated to boot (but that was 15 years before you wrote your book.. and the psych profession is improving.. hmm maybe only in my country). There are too many people who disbelieve the existence of this very real neurodivergence, and throwing around your guessed numbers of those wrongly diagnosed as percentages is harmful and just not ethical. DUDe!
- As he expresses his bias at the start he's hyperfocused on the role of sleep... which leads his tone to being overstated rather than nuanced, and if feels like sales pitch. He is very self-congratulatory, name dropping like it's his his CV ("when I worked with NASA...").
- Part of me feels like the sweeping statements that this is peppered with are a deliberate hyperbole.. like a bit of a Troll. It seems it is better that a work have bold claims and be debatable, or slightly controversial, because then more people talk about it and so sells more copies.. it's such a rich white Capitalist dude strategy.. present the FACTS.. in as affronting way as possible, tell a joke to minimise those feeling affronted, make it relatable to a TV series or popular story (classical Greek if you are trying to hit people who want to feel .. Educated), make it relatable to the powerful, while you're at it, might as well pitch your latest sleep-themed Startup idea and ask for sponsors... honestly? eh, I suppose it's his book....
TL:DR (in my words)
sleep dep makes you dumb.. it's like you're drunk and emotional, hungry and exhausted. It can delete things you are trying to remember, and stop you paying attention to stuff you ought to. It stops you processing big feelings and contributes to nope-ing out. You're likely to misread facial expressions and social cues (similar to the effects of alcoholism and drug abuse). Chronic sleep deprivation feels normal to people who suffer from it and they may not even notice the effects poor sleep has on them.
- if someone tells you you snore, consider seeing your GP for a referral to a sleep expert for testing / treatment for sleep-apnea.
Just because old people have trouble sleeping, doesn't mean they don't need as much sleep. Sleep deprivation in aging people contributes to fatigue, mental degradation and the inability to consolidate new memories... medical science needs to do more here.
Inadequate sleep ages you prematurely (much like smoking and too much UV), and can contribute to Obesity, Heart Disease, autoimmune disease, and is a leading cause of Type 2 Diabetes... probably contributes to other stuff like cancer.. and it really should be covered better in the health lessons we get at school. Good sleep helps you heal.
Severe sleep deprivation will give you sleep dep psychosis, hallucinations, paranoia, and symptoms of schizophrenia. (I know too many people who know this from personal experience o.o )
Don't drive tired; it's like driving drunk. It kills people.
Ask your surgeon how much sleep they had before you go under the knife. Doctors sometimes have stupid hours.
Stay safe and Google "sleep hygiene".
Graphic: Addiction, Alcoholism, Chronic illness, Death, Mental illness, Torture, Dementia, Alcohol, and War
Moderate: Medical trauma and Car accident
danielles_reads's review against another edition
2.5
I also didn’t like how dogmatic the author is (probably because he thinks deficient sleep is the cause of all problems and sufficient sleep solves everything). He said multiple times that you should go to bed and wake up at the same times every day no matter what. I’m sorry but some experiences in life are more important than getting the perfect 8 hours of sleep! He also basically said don’t drink any alcohol or caffeine because it ruins your sleep. The philosophy of “everything in moderation” helps people adhere to healthy habits, but the author seems to think it’s all or nothing. He did include some useful information on CBT-I treatment for insomniacs, but I can’t help but think that this book will make people who don’t get enough sleep for reasons they can’t control (work, children, illness, etc.) feel like shit. He didn’t include any reassurances, just constant doom and gloom statistics on less sleep causing every issue under the sun. For God’s sake, taking even one half of a sleeping pill once a year results in a 3x increased chance of death, like what the hell?? Just stop. It was especially ironic considering at the end of the book he mentioned how doom-and-gloom popular media is. What is your book then dude?!
I really appreciated the sections on how sleep works and how it affects our brains (as well as every animal on earth), and I really learned a lot in those sections. It’s so cool how sleep helps us remember things and create new links between things we experience! The stuff about sleep pressure and how our circadian rhythms change as we age is so interesting! I didn’t know the science of dreaming was so advanced!! The reason for humans being sensitive to blue light being because of our evolutionary past as marine life is wild too. I also really liked how the author explained scientific information, with metaphors and simple language. It was especially helpful for someone like me, who has a very shallow understanding of biology. I especially liked the one about brain waves being compared to a stadium of people yelling into a microphone lol.
But a lot of this book was repetitive fear-mongering that focused way too much on individuals’ failings even though it pretended not to. Honestly it’s best to just read part 1 (“This Thing Called Sleep”) and part 3 (“How and Why We Dream”) and call it a day.
Also, I found this page showing how inaccurate a lot of this book is, so take everything said in this book with a grain of salt (FUCK 🥲): https://guzey.com/books/why-we-sleep/
Graphic: Death
Moderate: Ableism, Fatphobia, and Medical trauma
Minor: Addiction, Suicide, and Torture
scripturient's review against another edition
4.0
Graphic: Death and Medical content
Moderate: Animal cruelty, Chronic illness, Mental illness, Terminal illness, Torture, Dementia, and Car accident
sderrig's review against another edition
4.5
Minor: Cancer, Chronic illness, Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Terminal illness, Medical content, and Alcohol
amavi's review against another edition
3.5
Graphic: Death
Moderate: Addiction, Alcoholism, Animal death, Cancer, Chronic illness, Death, Infertility, Mental illness, Suicidal thoughts, Torture, Medical content, and Dementia
bethanlcollins's review against another edition
5.0
Minor: Death and Dementia
marionlundqvist's review against another edition
5.0
Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, and Medical content
Minor: Addiction, Alcoholism, Cancer, Death, Drug use, Infertility, Miscarriage, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Car accident, and Suicide attempt