ESCP Europe

"Sleep is one of the most important aspects of our life, health and longevity and yet it is increasingly neglected in twenty-first-century society, with devastating consequences: every major disease in the developed world - Alzheimer's, cancer, obesity, diabetes - has very strong causal links to deficient sleep. Until very recently, science had no answer to the question of why we sleep, or what good it served, or why its absence is so damaging to our health. Compared to the other basic drives in life - eating, drinking, and reproducing - the purpose of sleep remained elusive. Now, in this book, the first of its kind written by a scientific expert, Professor Matthew Walker explores twenty years of cutting-edge research to solve the mystery of why sleep matters. Looking at creatures from across the animal kingdom as well as major human studies, Why We Sleep delves in to everything from what really happens during REM sleep to how caffeine and alcohol affect sleep and why our sleep patterns change across a lifetime, transforming our appreciation of the extraordinary phenomenon that safeguards our existence." - from publisher.

PART 1. THIS THING CALLED SLEEP --- Chapter 1. To sleep --- Chapter 2. Caffeine, jet lag, and melatonin: losing and gaining control of your sleep rhythm --- Chapter 3. Defining and generating sleep: time dilation and what we learned from a baby in 1952 --- Chapter 4. Ape beds, dinosaurs, and napping with half a brain: who sleeps, how do we sleep, and how much? --- Chapter 5. Changes in sleep across the life span --- PART 2. WHY SHOULD YOU SLEEP? --- Chapter 6. Your mother and Shakespeare knew: the benefits of sleep for the brain --- Chapter 7. Too extreme for the Guinness Book of World Records: sleep deprivation and the brain --- Chapter 8. Cancer, heart attacks, and a shorter life: sleep deprivation and the body --- PART 3. HOW AND WHY WE DREAM --- Chapter 9. Routinely psychotic: REM-sleep dreaming --- Chapter 10. Dreaming as overnight therapy --- Chapter 11. Dream creativity and dream control --- PART 4. FROM SLEEPING PILLS TO SOCIETY TRANSFORMED --- Chapter 12. Things that go bump in the night: sleep disorders and death caused by no sleep --- Chapter 13. iPads, factory whistles, and nightcaps: what's stopping you from sleeping? --- Chapter 14. Hurting and helping your sleep: pills vs. therapy --- Chapter 15. Sleep and society: what medicine and education are doing wrong; what Google and NASA are doing right --- Chapter 16. A new vision for sleep in the twenty-first century --- Conclusion: to sleep or not to sleep --- Appendix: Twelve tips for healthy sleep --- Acknowledgments..