Why We Sleep

I often have trouble writing reviews because my REM sleep way of thinking makes my writing too disorganized and I'm too lazy to go back and edit afterwards as I should. I enjoyed this book and think its message an important corrective to societies attitudes toward sleep, but have a need to criticize it because he does some things which annoy me more than they'd probably ignore you so keep that in mind as I ramble on.

It is perhaps forgivable that the subject matter to which a person chooses to devote his life seems to him to be the most important in the world and in American culture, hours spent asleep not being directly billable means they are treated as lesser. Also, one can't buy things while asleep so those selling stuff wish we'd do less of it. Add to this that sleep seems mysterious, a seeming waste of a third of our lives and the need for it by the more macho among us is regared as a weakness.This book goes all out in the opposite direction, making the hours we spend asleep seem more important than those awake--that is those during which we do those things whose real purpose is to tire us out so that we can return to sleep, perchance to dream. Countless studies are cited proving that sleep cheats diminish both the quantity and quality of their lives, making them less creative, intuitive, funtional and more prone to diseases (cancer, alzheimers, cardiovascular, erectile).
Some of these studies gave me pause. For example, I know nobody will get a grant to repeat the creativity experiments performed on those awakened from REM sleep on those who have just smoked a doob but I imagine the results would be comparable.

Dr. Walker misunderstands psychoanalysis, thinking dream analysis to be a pseudoscience rather than the product of our 19th century understanding of science. It is actually more akin to the art of reviewing a book than anything a 21st century scientist might do. His example of interpreting the dream of his student Kyle (I wonder if he used his real name) rather than disproving Freud, supports Freud's concept of transference (which predicts that a student will tell his teacher that his interpretaion is correct--brilliant, even). I don't want to derail this any further defending Freud (who was wrong about a great many things, usually not exactly the same ones he's criticized for). I will say that some of the experiments Dr. Walker recounts made me question whether he was observing causation or merely correlation (a distinction he himself points out early in the book.) For example, did those dreamers who "worked out past difficulties" do so by dreaming about them or were those who were capable of dreaming (and remembering those dreams) about the subjects of conflict merely those who were capable of getting over them?

Here are some question I wish he'd answered:
1) Where do you draw the line between interrupted sleep (bad) and polyphasic or segmented sleep (presumably good or at least acceptable)?
2) Why is it better to arrange for your melatonin level to be controlled via light and temperature than by taking a pill?
3) Are sleeping pills so bad that they shouldn't even be used for harm reduction? That is, wouldn't abnormal sleep still be better than no sleep?
4) If I fall asleep because of low blood sugar, is that a bad form of sleep? Why or why not?
5) If sleep pressure is a matter of circadian rhythms and melatonin, what is the chemical or physiological basis for REM sleep pressure?

The section on Lucid Dreaming was fascinating, but seemed to belong in a different book. He should write that one (but leave out the speculation about it being a next evolutionary step).