Review: A quick read with some interesting information
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 08 28, 2011
This is a short book with a lot of interesting facts about sleep. This book will not cure insomnia, however it has good advice about sleep hygiene and I found some information interesting.The book contains the following sections:Brilliant featuresIntroductionEyes wide shutThe rhythms of lifeLark or owl?System failure Six, seven or eight?The big one Back to basicsWired!Noisy nights!All stressed out!Sleep hygiene advice starts with helping you to identify the cause of sleep problems such as stress, bad diet, a noisy bedroom environment and so forth.  Then it contains some rules to go by.  The rules are not ground breaking but a good check list for someone who needs to change their current habits.I like the summary of stages of sleep from the section "Eyes wide shut"Stage 1: light sleep.Which lasts only a few minutes, and a person esily woken.Stage 2: proper sleep. This phase lasts about 3040 minutes, it does not take much to wake a person in this sleep stage, but a person is likely to feel groggy when woken.Stages 3 and 4: deep sleep. In stage 3 it takes a lot to wake up a person. Your oxygen levels, heart rate and breathing levels are at their lowest. During these stages the growth hormone is released, which helps cell renewal, building new tissue and repairing damaged cells.Stage 5: REM sleep. This is when you have your most vivid dreams.I did not know that when a person does not get enough sleep, it is the lighter stages of sleep (stage 1 and 2) that tend to be lost. The body tries to catch up on deep sleep first, then REM sleep.During the early part of the night you spend more time in non-REM sleep and less time in REM sleep. As the night progresses, sleep is lighter, you wake up more and spend more time in REM sleep. By early morning almost all your sleep is REM sleep which is why you can often remember your dreams at this time rather than the middle of the night.I also enjoyed the questions following each chapter, here are some examples of questions to which the book has answers:Can you reset your body clock?Are body clocks genetic?Does body clock change with the seasons?Who needs more sleep men or women?Is too much sleep bad for you?Overall, I found this book to be a quick read and I learned some facts I did not know before.