To say that sleep is the single most important thing we do with our time is perhaps an overstatement - but nothing contributes more to our physical, mental, and emotional well-being than a good night's rest.
It’s estimated we spend a third of our lives sleeping and for most of us, that’s around eight hours a day being horizontal. It’s not surprising that sleep has become a big money maker, from high-tech mattresses and pillows to wearables, and edibles.
Despite all the recent studies on the restorative impact of sleep, ranging from its alignment with our circadian rhythms to the significance of REM sleep, it's remarkable to consider that just a century ago, the scientific community showed little interest in this vital function. Researchers and scientists interested in the reasons behind and consequences of sleep struggled to gain recognition and credibility.
Award-winning science writer Kenneth Miller traces some of our earliest sleep habits and spotlights some of the extraordinary work done by Nathanial Kleitman, Eugene Azerinsky, and other scientists whose research revolutionized the way we think about sleep. Contrary to our notion that sleep problems only started with our modern 24/7 lifestyle, Miller says that “people didn't always sleep well in the past. Bedrooms tended to be fiendishly uncomfortable. You would sleep on a straw-filled bag with the sharp pieces of straw poking at you. Bedrooms were infested with vermin of various kinds[and] you'd have bedbugs, you'd have fleas!”
Miller’s book, Mapping the Darkness; The Visionary Scientists Who Unlocked The Mysteries of Sleep centers around Nathanial Kleitman, a Russian Jew who escaped the Russian Pogroms just before the start of World War 1. In 1915, Kleitman arrived in New York with aspirations to become a doctor. Within the span of a decade, he not only achieved his goal but had also established the world's first sleep laboratory in Chicago.
So why did Kleitman decide to study sleep? Miller explains that “Antisemitism was also rampant in America in the 1920s and if you were a Jewish researcher, it was very hard to get a job in an accepted field, or you would be frozen out and so Jewish academics tended to look for new territory.” Sleep research, Miller says, was unheard of and “sleep was an area in which no one was interested”. Kleitman, however, was fascinated by “consciousness and he thought, unconsciousness - your nightly unconsciousness, would reveal something about consciousness.”
“I'm interested in the ways that people are a lot of different ways at once,” says author and writer Leslie Jamison. “How they are kind of a combination of beautiful, tender loyalty, and also cruelty and anger and resentment, and just how do all those things live inside a human soul?” Photo by Lexie Scott
Miller also shares some of the latest discoveries in sleep research, emphasizing the importance of maintaining a regular sleep schedule as scientists have discovered that “sleep is coordinated by this biological clock in your brain, suprachiasmatic nucleus, and if you throw too many curveballs, it gets confused.”
And most recently Miller says, sleep scientists have discovered “that people who sleep insufficiently are more at risk of Alzheimer's disease and other neurodegenerative diseases. It seems this is probably because their glymphatic systems aren't getting a chance to clear out the toxins from their brain at night.”
So what if you don’t sleep well? Is there a way to ensure a good night’s rest? Miller says that “the most effective thing you can do without side effects, seems to be a technique called cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia or CBTI, which is a therapeutic approach that combines a whole bunch of different non-pharmacological approaches.”
In Mapping the Darkness; The Visionary Scientists Who Unlocked The Mysteries of Sleep author Kenneth Miller explains that “for millennia, sleep has been thought of as a miniature death, either you do sort of die during the night, or it's a rehearsal for death. But it raises the same sorts of questions, who are we when we have no waking consciousness? What's going on in there? Where does the self go?”
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