You’re probably getting the right amount of sleep if you feel alert all during the day, with no slump or fatigue until your regular bedtime. If you’re not sleepy in sedentary positions, such as driving a car or sitting in a boring meeting during the mid-afternoon trough in alertness, you’re among the alert minority and needn’t read further. Give this book to a sleepy friend. (pp 41, Chapter 4, Sleep Need and Peak Performance.)

Since most of us aren't in that minority, I'll go on! The author, Dr. James B. Maas, a professor at Cornell University, has studied what happens while we sleep since 1969 and his University course on sleep has grown from about 250 students to 1500, the most popular course in history. Kornell_911 here in our community has taken it and also read/reviewed his book, Power Sleep. In a nutshell, what happens while we sleep is not at all what we would expect.

Instead of the mind going to sleep after a day’s hard work of thinking, it becomes active after about a half hour of sleep. This is called REM sleep because your eyes are rapidly moving back and forth as if watching a movie, or your dreams. Actually they’re not, but responding involuntarily to a nerve that produces bursts of energy to the brain. These messages don’t go further than your brain stem, though, thank goodness, or you would be acting out your dreams!

It is such insights that make this book so fascinating, along with sleep trivia offered in boxes throughout the book. Some geniuses like Thomas Edison only caught three hours a night with a long nap. Albert Einstein didn’t think it was laziness to sleep ten hours a night, though. The author agrees with him. Our bodies and minds function best with ten hours of sleep. Whew! I would be sleeplogged if I got that much at once. I take after Edison myself and am probably sleep-deprived a lot of the time.

Titles of Some of the 13 Chapters

Learning About the Power of Sleep—The author suggests we take power naps as well as power lunches. We need sleep as much as proper diet and exercise.

The Architecture and Functions of Sleep—Maas takes us on the journey to deep sleep; explains penile erections (really!); poopoos the idea that we can learn new material while asleep (darn!).

The Golden Rules of Sleep—Twenty guidelines to help us sleep well, starting with getting an adequate amount of continuous sleep every night at the same time or make it up as soon as possible. He also recommends we see a physician if we still can't sleep (be responsible, don't just take his advice...)

There are five sections for the thirteen chapters, four appendixes and an index.

Final Thoughts

There’s a lot of information to digest here. If you’re having trouble sleeping or think you need less than the basic eight because you have so much work to do, then you should read this book. You will realize like I did that a good night’s rest will help you think more clearly and creatively. I knew there was a reason I haven’t been writing fiction or poetry lately! To his credit Maas doesn’t recommend sleeping pills at all, but suggests melatonin and many tricks for preventing jetlag and insomnia for shift workers. It really is a helpful book, if you want to be helped. Check it out and enjoy the benefits of power sleep.

P.S.-I can't remember much said about a diet other than not eating heavy or alcohol before sleeping.)





Recommended: Yes