Counting Sheep : The Science and Pleasures of Sleep and Dreams

Preliminaries A Third of Life A sleep-sick society? The universal imperative Half asleep Nice, not naughty Insufficiencies Sleep People Are we sleep-deprived? Are you sleep-deprived? Reasons for not sleeping Ancient and modern Sleepy drivers Sleepy pilots Sleepy doctors The madness of politicians Truly, madly, sleepily The price of eternal vigilance is liberty Dead Tired Sleepiness Fighting the beast A soil for peevishness Tired people are stupid and reckless Alcohol, beauty and old age Champion wakers Uses and abuses The Golden Chain A waking death Body and soul Sleep, immunity and healthy The Battle of Stalingrad Sleepless in hospital " 84 Mechanisms The Shapes of Sleep Measuring sleep Falling asleep again, what am I to do? The sleep cycle The paradoxical world of REM The sleep cycle continued Waking up The quality of sleep Meditating - or only sleeping? Morpheus Undressed The rhythms of life So SAD Lark and owls Genes and sleep A sleeplessness that kills Strange Tales of Erections and Yawning Nocturnal erections The mystery of yawning Friends and Enemies of Sleep Brother caffeine Sister alcohol Tobacco Food for sleep Exercise is bunk, isn't it? Things that go bump in the night Shift work Poppy, mandragora and drowsy syrups Hypnotic exotica Dreams The Children of an Idle Brain? To sleep, perchance . . . Do flies dream? A dream within a dream? Dreaming as madness Are dreams meaningful? Like wine through water Can dreams be sinful? A Second Life A creative state Stevenson's Brownies Lucid dreams The great dreamer Origins From Egg to Grave Screaming babies Bad children Yawning youth Old and grey and full of sleep The Reason of Sleep The evolution of sleep What is sleep for? What is REM sleep for? Reverse learning To sleep, perchance to learn Should machines sleep? Problems Bad Sleepers An intolerable lucidity Why can't you sleep? Storm and stress and sleep What to do? Staying awake Dark Night Walking and talking Nightmares, night terrors, sleep paralysis and the Old Hag Moving sleep Midnight feasting Soggy sheets Aching heads Troubled guts Troubled minds Sudden nocturnal death Narcolepsy Pickwickian Problems The wonderful world of snoring Silence is golden Breathless in bed Consequences - mostly dire Unblocking those tubes Pleasures And So to Bed A brief history of beds Sleeping partners An Excellent Thing Puritans and hypocrites Naps, nappers and napping Sweet dreams Blessed oblivion Give sleep a chance In praise of horizontalism Acknowledgements References Index A study of sleep that reveals its mysteries and sings its praises: “A choice example of science writing that entertains as it educates” (Kirkus Reviews).Does the early bird really catch the worm, or end up healthy, wealthy, and wise? Can some people really exist on just a few hours'sleep a night? Does everybody dream? Do fish dream? How did people cope before alarm clocks and caffeine? And is anybody getting enough sleep?Even though we will devote a third of our lives to sleep, we still know remarkably little about its origins and purpose. Paul Martin's Counting Sheep answers these questions and more in this illuminating work of popular science. Even the wonders of yawning, the perils of sleepwalking, and the strange ubiquity of nocturnal erections are explained in full.To sleep, to dream: Counting Sheep reflects the centrality of these activities to our lives and can help readers respect, understand, and extract more pleasure from that delicious time when they're lost to the world.Praise for Counting Sheep“Scientist Martin... is on a mission to cure our “sleep-sick society” and convince us, for our own good, to start taking sleep more seriously. Pithy, wry and earthily humorous, this book is Martin's manifesto for a healthier society.... A writer fully in command of his subject and his style, Martin reveals just how deeply and madly we pay for our collective indifference to the value of so simple a pleasure as a good night's sleep.” —Publishers Weekly“Energetic and immensely readable, this is as good a popular science book as I have read.” —Evening Standard (UK)“Everything you could possibly wish to know about sleep, lack of sleep, dreams, sleepwalking, nightmares, snoring, napping, and sudden sleep death syndrome. Marvelous.” —The Sunday Times (UK) Does the early bird really catch the worm, or end up health, wealthy and wise? Can some people really exist on just a few hours' sleep a night? Does everybody dream? Do fish dream? How did people cope before alarm clocks and caffeine? And is anybody getting enough sleep? Even though we will devote a third of our lives to sleep, we still know remarkably little about its origins and purpose. Paul Martin's Counting Sheep answers these questions and more in this illuminating work ofs popular science. Even the wonders of yawning, the perils of sleepwalking and the strange ubiquity of nocturnal erections are explained in full. Includes information on adolescence, alcohol, animals and sleep, beds, birds, blood pressure, body temperature, brain, breathing, caffeine, cardiovascular disease, children and babies, circadian rhythm, clocks, daylight, depression, Charles Dickens, dogs, dreams, drugs, emotions, evolution of sleep, Sigmund Freud, hallucinations, ancient Greece, heart disease, high blood pressure, hormones, hypnagogic state, insomnia, lark (morning type), artificial lighting, melatonin, memory, men, metabolism, napping, narcolepsy, nightmare, Non Rapid Eye Movement (NREM) sleep, older people, owl (evening type), Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep, William Shakespeare, shift work, sleep deprivation, sleep disorders, snoring, stress, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), tiredness, women, sleepy drivers, sleepy pilots, sleepy doctors, sleep cycle, food for sleep, exercise, lucid dreams, etc

Does the early bird really catch the worm, or end up healthy, wealthy, and wise? Can some people really exist on just a few hours' sleep a night? Does everybody dream? Do fish dream? How did people cope before alarm clocks and caffeine? And is anybody getting enough sleep?

Even though we will devote a third of our lives to sleep, we still know remarkably little about its origins and purpose. Paul Martin's Counting Sheep answers these questions and more in this illuminating work of popular science. Even the wonders of yawning, the perils of sleepwalking, and the strange ubiquity of nocturnal erections are explained in full.

To sleep, to dream: Counting Sheep reflects the centrality of these activities to our lives and can help readers respect, understand, and extract more pleasure from that delicious time when they're lost to the world.

"Even though we will devote a third of our lives to sleep, we still know remarkably little about its origins and purpose. Paul Martin's Counting Sheep answers these questions and more in this work of popular science. Even the wonders of yawning, the perils of sleepwalking, and the strange ubiquity of noctumal erections are explained in full." "To sleep, to dream: Counting Sheep reflects the centrality of these activities to our lives and can help readers respect, understand, and extract more pleasure from that delicious time when they're lost to the world."--BOOK JACKET A brilliant overview of that most vital, most underrated and most elusive of human activities, sleep.