Thompson Talks: Why we Sleep? Review and Commentary When I were a lad, newly qualified and sporting the full length white coat (medical students wore shorties), sleep was quite a preoccupation. On my first ever weekend on-call, we clocked in of a Friday morning, and clocked off at 5pm the following Monday. In between times I had, I kid you not, a total of ten hours of fractured sleep, having personally admitted twenty-nine persons to the hospital. By the Monday I was way beyond tired – I had actually gone slightly mad. Only a spell in a major war could have prepared us. I am so glad Matthew Walker’s book “Why We Sleep” wasn’t written in 1991. Bad enough to know that sleep deprivation had addled our ability to think and feel. How miserable it would have been to be informed by a Professor of Neuroscience at Berkeley, that deprivation was also a major risk factor for diabetes, heart disease, cancer, mental health problems and infertility. I’m actually surprised most of us are still alive. 7
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