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Why do residing issues sleep? “Ask researchers this question, and listen as, like clockwork, a sense of awe and frustration creeps into their voices,” Veronique Greenwood wrote in 2018.
“In a way, it’s startling how universal sleep is,” she continued. “In the midst of the hurried scramble for survival, across eons of bloodshed and death and flight, uncountable millions of living things have laid themselves down for a nice, long bout of unconsciousness. This hardly seems conducive to living to fight another day … That such a risky habit is so common, and so persistent, suggests that whatever is happening is of the utmost importance.”
In different phrases, Greenwood writes, “whatever sleep gives to the sleeper is worth tempting death over and over again, for a lifetime.” Whatever sleep offers us can also be definitely worth the many hours, and enormous quantities of cash, that people now spend determining the right way to maximize our slumber. Sixty % of America’s adults report experiencing sleep issues each evening or most nights, Amanda Mull famous in 2019, and a wide range of industries have sprung as much as assist us sleep longer and higher.
Sleep is a necessity, nevertheless it’s additionally a ritual: Where we sleep, after we sleep, and who we sleep subsequent to say lots about who we’re and what we wish. Today’s studying checklist explores sleep as a scientific thriller, a bodily want, and essentially the most constant routine of our every day lives.
On Sleep
Can Medieval Sleeping Habits Fix America’s Insomnia?
By Derek Thompson
“My 3-a.m. awakenings aren’t an unnatural disorder but an ancestral echo.”
Why Everyone Should Sleep Alone
By Malika Rao
On the virtues of splitting up for the evening
I Found the Key to the Kingdom of Sleep
By Amanda Mull
It’s my foot.
Still Curious?
Other Diversions
P.S.
I’ll depart you with one sleep truth from the animal kingdom that solely provides to the thriller: Golden hamsters “have been observed waking up from bouts of hibernation—in order to nap,” Greenwood stories. “Whatever they’re getting from sleep, it’s not available to them while they’re hibernating.” But what’s it? Scientists nonetheless don’t know.
— Isabel