Dreaming provides a unique suite of benefits to all species fortunate enough to experience it, humans included. Among these gifts are a consoling neurochemical bath that mollifies painful memories and a virtual reality space in which the brain melds past and present knowledge, inspiring creativity. %% highlight_id: 209449841 %%

First, after waking up in the morning, could you fall back asleep at ten or eleven a.m.? If the answer is “yes,” you are likely not getting sufficient sleep quantity and/or quality. Second, can you function optimally without caffeine before noon? If the answer is “no,” then you are most likely self-medicating your state of chronic sleep deprivation. %% highlight_id: 209449842 %%

When it comes to information processing, think of the wake state principally as reception (experiencing and constantly learning the world around you), NREM sleep as reflection (storing and strengthening those raw ingredients of new facts and skills), and REM sleep as integration (interconnecting these raw ingredients with each other, with all past experiences, and, in doing so, building an ever more accurate model of how the world works, including innovative insights and problem-solving abilities). %% highlight_id: 209449843 %%

For every day you are in a different time zone, your suprachiasmatic nucleus can only readjust by about one hour. %% highlight_id: 209449844 %%

Melatonin simply provides the official instruction to commence the event of sleep, but does not participate in the sleep race itself. %% highlight_id: 209449845 %%

Aging also alters the speed of caffeine clearance: the older we are, the longer it takes our brain and body to remove caffeine, and thus the more sensitive we become in later life to caffeine’s sleep-disrupting influence. %% highlight_id: 209449846 %%

The physical and mental impairments caused by one night of bad sleep dwarf those caused by an equivalent absence of food or exercise. %% highlight_id: 209449847 %%

Routinely sleeping less than six or seven hours a night demolishes your immune system, more than doubling your risk of cancer. %% highlight_id: 209449848 %%

Caffeine has an average half-life of five to seven hours. Let’s say that you have a cup of coffee after your evening dinner, around 7:30 p.m. This means that by 1:30 a.m., 50 percent of that caffeine may still be active and circulating throughout your brain tissue. In other words, by 1:30 a.m., you’re only halfway to completing the job of cleansing your brain of the caffeine you drank after dinner. %% highlight_id: 209449849 %%

It is disquieting to learn that vehicular accidents caused by drowsy driving exceed those caused by alcohol and drugs combined. %% highlight_id: 209449850 %%