I’ve been sleeping for more than 30 years.
The back of the napkin math says that I’ve tallied more than 90,000+ hours of sleep.
That’s more than 10 years.
The assumption in this calculation is that I’ve averaged 8 hours of nightly sleep over the course of my life.
This puts me in the top 65% of sleepers.
More than a third of adults fail to obtain the recommended seven to nine hours of nightly sleep - a figure borrowed from Matthew Walker’s
Why We Sleep.
Walker’s book also taught me that after 10 days of just seven hours of sleep, the brain is as dysfunctional as it would be after going without sleep for 24 hours.
And, that the recycle rate of a human being is around 16 hours.
This means that after 16 hours of being awake, the brain begins to fail.
There is a part of me that wishes I never read Why We Sleep.
Sometimes there’s comfort in being oblivious.
Now, I’d just be ignorant.
Equipped with knowledge from Walker and his peers, I kind of have to treat sleep the same way I treat my plate, my movement, and my mind.
I may even need to prioritize it over those.
“I was fond of saying that sleep is the third pillar of good health, alongside diet and exercise, but I have changed my tune. Sleep is more than a pillar; it is the foundation on which the other two health bastions sit.” - Matthew Walker