Just Finished Reading: The Nocturnal Brain – Nightmares, Neuroscience and the Secret World of Sleep by Guy Leschziner (FP: 2019) [315pp] 

I like my sleep and if I say so myself, I’m pretty good at it. My record, as a teenager naturally, is 16 hours. Thankfully my parents left me to it apart from some sarcastic remarks when I finally emerged from my room. Thankfully too I can say that I’ve had very few problems with my sleep apart from the odd, and sometimes very odd, nightmare (mostly when I was young) and the occasional (thankfully short) bout of insomnia generally as the result of work-related stress. In the last few years at work, I was almost constantly tired and relied on a regular coke intake – mostly Pepsi actually – to keep me awake. This was actually my own fault as I’d go to bed quite late – I'm most definitely a night-owl – and then struggle to get up at a ridiculous hour in the morning and have to function through a full day. Self-inflicted but I wasn’t prepared to give up my life so I’d be perkier at my desk each day. 

Anyway, to the book itself. I’m aware that sleep disorders are not exactly rare. Apart from my own minor issues (plus being told that I mumble in my sleep and tend to move about a bit in bed), my sister used to sleep walk as a child (we’d sometimes find her curled up on the sofa in the morning) and a friend at Uni apparently had sleep apnoea where he’d momentarily stop breathing which would wake him up (and scare the hell out of his girlfriend). But I wasn’t aware of the number of problems and the damage they cause until reading this fascinating and honestly frightening book!  

Circadian rhythms have long interested me ever since learning about them. The idea that we have a (roughly) 24-hour in-built clock that can sometimes malfunction is intriguing to say the least, especially discovering that ALL life – including plants and bacteria – have the same clock. It’s VERY old. But what’s really weird is when it malfunctions and you’re cursed with a 25-hour one. This doesn’t sound too bad until you realise that means slowly moving out of and then back into synch with the rest of the world. Disruptive or what! Then there’s sleepwalking and variations thereof – including sleep driving(!), sleep eating(!!), sleep sex(!!) and sleep crime(!!!). I’ve already mentioned sleep apnoea but imagine stopping breathing for a few seconds but HUNDREDS of times a night. You might not even remember most of it but imagine the damage it’s doing to your sleep patterns and your general health. Then there’s things like narcolepsy, falling asleep for a minute or so at random moments which, of course can be incredibly dangerous. There’s Restless Leg Syndrome, Night Terrors which put my piddling nightmares to shame, and other neurological disorders that threaten our need for sleep.  

This was honestly a riveting read. The author, a consultant neurologist at Guy’s Hospital in London, is an excellent communicator and has filled this slim volume with case studies, explanations and not a little humour. One of the things that struck me was his humility in stating time and again the present limits to our knowledge of the human brain. But we are learning fast and some of the seemingly intractable problems of today will, no doubt, be able to be addressed in the future. I most definitely count myself lucky that I haven’t had to manage any of the scenario's outlined in the book. But if you, or someone you know, is having serious and persistent sleep issues this book could point you in the right direction for possible solutions. Highly recommended for anyone interested in the grey-matter between our ears or for anyone dreaming of a good night's sleep. 

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