Sometimes we laugh, sometimes we cry

 

Source: Instagram

The Importance of Sleep

The text below is an excerpt from Matthew Walker's book Why We Sleep. Do you agree with what it says? Do you think you would enjoy reading this book?

Why we sleep

Do you think you got enough sleep this past week? Can you recall the last time you woke up without an alarm clock feeling refreshed, not needing caffeine? If the answer to either of these questions is ”no,” you are not alone. More than a third of adults in many developed nations fail to obtain the recommended seven to nine hours of nightly sleep.

I doubt you are surprised by this fact, but you may be surprised by the consequences. Routinely sleeping less than six hours a night weakens your immune system, substantially increasing your risk of certain forms of cancer. Insufficient sleep appears to be a key lifestyle factor linked to your risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease. Inadequate sleep even moderate reductions for just one week disrupts blood sugar levels so profoundly that you would be classified as pre-diabetic. Short sleeping increases the likelihood of your coronary arteries becoming blocked and brittle, setting you on a path toward cardiovascular disease, stroke, and congestive heart failure. Fitting Charlotte Bronte’s prophetic wisdom that ”a ruffled mind makes a restless pillow,” sleep disruption further contributes to all major psychiatric conditions, including depression, anxiety, and suicidality.

Perhaps you have also noticed a desire to eat more when you’re tired? This is no coincidence. Too little sleep swells concentrations of a hormone that makes you feel hungry while suppressing a companion hormone that otherwise signals food satisfaction. Despite being full, you still want to eat more. It’s a proven recipe for weight gain in sleep-deficient adults and children alike. Worse, should you attempt to diet but don’t get enough sleep while doing so, it is futile, since most of the weight you lose will come from lean body mass, not fat.

Add the above health consequences up, and a proven link becomes easier to accept: relative to the recommended seven to nine hours, the shorter your sleep, the shorter your life span. The old maxim “I’ll sleep when I’m dead” is therefore unfortunate. Adopt this mindset, and it is possible that you will be dead sooner and the quality of that (shorter) life will be worse. The elastic band of sleep deprivation can stretch only so far before it snaps. Sadly, human beings are in fact the only species that will deliberately deprive themselves of sleep without legitimate gain. Numerous components of wellness, and countless seams of societal fabric, are being eroded by our costly state of sleep neglect: human and financial alike. So much so that the Center for Disease Control declared insufficient sleep as a public health epidemic. It may not be a coincidence that countries where sleep time has declined most dramatically over the past century, such as the US, the UK, Japan, and South Korea, and several in western Europe, are also those suffering the greatest increase in rates of the aforementioned physical diseases and mental disorders.

Scientists such as myself have even started lobbying doctors to start “prescribing” sleep. As medical advice goes, it’s perhaps the most painless and enjoyable to follow. Do not, however, mistake this as a plea to doctors to start prescribing more sleeping pills quite the opposite, in fact, considering the evidence surrounding the deleterious health consequences of these drugs.

Different types of biscuit

 

Have you tried any of these biscuits? Do you have a favourite? My daughter and I both love ginger nuts.

Vocabulary

 

Easy recipes: just mix the ingredients and pop the mug into the microwave for around one minute.

 

Health Idioms

 

What do you think of the sentence below?

 

How many of these expressions did you already know?

 

Synonyms

 

Do you understand this idiom?

have second thoughts Meaning: If you're having second thoughts about something, you're having doubts about a decision you've made. For example: You're not having second thoughts about moving to Australia to live, are you? I've been having second thoughts about quitting my job. Maybe I should keep it for a while longer.

Can you summarise this short documentary for me?

 

What do you think of this cover? Do you like it?

 

Idiom

for a song 2026-04-01 Meaning: If you buy or sell something for a song, you buy or sell it at a very cheap price. For example: When I was in Vietnam I bought some beautiful lacquerware for a song. I still can't believe how cheap it was. James had a really valuable record by an old American band called The Cramps, but he sold it for a song at a garage sale. He didn't know how much it was worth.

Idiom

young blood 2026-03-26 Meaning: If you say "young blood", you mean young people who have fresh, new ideas and lots of energy. For example: The company is successful because they're always bringing in young blood, and this helps them keep up with the latest fashions and ideas. The trouble with the seniority system is that it keeps young blood out of decision-making positions.

What is petrichor?

 

Different types of laugh

 

Can you explain this in your own words?

 

Eid al-Fitr

 

Shopping Idioms

 

British Accents