The Book
The Paleo diet is one of the world’s most popular lifestyle hacks. If you eat and exercise like our prehistoric ancestors, they say, you’ll live a longer, healthier, and happier life. But what if it wasn’t what cavemen did during the day that made them healthy? What if the true secret is imitating their nights? In SLEEP LIKE A CAVEMAN, sleep scientist Merijn van de Laar explains the ancient origins of our sleep system and how we can sleep better without going back to the caves.
Contemporary hunter-gatherers lead lives much like our ancestors — and they don’t have a word for “insomnia.” Sleeplessness is, however, a major problem for millions of people the world over. Even the author, who has made better sleep his life’s work, has experienced it! In twelve short but profound chapters, van de Laar explains how evolutionary pressures shaped our brains and offers simple but counterintuitive advice for better shut-eye. Readers will learn:
- Why insomnia provided an evolutionary advantage
- How REM and sleep cycles work
- Why travel wreaks havoc on our internal clocks
- How cavemen used stimulants, and what today’s readers need to know about how substances, ranging from caffeine to cocaine, affect sleep
- How to transform nightmares with lucid dreaming
- Whether or not you really need a full eight hours every night
We spend roughly a third of our lives in bed. SLEEP LIKE A CAVEMAN helps ensure it is time well-spent. With the scientific insight of Matthew Walker’s Why We Sleep and the data-driven, goal-oriented approach of Aric Prather’s The Sleep Solution, SLEEP LIKE A CAVEMAN is the ideal book for anyone looking for better rest.
