Aric Prather
Penguin Life (out now)
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Essential, yet for many elusive; simple, but of endless fascination. Another paradox of sleep is that, though we might not be getting enough of it at night, we canât get enough of reading about it. Books about how to get more and better shuteye â and warnings of the ills we bring upon ourselves if we donât â are the blockbusters of popular non-fiction, flying off the shelves and sparking discussion everywhere.
Why We Sleep by neuroscientist Matthew Walker was an international bestseller in 2017. While some of his claims are still controversial and may end up facing some adjustment or revision in the future, no one is disputing the importance of the case he made for sleep. Now, Walker is joined by Aric Prather and The Seven-Day Sleep Prescription, a new book of solutions and strategies, praised by Walker as âthoughtful, vastly knowledgeable, and genuinely brilliantâ.
If the back coverâs promise of âtransformativeâ results in âjust seven daysâ piques scepticism, Prather writes with authority. As a clinical psychologist treating patients with insomnia and a professor of psychiatry and behavioural sciences at the University of California, San Francisco, he has a wide-ranging view of common struggles with sleep. Prather is a parent of young children, so he can relate. âI couldnât sleep in if I tried,â he writes.
Pratherâs acceptance that our lives often donât allow for a full eight hours of sleep counters that strand of wellness advice that tends towards monasticism, heavily hinting that any electrical light after 10pm condemns us to compromised sleep. He is refreshingly relaxed about watching TV to wind down before bed, just so long as you donât do it in bed.
Prather addresses upfront the essential challenge: the modern world isnât set up for sleep and, for many people, it is just one priority among many. Especially for those who are socioeconomically disadvantaged, it may not even rank that highly, relative to earning money to pay the bills.
As Prather tells a patient, sometimes it is a case of accepting that âyouâre going to be short on sleep, and live with it the best you canâ. Yet, at the same time, he makes a compelling argument for why sleep is worth prioritising, in whatever way we can.
This might mean ensuring that what little rest we do get is more restorative by actively managing stress and taking regular breaks during the day, or, at the more drastic end of Pratherâs case studies, reorganising our daily life to suit our individual sleep patterns.
Like the self-styled âsleep diplomatâ Walker, Prather identifies himself not just as a scientist of sleep, but as an âevangelistâ for it. Even setting aside the myriad individual health impacts, he suggests that our fractious, in many ways failing, society is a result of widespread chronic sleeplessness.
In a perfect world, says Prather, our economy would be reorganised to ensure that we all get sufficient rest and sleep would be considered a basic human right â not the pursuit and pet interest of the privileged. After all, it is as fundamental to our mental and physical well-being as food and shelter.
For those readers already well-versed in sleep health, The Seven-Day Sleep Prescription might offer few surprises, but it is still a valuable read for its balance between pragmatism and idealism. The structure of the book, with its bitesize steps towards better sleep, is accessible and immediately helpful, amd the steps themselves are  persuasive
âWhen you sleep better, your whole life improves,â he writes. For those of us perhaps more inclined to fret over our sleep than to actively prioritise it, it is a worthwhile reminder to give this miracle cure a try.
