比尔盖茨推荐《为什么要睡觉》：这本书催我入睡

Back in my early Microsoft days, I routinely pulled all-nighters when we had to deliver a piece of software. Once or twice, I stayed up two nights in a row. I knew I wasn’t as sharp when I was operating mostly on caffeine and adrenaline, but I was obsessed with my work, and I felt that sleeping a lot was lazy.

回想微软早年的岁月，当我们必须要交付一个软件时，我们经常通宵工作。有一次或两次，我连续两天熬夜。我知道当我主要靠咖啡因和肾上腺素撑着的时候，我的状态不会太好。但当时的我痴迷于工作，我觉得睡太多觉是懒惰的表现。

Now that I’ve read Matthew Walker’s Why We Sleep, I realize that my all-nighters, combined with almost never getting eight hours of sleep, took a big toll. The book was recommended to me by my daughter Jenn and John Doerr. Walker, the director of UC Berkeley’s Center for Human Sleep Science, explains how neglecting sleep undercuts your creativity, problem solving, decision-making, learning, memory, heart health, brain health, mental health, emotional well-being, immune system, and even your life span. “The decimation of sleep throughout industrialized nations is having a catastrophic impact,” Walker writes.

当我读完马修·沃克的《为什么要睡觉》，我意识到自己通宵工作，加之几乎没睡够过八个小时，这对我造成了极大的伤害。沃克是加州大学伯克利分校人类睡眠科学中心的主任，他解释了忽视睡眠会如何削弱你的创造力、解决问题的能力、决策能力、学习能力、记忆力、心脏健康、精神健康、情绪健康、免疫系统，甚至缩短你的寿命。沃克写道：“整个工业国家正在遭受睡眠减少带来的毁灭性影响。”

I don’t necessarily buy into all of Walker’s reporting, such as the strong link he claims between not getting enough sleep and developing Alzheimer’s. In an effort to wake us all up to the harm of sleeping too little, he sometimes reports as fact what science has not yet clearly demonstrated. But even if you apply a mild discount factor, Why We Sleep is an important and fascinating book.

我并不完全接受沃克的这份报告，例如他所声明的关于睡眠不足与阿茨海默症之间的强联系。为了使我们所有人都醒悟关于睡眠太少带来的危害，有时他会用科学还未验证的事实进行论述。但是，即使你会对此书有一些微词，《为什么要睡觉》仍然是一本重要且引人入胜的好书。

Because this is a short review, I’ll answer a few questions that I suspect are top of mind for you.

鉴于这是一篇短评，我将回答几个我认为你会首先想到的问题。

Does everyone really need seven or eight hours of sleep a night? The answer is that you almost certainly do, even if you’ve convinced yourself otherwise. In the words of Dr. Thomas Roth, of the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, “The number of people who can survive on five hours of sleep or less without impairment, and rounded to a whole number, is zero.”

每人每晚真的需要七或八小时的睡眠吗？答案是：你基本上确实需要这么多睡眠，即便你已经说服自己不这样做。借用底特律亨利福特医院托马斯·罗斯医生的话：“靠五小时甚至更少时间睡眠存活下来且没有因此造成任何损害的人数，去掉小数点四舍五入，结果是零。”

Why do we sleep? After all, when you’re sleeping—and all animals do—you can’t hunt, gather, eat, reproduce, or defend yourself. Yet Walker concludes that the evolutionary upsides of sleep are far greater than these downsides. In brief, sleep produces complex neurochemical baths that improve our brains in various ways. And it “restocks the armory of our immune system, helping fight malignancy, preventing infection, and warding off all manner of sickness.” In other words, sleep greatly enhances our evolutionary fitness—just in ways we can’t see.

为什么我们要睡觉？在你睡觉的时候，与所有动物一样，你不能狩猎、聚会、进食、繁殖或防御自己。然而沃克的结论是，睡眠的演化性优势要远远大过这些消极影响。简而言之，睡眠产生出复杂的影响神经系统的化学物质，通过不同方式改善大脑的功能。此外，它“增强我们的免疫系统，帮助抵抗恶性肿瘤，预防感染，以及防止各种疾病。”换句话说，睡眠极大地增强了我们的演化适应性，以我们肉眼看不见的方式。

What can I do to improve my sleep hygiene?我能做什么来改善睡眠健康？

• Replace any LEDs bulbs in your bedroom, because they emit the most sleep-corroding blue light.

• If you’re fortunate enough to be able to control the temperature where you live, set your bedroom to drop to 65 degrees at the time you intend to go to sleep. “To successfully initiate sleep … your core temperature needs to decrease by 2 to 3 degrees Fahrenheit,” according to Walker.

• Limit alcohol, because alcohol is not a sleep aid, contrary to popular belief. While it might help induce sleep, “alcohol is one of the most powerful suppressors of REM [rapid-eye-movement] sleep,” Walker says.

• If you can possibly take a short midday nap like our ancestors used to and some Mediterranean and South American cultures still do, you should (but no later than 3 pm). It will likely improve your creativity and coronary health as well as extend your lifetime.

• 替换掉卧室里所有的LED灯泡，因为它们发出对睡眠破坏性最强的蓝光。

• 如果你足够幸运到可以控制居所的温度，请在你准备入睡时将卧室温度下调至65华氏度（译注：约18.3摄氏度）。据沃克所言，“若要成功进入睡眠……你的核心体温需要下降2至3华氏度（译注：约1.1-1.8摄氏度）”。

• 限制饮酒，因为酒精不是助眠剂，这与普遍的认知正好相反。尽管它可能有助于诱发睡意，但沃克说：“酒精是快速眼动睡眠（译注：睡眠的一个阶段。在这个阶段里，人的大脑非常活跃，眼球会快速转动，人也很容易做梦）的最强抑制剂之一。”

• 如果你可以中午小憩片刻，就像我们的祖先过去常常做以及一些地中海及南美群落仍然在做的那样，你应该这样做（但不要超过下午3点）。这将有可能提升你的创造力和冠状动脉健康，以及延长你的寿命。

It took me a little longer than usual to finish Why We Sleep—ironically, because I kept following Walker’s advice to put down the book I was reading a bit earlier than I was used to, so I could get a better night’s sleep. But Walker taught me a lot about this basic activity that every person on Earth needs. I suspect his book will do the same for you.

我花了比平常更多的时间读完《为什么要睡觉》——这听上去有点讽刺，因为我总是遵循沃克的建议，比我习惯的时间更早一些将书放下，以便在晚上能有更好的睡眠。但关于这项地球人都需要的基本活动，我从沃克那里学到了很多。我想他的这本书也将教会你很多。