Are you a light sleeper, or do you sleep very deeply? Find out everything you wanted to know about sleep from Merijn van der Laar's new book How to Sleep Like a Caveman. Merijn will be presenting his book and talk about sleeping, sleep deprivation and his research on sleep.
About Merijn van de Laar
Dr. Merijn van de Laar is a sleep scientist and psychologist who specializes in treating sleep disorders. How to Sleep Like a Caveman is his first book and has been translated into more than twenty languages. He lives in the Netherlands.
About How to Sleep Like a Caveman
We spend roughly a third of our lives in bed, but for millions of us, not all of that time is spent sleeping. We strive for eight hours per night, only to lie awake thanks to stress, our ever-present devices, a new baby, or that 4pm coffee you thought you needed.
We're hardly the first to experience this. When our ancestors evolved hundreds of thousands of years ago, saber-toothed tigers were their biggest nighttime worry, and wakefulness served to protect one's tribe at night. They had no concept of sleep stress; their episodic sleep patterns gave them an evolutionary advantage. But, while the factors keeping us up at night might have changed since early humans snoozed in their caves, the solutions haven't. As sleep scientist and recovering insomniac Merijn van de Laar shows in How to Sleep Like a Caveman, we can look to their example to improve our own sleep health, including focusing on the quality of our sleep rather than the quantity, adapting to changes in our sleep patterns as we age, and, yes, letting go of the eight-hour rule.
Drawing from emerging science, archeological research into our ancestors' sleep habits, and close observation of contemporary hunter-gatherer cultures, How to Sleep Like a Caveman reveals how our brains evolved to rest, and charts the course toward a better night's sleep. It explains everything from why we sometimes jerk awake at night—likely a remnant of having slept in trees—to why our efforts to "optimize" our sleep schedules might just be a fool's errand. The result is a surprising, accessible new framework for thinking about sleep—the way we were designed to.
