Dr. Matt Walker

Oh, I disagree.

Well, I think I was very absolutist and I've learned my lesson.

Thank you for saying that.

I will stop trying to reject that.

I would say though that

please don't start, as you mentioned that, getting anxious if you're not finding it easy to fall asleep, that listening to me is firstly probably not going to make matters any better, but don't think even if you're in the general public that, look, I had one bad night of sleep, does it mean I'm now going to develop Alzheimer's disease?

Absolutely not.

We're not suggesting that.

We're talking about a model in which

you know week after week month after month yes i've demonstrated that you know after just one night of something of short sleep you can see measurable impairments and we can and i can't you know i can't be untruthful about the scientific data but it's not as catastrophic as one may think and as you said in this series we will also speak and focus a great deal about what can you do to start to try to optimize your sleep so thank you for that opportunity

Precisely.

Yeah, so there are so many wonderful carrots.

So when you are sleeping, your brain's capacity and its learning centers are so much more ready to absorb information.

So think about these memory centers in the brain.

almost like a dry sponge if you've been sleeping well.

And they are so excited to soak up new information and retain that information.

So firstly, sleep before learning is going to help you acquire and imprint new memories very effectively.

And we've demonstrated that and I'll tell you about the studies in a later episode.

We also know though, sleep after learning does something delicious.

It will take those freshly minted memories and it will consolidate them into the brain, meaning that it will start to fixate them, almost like sort of setting them in concrete into the brain.